Something for everybody here. I have trailed the dog IQ paper, but here are some others which are equally interesting.
Macpherson (48) Dietary Interventions
Take multivitamins to slow down cognitive decline. Placebo controlled trial finds positive results.
hmacpherson@swin.edu.au; apipingas@swin.edu.au; ascholey@swin.edu.au
Ritchie (54) Alcohol Consumption
Effects of alcohol over a lifetime depend partly on your genetics, which in some cases can mitigate the ill effects.
stuartjritchie1@gmail.com; tim.bates@ed.ac.uk; janie.corley@ed.ac.uk;
g.mcneill@abdn.ac.uk; gail.davies@ed.ac.uk; dave.liewald@ed.ac.uk;
jstarr@staffmail.ed.ac.uk; i.deary@ed.ac.uk
Arden (75) g in Dogs
Yes, dogs have general intelligence (40% of variance) like humans do (50% of variance). Rosalind picked border collies, who are among the brightest breed.
arden.rosalind@gmail.com; r.plomin@kcl.ac.uk
Plotnik (76) The Elephant Model
Elephants in Thailand are studied in terms of their capacity to cooperate, and appear to be capable of complex cognitions.
joshua.plotnik@gmail.com
Taylor (77) Tool-Making Crows "
Crows are good at making tools, but are relatively unsocial, which favours the idea that brains evolve to deal with practical problem solving, not “dealing with other people” problems.
I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that that multivitamin study had a small sample size and barely significant results....
ReplyDeleteCrows seem pretty social for the last hour of daylight each day when they get together in one tree and squawk. I wonder why they do that? I've also seen them team up to attack hawks.
ReplyDeleteIf you see one rook it's a crow; if you see lots of crows they're rooks.
Delete(Ancient folk wisdom)
Friends have been speaking up for the sociability of crows, so we may have to confront the authors, and demand evidence. Shall we do that one at a time, or all together?
ReplyDelete