Weird News of the World Thread - Part 1

[Teelie]

[YT]xHBtnwtDVfY#t=225[/YT]

Short answer: No, but it can sometimes reduce the symptoms.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Suicide Warnings on Antidepressants Led to More Suicide Attempts

A decade ago, everyone was worried about all our kids being on antidepressants. What about the side effects. So the FDA put big warnings on antidepressants about possible increased suicide risks for young people. How did that turn out?

Astoundingly poorly, according to a new study from the British Medical Journal. From the BBC:

The study, which followed 2.5 million teenagers and young adults between 2000 and 2010, showed an immediate impact of the warnings.

Prescriptions fell by a third in teenagers and by a quarter in young adults.

The number of suicide attempts increased by 22% in teenagers and 34% in young adults.

Media-aided public panic over murky drug issues; government regulators react; doctors react; prescriptions decline; then suicide attempts go up.

Well I guess we all pretty much screwed up that one, guys. In retrospect perhaps "get off antidepressants" was not the best advice for suicidal teens.

http://www.bbc.com/news/health-27904749

Considering medications like that are very hit or miss while also taking weeks before results actually start to show it looks like adding that warning had worse consequences than if they didn't use it all

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Distracted White People Mistakenly Vote for Slavery Reparations

Dallas County, population 2.5 million, now officially stands for "monetary and substantial reparations" for black Americans' suffering, after the County Commission summarily approved a resolution by its only black member that the white commissioners never bothered to read.

The dramatic and apparently unintentional move came Tuesday, after black commissioner John Wiley Price introduced a Juneteenth resolution celebrating the end of slavery in America. The resolution passed unanimously, according to the Dallas Morning News:

The "Juneteenth Resolution," commemorating the day slaves in Texas learned of their freedom, seemed from its description to be just another routine proclamation. Others approved on Tuesday expressed support for Men's Health Month — it's June — the American Kidney Fund, and an employee in the tax office who's been on the job for 25 years.

But Price's resolution went beyond taking note of Juneteenth; it included a long list of injustices endured by blacks, from slavery to Jim Crow to predatory lending practices. Then, in its final paragraph, it declared that the suffering of African-Americans should be "satisfied with monetary and substantial reparations."

Price read the entire document aloud at the meeting. But that happens with every resolution, and the commissioners didn't seem to be listening with a critical ear. With no discussion, Price's resolution was approved by voice vote.

The commissioners are "not necessarily used to reading through, trying to figure out whether there's anything controversial in" these voice-vote resolutions, Matthew Watkins, the Morning News reporter who was present at the meeting, told KXAS-TV in the video above. Watkins added that, just listening to the resolution read aloud, "I didn't understand the ramifications myself."

Some of the commissioners apparently got buyer's remorse an hour after the vote. One Republican changed his "yes" vote to an "abstention," complaining that he was hoodwinked:

"I do not support reparations, and I do not support one of the statements he made, which was that the United States was derelict in his promise to African Americans," Cantrell told the Dallas Observer. "I think Commissioner Price went too far, and I can't support that."

"I had no opportunity to review it, to see what was in the resolution," he added. "As Commissioner Price was reading this I was trying to find a copy because it sounded like he was going way over what he typically does."

Price, for his part, said it was an unintended mistake that his fellow commissioners hadn't received written copies of the resolution for the vote. He added that he'd been inspired to introduce the proposal after reading Ta-Nehisi Coates' epic case for black reparations in last month's Atlantic, another composition by a prominent black man that many white people with opinions couldn't be bothered to read.

http://www.dallasnews.com/news/metr...ners-unwittingly-back-slavery-reparations.ece

This is so great I don't even no where to begin. Seems to me that if they had actually been listening to what has been said they would have realized what it entailed and if they didn't agree they shouldn't have said yes to it. This is truly classic stuff

 

[Marvolo]

Its pretty funny how it passed, but it needs to be struck down. No one alive today took part in slavery and no one alive today in america has been enslaved so they arent owed monetary reparations.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

CDC: 75 Scientists Potentially Exposed to Anthrax

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced today that up to 75 of its scientists may have been exposed to live anthrax bacteria in its laboratories in Atlanta. According to Reuters, the scientists were exposed after staff at a high-level biosecurity lab failed to follow the proper procedures to render the live anthrax bacteria inactive. So far, the CDC reports, none of the potentially exposed staff has reported any symptoms.

Staff beyond the high-level lab became exposed when the anthrax samples were transferred to a lower-level lab that, believing the bacteria to be inactive, were not properly protected against airborne exposure. From the Associated Press:

The safety lapse occurred when a high level biosecurity lab was preparing anthrax samples. The samples were to be used at lower security labs researching new ways to detect the germs in environmental samples. The higher security lab used a procedure that did not completely inactivate the bacteria.

Workers in three labs who later came into contact with these potentially infectious samples were not wearing adequate protective gear because they believed the samples had been inactivated. Procedures in two of the labs may have spread anthrax spores in the air.

Per Reuters, inhaling anthrax spores can be especially dangerous, with a high likelihood of death once illness reaches the second stage of symptoms:

In inhalation anthrax, bacterial spores enter the lungs where they germinate before actually causing disease, a process that can take one to six days. Once they germinate, they release toxins that can cause internal bleeding, swelling and tissue death.

Inhalation anthrax occurs in two stages. In the first stage, symptoms resemble a cold or the flu. In the second stage, anthrax causes fever, severe shortness of breath and shock. About 90 percent of people with second stage inhalation anthrax die, even after antibiotic treatment.

The potential exposure was discovered by CDC officials on Friday, June 13. Dr. Paul Meechan, director of the environmental health and safety compliance at the CDC, told Reuters that as many as seven staff members may have been directly exposed and that around 75 people have been offered a 60-day treatment regimen.

Meechan also told Reuters that an internal investigation has been launched and that the incident has been reported to the Federal Select Agent Program, "which oversees the use and transfer of biological agents and toxins that pose a severe threat to the public." He said it is currently unclear if the transfer of the active anthrax bacteria was accidental or intentional.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/19/us-usa-anthrax-idUSKBN0EU2D620140619

You would think people at the CDC would be more careful than that

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Reporter's Purse Stolen Outside Police Station During Story on Robbery

A reporter had to cancel her credit cards after her purse was stolen while she was doing a story about a robbery spree—wait, it gets more ironic— outside a police station.

KTVU's Heather Holmes was outside Oakland's police headquarters Monday to report on a spree of car robberies in the Temescal neighborhood. A young woman had been attacked in broad daylight earlier that day, and witnesses stepped in to break up the attempted mugging.

While she was explaining all of this to viewers, thieves were taking her purse from the unlocked news van. By the time she realized it was missing, 20 minutes later, they'd already run up charges on her cards.

A rash of car breakins in the area? The thieves are becoming more bold? You don't say!

https://***********/hholmesktvu/status/478960711914115072

Oh the irony

 

[KevanG]

CDC: 75 Scientists Potentially Exposed to Anthrax

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/19/us-usa-anthrax-idUSKBN0EU2D620140619

You would think people at the CDC would be more careful than that

You idiots.

Reporter's Purse Stolen Outside Police Station During Story on Robbery

https://***********/hholmesktvu/status/478960711914115072

Oh the irony

On the plus side it did nothing but prove the point she was trying to make.

 

[redmarvel]

Naked bikers 'streak' across Toronto

On Saturday, June 14 cyclists around the world participated in a World Naked Bike Ride - including in Toronto.

The naked ride is meant to be an international protest “against oil dependency and urban pollution,” according to the Naked Bike Ride Toronto website. The ride also aims to promote bicycling safety and inspire body freedom.

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2014/06/14/naked_cyclists_streaking_across_toronto.html

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Those are some awesome goals for a weird event

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Cookies Loaded with $52,000 Worth of Cocaine Seized at Newark Airport

Mauricio Isidro Rivera Hernandez, from Guatemala, was taken aside by U.S. Customs and Border Protection at Newark Liberty International Airport earlier this month after raising suspicion with his three checked bags containing cookies. Upon inspection, the baked goods in question were not just cookies, but also vessels for three pounds of cocaine.

U.S. Customs representative Anthony Bucci told the New Jersey Star-Ledger:

Officers discovered cookies in his three checked bags. Inside the cookies, officers found 118 small, oval-shaped pellets of cocaine. The pellets contained a total of 3 pounds of cocaine with an an approximate street value of $52,000, according to Bucci.

CBS New York reports that Rivera Hernandez was turned over to Port Authority police and is facing narcotics smuggling charges. No one appears to have tasted the non-cocaine parts of the cookies.

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/20...smuggling_3_pounds_of_cocaine_in_cookies.html

This cracks me up, lets take a moment to journey down his line of reasoning shall we? First he had to come up with an idea to smuggle the drugs. I'm sure he thought about swallowing them but then he thought there had to be a better way. Then the bright idea struck and he just knew he could travel with 3 bags full of nothing but cookies because surely that wouldn't raise an alarm. Brilliant!

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Look How Much the Earth's Magnetic Field Is Changing

When the Earth's magnetic field switches, strange things happen. Now, the European Space Agency's Swarm satellite system has revealed exactly how our planets magnetism is changing.

Launched in 2013, Swarm is made up of three satellites which measure the strength of the Earth's magnetic field remotely. These new results are based on changes in the magnetic signals stemming from Earth's core; blue means the field is decreasing, magenta means it's increasing.

Measurements made over the past six months confirm the general trend that we expect to see: a gradual weakening of the planet's field. In fact, the most dramatic declines are over the Western Hemisphere, especially over Northern America.

But there are quirks. The magnetic field over the southern Indian Ocean has strengthened since January, for instance. And the results also show that magnetic North continues to move towards Siberia.

Over the coming months, researchers will further probe the data to understand how magnetic contributions from other sources—the mantle, crust, oceans, ionosphere and magnetosphere—affect our field, too.

http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/Swarm/Swarm_reveals_Earth_s_changing_magnetism

I can already here the doomsday preppers freaking out

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Scientists discover that spiders kill and eat fish too

A new research paper just published in the scientific journal Plos One brings us new fuel for nightmares: Spiders not only eat insects but also kill and eat fish often much larger than them. And it's not only one or two species, but many species at a global scale.

More than 80 incidences of fish predation by semi-aquatic spiders—observed at the fringes of shallow freshwater streams, rivers, lakes, ponds, swamps, and fens—are reviewed. We provide evidence that fish predation by semi-aquatic spiders is geographically widespread, occurring on all continents except Antarctica.

Spiders wait on the edge of the water, with a couple of legs on firm ground and the rest resting on the water thanks to its surface tension. They wait for a fish to pass, attack, inject a powerful venom that paralyzes them, and then drag them to dry land and start to process them.

Most of the cases have been observed in North America, especially in the wetlands of Florida. Once again, thank you Florida.

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0099459

Looks like I won't be swimming in the lakes or rivers of FL anymore

 

[Teelie]

Look How Much the Earth's Magnetic Field Is Changing

Spoiler

http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/Swarm/Swarm_reveals_Earth_s_changing_magnetism

I can already here the doomsday preppers freaking out

This is well known scientifically but not broadly, and I'm just waiting for "Climate Change!" to be shouted (climate change isn't causing it, it's natural) and when someone points out that isn't the case, the climate change deniers try to use this as justification for their claims we aren't affecting the climate.

Besides, this will take tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of years to completely reverse. The changing climates will take decades at most with current rates.

Scientists discover that spiders kill and eat fish too

Spoiler

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0099459

Looks like I won't be swimming in the lakes or rivers of FL anymore

Also not a new thing although still interesting. Some spiders eat birds too.

 

[SuperSonics]

Don't know if this counts as weird enough news. A family who wanted to bring their knives into Canobie Lake Park in Vermont got denied entry and turned on the cop.
http://www.wmur.com/news/family-attacks-officers-at-canobie-lake-park-police-say/26528856#!1ttx7

 

[squeekness]

Scientists discover that spiders kill and eat fish too

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0099459

Looks like I won't be swimming in the lakes or rivers of FL anymore

Spiders are kewl.

 

[KevanG]

Spiders are evil.

A necessary evil but still evil.

 

[squeekness]

Is there anything they can't do?

 

[KevanG]

Not scare me.

 

[squeekness]

Hee hee.

 

[DJ_KiDDvIcIOUs]

Don't know if this counts as weird enough news. A family who wanted to bring their knives into Canobie Lake Park in Vermont got denied entry and turned on the cop.
http://www.wmur.com/news/family-attacks-officers-at-canobie-lake-park-police-say/26528856#!1ttx7

That is weird and stupid so it would fit either thread. Feel free to post anything you feel is weird here my friend

 

[Alex_Spider]

http://www.iflscience.com/environment/microbeads-soaps-facing-bans-due-great-lakes-pollution

Microbeads In Soaps Facing Bans Due To Great Lakes Pollution

What puts the ‘scrub’ in facial scrub? Typically, they are tiny plastic microbeads, ranging in size from 0.0004 to 1.24 millimeters. In December 2013, a paper was published in Marine Pollution Bulletin and described how the Great Lakes were choking from this plastic pollution. While Lake Michigan had an average of 17,000 microbeads per square kilometer, some areas of Lake Ontario had as many as 1.1 million beads per square kilometer. How much harm can something so tiny really do? As it turns out, a whole hell of a lot.

Washing your face with something like Clean & Clear’s facial scrub can put as many as 330,000 microbeads down the drain per bottle, according to Gizmodo. These particles are much too small to be filtered out by wastewater facilities, so they are just passed along with the cleaned water, which eventually makes its way to lakes. These tiny particles coat the floor of the lake, choking out plant life. Additionally, some creatures mistake them for fish eggs and ingest them. Unable to digest the particles, their gut becomes filled with the plastic until they ultimately starve to death. The small fish who eat the plastic are eaten by progressively larger fish, all of whom begin to accumulate the plastic.

Unfortunately, the plastic alone isn’t the only problem. Plastic can act like a sponge for pollutants like motor oils and pesticides. These toxins could work their way into bloodstreams all the way up the food chain, even into the fish eaten by humans.

There may not be too much that can be done about the plastic that is already in the lakes. The microbeads are similar in size to zooplankton, so any efforts to get rid of the plastic would also devastate the base of the food chain. Environmentalists chose to focus on preventing additional plastic from entering the water, and many states began discussing bills that would ban the sale and distribution of soaps, toothpastes, and other products containing microbeads. They expected a long fight, but manufacturers put up little resistance in the measure and were quick to agree to deadlines when they would be phased out.

Unilever, which owns soap companies including St. Ives, Pond’s, Noxema, Caress, Dove, Axe, and Suave, has announced plans to completely phase out microbeads from their products by 2015. Though a spokesperson for L’Oreal stated microbeads have "no proven environmental toxicity,” the company agreed to begin phasing them out anyway. Colgate-Palmolive, Procter & Gamble, and Johnson & Johnson have all agreed to end their use of microbeads. This isn’t entirely altruistic; there are many viable alternatives to plastic microbeads, making it easier to switch than put up a fight.

Compliance from top manufacturers is making it easier on states that have introduced anti-microbead legislation, which would prohibit the sale and distribution of products that have that plastic. Illinois has just passed legislation that requires microbeads to be phased out by 2019. New York’s state Assembly unanimously passed a similar bill that would ban microbeads in 2016, though it is awaiting approval from the state senate. California’s bill would also prohibit biodegradable microbeads, which is causing more resistance from manufacturers.

Not every facial scrub uses plastic microbeads; many higher end cosmetics use sand, sugar, salts, or diamond crystals. If you currently use a facial scrub containing these plastic particles, think about switching brands until the changes have taken effect. A simple scrub can be made by adding sugar to your regular daily cleanser or by making a paste by mixing coconut oil or honey with lemon juice and sugar.

 

[Alex_Spider]

http://ecowatch.com/2014/01/09/plastic-in-facial-scrub-app-for-that/

[YT]voWTpAE9pqQ[/YT]

Find Out if Your Facial Scrub Has Plastic Microbeads With New App

Plastic microbeads, often found in personal hygiene products, are getting rinsed down the drain and ending up in the Great Lakes and other waterways.

To alert customers to these barely visible plastics, a new smartphone App lets consumers scan barcodes to see if a product contains the beads.

The App was developed by the North Sea Foundation and the Plastic Soup Foundation, both based in the Netherlands.

The beads are used in many common consumer goods as abrasives, said Sherri A. Mason, an associate professor of chemistry and the program coordinator of environmental sciences at State University of New York–Fredonia.

“They’re also used in boat cleansers and other products as well,” said Mason.

The plastic pollution is simply the result of people washing their faces and brushing their teeth, she said. “It’s an unfortunate reality that people just go to the store and see products that look really cool, like a bottle that has floating beads in a clear liquid,” she said. “They are appealing to the eye from a marketing standpoint but then they wash their face and the beads go down the drain.”

Manufacturers sometimes place the small beads in products to give consumers an exfoliating scrub.

“In personal care products they act to gently scrub away dead skin in much the same way a sponge would,” as listed in Johnson and Johnson’s ingredient policy.

The problem is that wastewater treatment plants are not equipped to filter or break the plastics down, according to Mason.

“Wastewater treatment plants were designed in the 1940s,” Mason said. “A wide variety of pharmaceutical products don’t get removed either, you find these chemicals such as birth control or Ibuprofen. You find various soaps and makeups, things that people use and then they wash down the drain, and the wastewater treatment plant wasn’t used to rid these products from the water.”

Mason doesn’t worry that the tiny plastics are getting into drinking water. That water goes through fabric filtration systems before reaching taps.

It is wastewater that concerns her.

“We have different standards for wastewater than for drinking water,” she said. “We don’t think of the need of cleaning it up to the same degree.”

The plastics can be digested by aquatic life like plankton or zebra mussels and then passed along the food chain to human consumption, Mason said.

The beads can pick up on other pollutants in the water and pass it along to humans, according to the 5 Gyres Institute.

The 5 Gyres Institute, a nonprofit organization that researches plastic pollution in the ocean, recently teamed up with Mason to study how much plastic is accumulating in the Great Lakes.

Preliminary studies have found plastic particles in the guts of fish, according to Mason.

“I tend to just remind people that water is a fundamental necessity of life, It’s the first thing we do when we go to other planets, we look for water,” said Mason. “Life can’t exist without water. The fact that we’re contaminating it with something that never goes away and is so small that it can be eaten by plankton and then accumulate up the food chain—it’s fundamentally something we shouldn’t be doing.”

The highest concentrations were found in 2012 in Lake Erie. Researchers found polyethylene and polypropylene that included traces of aluminum silicate and coal ash, often coming from coal power plants. Some of the samples had 450,000 particles of plastic per square kilometer. With lakes so vast—they are 20 percent of the world’s fresh surface water—it is hard to determine just how much plastic is going into them, Mason said.

The free App has three alert settings to tell you if a product contains harmful plastic. The red alert means that it has microbeads. Orange means that it has them now, but the manufacturer has decided to begin phasing out the plastics, and future products will no longer contain the beads. Green means the product is microbead free.

The App can be downloaded for Apple products at the Apple App Store and for Google products at the Google Play Store. It is also available on Windows Phone Store.



Researchers began asking companies to phase out the use of the tiny plastics in 2011, according to 5 Gyres. Unilever and Johnson and Johnson promised to phase them out.

“We have stopped developing new products containing plastic microbeads and we are currently conducting an environmental safety assessment of a promising alternative,” according to Johnson and Johnson’s ingredient policy.

Meanwhile the key is publicity, Mason said. “I appreciate the companies saying they plan to phase them out in a few years; I would like to see people make a choice to change their products now. It’s very easy to go to the store and find things on the shelf that don’t use plastics and use apricot seeds or walnut husks as natural products as their exfoliants.”

People often don’t know the scientific language and terms of these tiny plastics when reading labels on products, according to Mason. “I think this App is very helpful and very useful. People are often asking me because they don’t know what to look for on the ingredients, so having a color coded App on their phone can be beneficial.”

 

[Alex_Spider]

http://humansarefree.com/2014/06/harvard-scientists-there-may-be-ancient.html

Harvard Scientists: There May be an Ancient Earth Inside... Earth

A team of Harvard scientists believe the remnants of an ancient Earth, dating to the time another planet collided with ours to produce the moon, may still be lodged deep within the Earth’s mantle

If you thought it was a trip to see the Earth from space, then wait until you get a load of this: A team of scientists from Harvard University believe that have found evidence that an ancient Earth exists inside the Earth.

The team believes that a previously unexplained isotopic ratio from deep within the Earth might be a signal from material from before the Earth collided with another planet-sized body, which led to the creation of the Moon. This might be an echo of an ancient Earth that existed 4.5 billion years ago, prior to the proposed collision.



The current favored theory says that the Moon was formed 4.5 billion years ago when the Earth collided with a mass the size of Mars, dubbed “Theia.” This theory states that the heat generated by the collision would have melted the whole planet before some of the debris spun off to create the Moon.

But now, the team at Harvard, led by Associate Professor Sujoy Mukhopadhyay, believe that they’ve found evidence to support that only part of the Earth melted, and that an ancient part still exists within the Earth’s mantle.

According to Professor Mukhopadhyay:
“The energy released by the impact between the Earth and Theia would have been huge, certainly enough to melt the whole planet. But we believe that the impact energy was not evenly distributed throughout the ancient Earth.

“This means that a major part of the impacted hemisphere would probably have been completely vaporized, but the opposite hemisphere would have been partly shielded, and would not have undergone complete melting.”
The team analyzed the ratios of noble gas isotopes from deep within the Earth’s mantle and compared the results to isotope ratios closer to the surface. They found that 3He to 22Ne ratio from the shallow mantle is significantly higher than the equivalent ratio deep within the mantle.

Professor Mukhopadhyay remarked:
“This implies that the last giant impact did not completely mix the mantle and there was not a whole mantle magma ocean.”
Further evidence comes from analysis of the 129-Xenon to 120-Xenon ratio. Material brought to the surface from the deep mantle has a lower ratio than what’s normally found near the surface.

Because 129-Xenon is produced by the radioactive decay of 129-Iodine, the isotopes place the formation age of the ancient section of mantle to within the first 100 million years of Earth’s history.
“The geochemistry indicates that there are differences between the noble gas isotope ratios in different parts of the Earth, and these need to be explained.

“The idea that a very disruptive collision of the Earth with another planet-sized body, the biggest event in Earth’s geological history, did not completely melt and homogenize the Earth challenges some of our notions on planet formation and the energetics of giant impacts.

“If the theory is proven correct, then we may be seeing echoes of the ancient Earth, from a time before the collision,” said Professor Mukhopadhyay.
Professor Richard Carlson of the Carnegie Institution Department of Terrestrial Magnetism stated:
“This exciting result is adding to the observational evidence that important aspects of Earth’s composition were established during the violent birth of the planet and is providing a new look at the physical processes by which this can occur.”
The findings of the team at Harvard coincide with a German team’s findings supporting the theory that the Moon was formed 4.5 billion years ago after a catastrophic collision with a planet-sized mass.

Both the Harvard and German teams presented their findings to the Goldschmidt Geochemistry Conference in California this week.

 

[Alex_Spider]

http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-01-09/new-research-plant-intelligence-may-forever-change-how-you-think-about-plants

New research on plant intelligence may forever change how you think about plants

The Intelligent Plant. That is the title of a recent article in The New Yorker — and new research is showing that plants have astounding abilities to sense and react to the world.

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But can a plant be intelligent? Some plant scientists insist they are — since they can sense, learn, remember and even react in ways that would be familiar to humans.

Michael Pollan, author of such books as "The Omnivore's Dilemma" and "The Botany of Desire," wrote the New Yorker piece about the developments in plant science. He says for the longest time, even mentioning the idea that plants could be intelligent was a quick way to being labeled "a whacko." But no more, which might be comforting to people who have long talked to their plants or played music for them.

The new research, he says, is in a field called plant neurobiology — which is something of a misnomer, because even scientists in the field don't argue that plants have neurons or brains.

"They have analagous structures," Pollan explains. "They have ways of taking all the sensory data they gather in their everyday lives ... integrate it and then behave in an appropriate way in response. And they do this without brains, which, in a way, is what's incredible about it, because we automatically assume you need a brain to process information."

And we assume you need ears to hear. But researchers, says Pollan, have played a recording of a caterpillar munching on a leaf to plants — and the plants react. They begin to secrete defensive chemicals — even though the plant isn't really threatened, Pollan says. "It is somehow hearing what is, to it, a terrifying sound of a caterpillar munching on its leaves."

Pollan says plants have all the same senses as humans, and then some. In addition to hearing, taste, for example, they can sense gravity, the presence of water, or even feel that an obstruction is in the way of its roots, before coming into contact with it. Plant roots will shift direction, he says, to avoid obstacles.

So what about pain? Do plants feel? Pollan says they do respond to anesthetics. "You can put a plant out with a human anesthetic. ... And not only that, plants produce their own compounds that are anesthetic to us." But scientists are reluctant to go as far as to say they are responding to pain.

How plants sense and react is still somewhat unknown. They don't have nerve cells like humans, but they do have a system for sending electrical signals and even produce neurotransmitters, like dopamine, serotonin and other chemicals the human brain uses to send signals.

"We don't know why they have them, whether this was just conserved through evolution or if it performs some sort of information processing function. We don't know. There's a lot we don't know," Pollan says.

And chalk up another human-like ability — memory.

Pollan describes an experiment done by animal biologist Monica Gagliano. She presented research that suggests the mimosa pudica plant can learn from experience. And, Pollan says, merely suggesting a plant could learn was so controversial that her paper was rejected by 10 scientific journals before it was finally published.

Mimosa is a plant, which looks something like a fern, that collapses its leaves temporarily when it is disturbed. So Gagliano set up a contraption that would drop the mimosa plant, without hurting it. When the plant dropped, as expected, its leaves collapsed. She kept dropping the plants every five to six seconds.

"After five or six drops, the plants would stop responding, as if they'd learned to tune out the stimulus as irrelevent," Pollan says. "This is a very important part of learning — to learn what you can safely ignore in your environment."

Maybe the plant was just getting worn out from all the dropping? To test that, Gagliano took the plants that had stopped responding to the drops and shook them instead.

"They would continue to collapse," Pollan says. "They had made the distinction that [dropping] was a signal they could safely ignore. And what was more incredible is that [Gagliano] would retest them every week for four weeks and, for a month, they continued to remember their lesson."

That's as far out as Gagliano tested. It's possible they remember even longer. Conversely, Pollan points out, bees that are given a similar dishabituation test forget what they've learned in as little as 48 hours.

Pollan says not everyone accepts that what Gagliano describes is really learning. In fact, there are many critics with many alternative theories for explaining the response the plants are having. Still ...

"Plants can do incredible things. They do seem to remember stresses and events, like that experiment. They do have the ability to respond to 15 to 20 environmental variables," Pollan says. "The issue is, is it right to call it learning? Is that the right word? Is it right to call it intelligence? Is it right, even, to call what they are conscious. Some of these plant neurobiologists believe that plants are conscious — not self-conscious, but conscious in the sense they know where they are in space ... and react appropriately to their position in space."

Pollan says there is no agreed definition of intelligence. "Go to Wikipedia and look up intelligence. They despair of giving you an answer. They basically have a chart where they give you nine different definitions. And about half of them depend on a brain — they refer to abstract reasoning or judgment.

"And the other half merely refer to a problem-solving ability. And that's the kind of intelligence we are talking about here. ... So intelligence may well be a property of life. And our difference from these other creatures may be a matter of difference of degree rather than kind. We may just have more of this problem-solving ability and we may do it in different ways."

Pollan says that really freaks people out — "that the line between plants and animals might be a little softer than we traditionally think of it as."

And he suggests that plants may be able to teach humans a thing or two, such as how to process information without a central command post like a brain.

Check out this video of Michael Pollan discussing time-lapse photography of bean plants looking very purposeful.

 

[Alex_Spider]

http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/fish-are-smarter-you-think

Fish Are Smarter Than You Think

Despite traveling in schools, fish usually are regarded as unintelligent creatures (Don’t you groan at me; that was gold.) However, a new study by Culum Brown of Macquarie University in Sydney, suggests that some fish have higher cognitive function than previously believed. If fish sentience is higher than we thought, there are implications in animal husbandry for fish used in the laboratory and would likely affect the fishing industry as well. Brown analyzed the current body of research surrounding fish cognition and sensory perception. His paper was published in the journal Animal Cognition. The paper was funded by The Someone Project, an animal rights group.

Of the estimated 62,000 species of vertebrates on the planet, half of them are fish. Fish are also a common model organism in laboratory testing, second only to rodents. Globally, humans eat fish more than any other animal. Despite the large diversity and importance of these creatures, they aren’t regarded as highly as other vertebrates, particularly mammals. This is partially due to the widely accepted idea that fish don’t feel pain and are fairly dumb creatures with little awareness of the world around them. As it turns out, certain fish may have traits that are not entirely dissimilar to humans.

“Although scientists cannot provide a definitive answer on the level of consciousness for any non-human vertebrate, the extensive evidence of fish behavioral and cognitive sophistication and pain perception suggests that best practice would be to lend fish the same level of protection as any other vertebrate,” Brown stated in a press release. “We should therefore include fish in our ‘moral circle’ and afford them the protection they deserve.”

Here are some highlights from the research:

-Though it used to be assumed that only humans had cerebral lateralization, the ability to favor certain hemispheres for certain tasks, permitting the ability to multitask. Many associate this ability with higher thinking, and the phenomenon has been shown to exist in a number of other organisms, including fish. Brown argues this allows fish to "perform multiple complex tasks simultaneously. ”

-Fish can be trained to recall the location of objects by obtaining clues from the landscape.

-The myth that goldfish have a three-second-long attention span has been long-since debunked, and fish have been shown to have "have excellent long-term memories” for a number of factors.

-A school of fish isn’t just an aimless group swimming around. Fish can have complex societies where certain traditions can be passed down to other fish, which also shows the capacity to learn. Certain fish have also been shown to demonstrate traits of cooperation and reconciliation within the group.

-Tool use is typically regarded as the gold standard for intelligence, and it turns out that some fish can be added to that list. For example, certain cod species were fitted with a dorsal tag. The fish were able to use the tag by swimming up to a self feeder that had a string hanging down to trigger the release of food. The fish learned how to swim up to the string and catch it on their dorsal tag, causing the food to be released.

Brown also argues that fish indeed feel pain, as "it would be impossible for fish to survive as the cognitively and behaviorally complex animals they are without a capacity to feel pain." However, a paper published in August 2013 suggests that fish perceive pain differently than humans, due to the lack of a neocortex in fish. Many species of fish also lack certain nerve fibers associated with pain in humans. The paper cautions against anthropomorphizing the feelings of fish based on perceived amounts of pain. While their paper doesn’t definitively prove fish don’t feel pain, it does speak to the fact that there is much about fish cognition that we don’t understand. Future research among ichthyologists will seek to resolve these discrepancies in order to understand the full cognitive capabilities of this amazing, diverse group of animals.