YAY! COFFEE IS BETTER FOR YOU THAN IT IS BAD!

I write this despite a queasy churning stomach caused by my morning dose of acidic coffee: Coffee is excellent. Coffee is good. Coffee will cause you to be happy and to live forever.

No, of course it won’t make you live forever. But people who drink it — up to quite a lot of it — are less likely to kack than people who are too — what, English? — to drink the most fantastic thing available for drinking.

What is it about coffee drinking that cuts down on the kackage? Not caffiene, apparently, because even decaf is associated with a lower kack-risk.

Ultimately, science is about improving life on earth, however, so who cares HOW coffee protects us from death and destruction? It just does.

But if I had to venture a guess as to why coffee makes a person stronger in the face of inevitable kacking, I would say two things:

Antioxidants! These are “rust inhibitors” of the human body, and Americans get most of ours from… coffee!

Happiness! Boatloads of research shows that people without coffee are grumpy, disgruntled, miserable, and unhappy, all of which encourage others to kill them.

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STRESSED MOMS MAKE STRESSED GIRLS AND BLYTHE BOYS

The uterus is a child’s first classroom. The lessons learned there have the potential to set up a brain for success in a variety of environments. So why would a stressed mother produce stressy girls, but not stressy boys?

The study: Researchers measures pregnant women’s cortisol throughout pregnancy. Cortisol rises with stress, so it’s a fair measure of how difficult a person’s emotional life is.

Researchers then measured two things in the resulting kids: the size of the right amygdala, which is sort of an emergency operations center; and mood problems.

The women who experienced high stress early in pregnancy produced stressy girls — girls with large right amygdalae, and with mood issues.

But the boys were unremarkable.

WTF? Why should male and female brains respond differently to the warning that they’re going to enter a difficult environment?

Because males and females need different behaviors to succeed.

Males, biologically speaking, evolutionarily speaking, need to take substantial risks in order to stand out as an awesome hunter and protector and provider. If anything, a male brain should respond to the “dangerous environment” lesson by taking bigger risks, and being less fearful. And in fact, research does suggest that the male children of stressed moms are more inclined to ADHD — the ultimate risk-taking, impulsive brain type.

Females, however, are more successful when they are “fearful for two.” Every female who ever wished to get pregnant has had her wish come true. Attracting sperm is not a challenge for females. But protecting that fetus, and then a helpless baby, is a challenge — even more so in a difficult environment.

Hence, I propose wildly and without supporting evidence, a developing female brain will err on the side of becoming more sensitive to danger.

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POSSIBLY THE MOST BIZARRE DRUG EVER TO GRANT QUASI-ETERNAL YOUTH TO A FRUIT FLY

Ayurvedic medicine, the traditional Indian method of treating diseased humans, hasn’t enjoyed the rush of popularity that Chinese herbal medicine has seen. But perhaps it should. At least if you’re a fruit fly.

Researchers took an uncommonly holistic approach to studying the efficacy of two “drugs.” Instead of isolating the “active ingredients” in the traditional preparations, they used the whole enchilada, the complete stew, the full monte.

These are some full montes, indeed. Amla, a traditional fertility treatment and general invigorator, is made from Indian gooseberries. But the process of grinding the berries, extracting the juice, then repeatedly drying the pulp as you add back doses of the juice, takes THREE MONTHS!

Rasa-Sindoor begins life as mercury — that famous nerve toxin and carcinogen. But it’s mixed with sulphur, which itself is purified in butter and milk. With aloe juice, these ingredients are ground for approximately 240 hours. The paste is dried on a wooden board in the shade for four days. The dry gunk is pulverized and sealed inside two bowls; this sphere is wrapped in clay-coated cloth; which is dried and baked in a furnace. The flakes that remain are scraped off the inside of the bowl and pulverized.

Got it? You can see why simply isolating the “active ingredient” might miss some of the subtle transformations of the chemistry. The meds are typically mixed with more clarified butter and/or honey to make them taste better.

The flies got it with their regular food. And, as predicted by ancient Ayurvedic texts…

• Amla gave flies a lifespan bonus of about ten percent.

• It also made females produce more hatched eggs if they ate it during larval stage. (The equivalent in mammals might be giving the Amla to a pregnant mother, and seeing a healthier reproductive system in her grown child.)

• It also made them more hardy under starvation — a measure of how efficiently an animal handles stress.

• It also had a salubrious effect on a detail of cellular genetics. I won’t endeavor to elucidate.

• Rasa-Sindoor made females produce more hatched eggs but only if they ate it as adults. Say the authors: “…it is interesting to note that in Ayurvedic practice, RS is not recommended for growing children but is indicated, among other things, for genital disorders and rejuvenation in adult subjects.”

• It also had that salubrious effect on a detail of cellular genetics which I won’t endeavor to elucidate. It had even more of that effect than Amla did.

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HIDERS AND SEEKERS SEE THE WORLD DIFFERENTLY

Perhaps the reason “hide and seek” never loses its appeal is that the hiders and seekers use different strategies. Hence what could be a simple game, if both parties thought alike, is still surprising.

To study how humans strategize, researchers treated one group of people like squirrels with something to hide; and another group like squirrels hoping to find what the others buried.

Researchers presented human “squirrels” with a “lawn” of office floor tiles, in a real office. Each tile had a manila folder on it. Hiders hid three index cards in three of the folders; seekers tried to find the cards.

Scientists counted how many times each tile was used as a hiding place; and how many times each tile was searched.

Put yourself in a squirrel’s shoes: You’ve acquired this resource through hard work and risk taking, gathering an acorn without getting nailed by a hawk. You have some investment in this acorn. Where ya gonna put it?

No, more interestingly: You are the seeker. Given the layout below, which tiles would you check for three hidden acorns? Which three tiles are most likely to produce a hidden acorn or index card?

I don’t know what squirrels do. But human hiders tend to avoid hiding things in PRECISELY THE REGIONS THAT SEEKERS SEEK.

Seekers travel farther and check tiles that are more dispersed than hiders do. And in general, hiders stashed their nuts toward the center of the “lawn;” and seekers sought them at the edges and corners. Here’s a glimpse at the “average behavior” of hiders (left column) and seekers (right column). Note how fond seekers are of the corners! Hiders also avoided putting cards in the bright area near a window; and seekers preferred to search that area.

Perhaps squirrels are better at this — the researchers suggested that people may “overthink” a hider’s strategy.

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THE STONE-THROWING CHIMP REFINES HIS ATTACK ON HUMANS

Santino first made the news when keepers at his Swedish zoo noticed that the chimpanzee stashed stones and concrete in advance of visiting hours, in order to drill them at people. Animals aren’t supposed to plan like this. And now Santino has intensified his battle.

The chimp lives on an island with a couple of females and young. About 20 feet across the moat is a visitor’s viewing area.

Nobody knows what inspired Santino to start firing projectiles at the gawkers. Perhaps a bratty kid fired something at Santino. But chimps are avid throwers by nature, so it may have been a natural evolution in his effort to maintain dominance in his territory.

He always did his ammo collecting after hours, when he wouldn’t be seen. That’s insightful thing number two.

(Insight number one was that his tormentors would return in THE FUTURE.)

And often he hid his ammo behind objects that blocked the visitors’ line of sight. That’s number three.

Now the peevish primate has taken two new measures to deceive and defeat his enemy: When the zoo opened for the (short) season in the spring of 2010, he greeted the first round of visitors by ambling casually toward the moat. He performed no “piloerection” (fur raising), or other aggressive posturing. He ambled. He paused to taste an apple.

I’m just chillin’.

And then without warning he hurled a couple hunks of concrete that had been hidden in his hand.

Here’s the thing — it works. The intruders backed away when Santino “attacked” them. And when the coast was clear, Santino implemented his next innovation. He went indoors and brought out a clump of hay bedding. He put it down nice and close to the moat. And the he stuck a bunch of ammo under it.

Instead of exploiting the “natural” landscape to surprise his foes, he actually created a new landscape that worked even better.

While fascinating, this element of zoos troubles me. If Santino’s behavior is about dominance and aggression, then I guess I’m OK with it. But if it’s about defense, and he’s throwing rocks because he’s fearful of his territory being invaded, I’m not so OK. If Santino’s stress level is higher during the visitor season than the closed season, then the least he deserves is for the gawkers to be kept behind one-way glass, so their eyes can’t drill into his psyche.

Art Note: Also piloerection.

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