Why Your Teenager Isn't That Smart Yet

The old joke about teenagers moving out while they still know everything still applies, but now, there's scientific evidence to back up what every parent already knows: teenagers have no forethought and don't consider the consequences of their actions.

More interestingly, to me, this research suggests that the decision-making center of your brain--the prefrontal cortex--doesn't fully develop until the late 20s. By that time, people have been through college (or dropped out), gotten married and had babies (not necessarily in that order). Is it any wonder young adults get in so much hot water so quickly with finances, careers, dating, and family? According to the science, they simply aren't mature enough to handle making these decisions. Yet the same guy who spends all his money on gaming systems has the same voting rights mature adults do.

Ann Coulter has proposed repealing the 26th Amendment, based on the crappy voting record of young adults. But given the research that shows 18-year-olds don't have the mental capacity to make good choices, maybe it isn't such a bad idea.

One for the Dog Lovers

I'm not a dog person, although I do like dogs. I'm one of those people who loves having a menagerie to look after, and our household reflects that. Currently, we have a dog (the big, dopey variety), 2 cats (calico and tortoiseshell), 3 fish, and 2 parakeets who squawk too much.

I ran across this article which is sure to lift doggy spirits in the which-pet-is-smarter-dogs-or-cats war.

For serious scientists, Lassie and her friends were deemed little more than dumbed-down ancestors of the wolf, degenerated into panting morons by millennia of breeding. But a younger generation of researchers has set out to restore the reputations of our beloved pets. "Dogs can do things that we long believed only humans had mastered," says Juliane Kaminski of the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Evolutionary Anthropology in the eastern German city of Leipzig.

It is precisely their proximity to people -- which disqualified our four-legged friends as a model for so long -- that now makes them interesting to animal researchers. "When it comes to understanding human behavior, no mammal comes even close to the dog," says Kaminski. Her Leipzig research team has demonstrated that dogs are far better than the supposedly clever apes at interpreting human gestures.

The researchers held two containers, one empty and the other containing food, in front of chimpanzees and dogs. Then they pointed to the correct container. The canines understood the gesture immediately, while the apes, genetically much more closely related to humans, were often perplexed by the pointing finger.

That's not all. Many dogs were even capable of interpreting the researcher's gaze. When the scientists looked at a container, the dogs would search inside for food, but when they looked in the direction of the container but focused on a point above it on the wall, the dogs were able to understand that this was not meant as a sign.

It's interesting that we have trained dogs to understand us in ways other animals do not. Even though apes are supposedly more closely related to humans, it is dogs who understand our gestures, facial expressions, and speech.

Interestingly, border collies and herding dogs seem to be smarter than other dogs. And, unfortunately for us cat lovers, cats seem to do far worse. Argh!

One Guy We Should Be Celebrating

Gregg Easterbrook has a column about the American Nobel Peace Prize winner who isn't Jimmy Carter.

The greatest living American is Norman Borlaug, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970, and joins Jimmy Carter as the two living American-born laureates around whose necks this distinction as been placed. Do you know Borlaug's achievement? Would you recognize him if he sat on your lap? Norman Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Prize, yet is anonymous in the land of his birth.

Born 1914 in Cresco, Iowa, Borlaug has saved more lives than anyone else who has ever lived. A plant breeder, in the 1940s he moved to Mexico to study how to adopt high-yield crops to feed impoverished nations. Through the 1940s and 1950s, Borlaug developed high-yield wheat strains, then patiently taught the new science of Green Revolution agriculture to poor farmers of Mexico and nations to its south. When famine struck India and Pakistan in the mid-1960s, Borlaug and a team of Mexican assistants raced to the Subcontinent and, often working within sight of artillery flashes from the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965, sowed the first high-yield cereal crop in that region; in a decade, India's food production increased sevenfold, saving the Subcontinent from predicted Malthusian catastrophes. Borlaug moved on to working in South America. Every nation his green thumb touched has known dramatic food production increases plus falling fertility rates (as the transition from subsistence to high-tech farm production makes knowledge more important than brawn), higher girls' education rates (as girls and young women become seen as carriers of knowledge rather than water) and rising living standards for average people. Last fall, Borlaug crowned his magnificent career by persuading the Ford, Rockefeller and Bill & Melinda Gates foundations to begin a major push for high-yield farming in Africa, the one place the Green Revolution has not reached.

Basically, Borlaug single-handedly allowed the way of life most Americans enjoy. By inventing a process that increased crop yields exponentially, he created a way for food to stay cheap and easily available for both animals and humans.

I was talking to my dad along these lines just last night. One of the golden oldiest station was playing songs from 1969.

"Bread cost 23 cents a loaf in 1969," said the radio personality (are there disc jockeys anymore?), "and the average American made $5,000 per year."

$5,000? That's $2.60 an hour. So, a loaf of bread cost far more than the average loaf does these days (about $2).

If not for Borlaug's invention, that loaf of bread would be far higher and, rather than having a problem with obesity in this country, we'd have more malnutrition.

It's a pity that Borlaug's accomplishments are ignored by our society. And while I don't completely agree with Easterbrook's assessment, he is correct that it's a shame when body counts, political stunts, and a teenage wizard get far more notice than the accomplishments that have enriched all our lives.

Are Mobile Phones Killing Our Bees?

I'm not usually one to believe all the "our modern lives are killing us" stuff that is out there (and there is a lot of it), but I found this story to be very interesting.

It seems like the plot of a particularly far-fetched horror film. But some scientists suggest that our love of the mobile phone could cause massive food shortages, as the world's harvests fail.

They are putting forward the theory that radiation given off by mobile phones and other hi-tech gadgets is a possible answer to one of the more bizarre mysteries ever to happen in the natural world - the abrupt disappearance of the bees that pollinate crops. Late last week, some bee-keepers claimed that the phenomenon - which started in the US, then spread to continental Europe - was beginning to hit Britain as well.

The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bees' navigation systems, preventing the famously homeloving species from finding their way back to their hives. Improbable as it may seem, there is now evidence to back this up.

Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) occurs when a hive's inhabitants suddenly disappear, leaving only queens, eggs and a few immature workers, like so many apian Mary Celestes. The vanished bees are never found, but thought to die singly far from home. The parasites, wildlife and other bees that normally raid the honey and pollen left behind when a colony dies, refuse to go anywhere near the abandoned hives.

The alarm was first sounded last autumn, but has now hit half of all American states. The West Coast is thought to have lost 60 per cent of its commercial bee population, with 70 per cent missing on the East Coast...

The implications of the spread are alarming. Most of the world's crops depend on pollination by bees. Albert Einstein once said that if the bees disappeared, "man would have only four years of life left".

No one knows why it is happening. Theories involving mites, pesticides, global warming and GM crops have been proposed, but all have drawbacks.

German research has long shown that bees' behaviour changes near power lines.

Now a limited study at Landau University has found that bees refuse to return to their hives when mobile phones are placed nearby. Dr Jochen Kuhn, who carried it out, said this could provide a "hint" to a possible cause.

Dr George Carlo, who headed a massive study by the US government and mobile phone industry of hazards from mobiles in the Nineties, said: "I am convinced the possibility is real."

I expect scientists to come up with a non-bee cross-pollination solution, but I haven't a clue what that would be.

Altruists Have Different Brains

Ever wondered why some people seem to be naturally generous while others are always stingy or miserly? According to this post at lifescript.com, there may be something different about the brains of people who are altruistic.

Do you volunteer at the local soup kitchen? Are you always the first one to pitch in your time, money or emotional energy for a friend in need? Your compulsive generosity may have a basis in neurochemistry, according to a new study. Researchers at Duke University used MRI scans to study the brain activity of subjects engaged in a range of behaviors. The study found that subjects who chose to participate in charitable activities experienced high levels of activity in the parietal lobe, part of the brain's "reward center." Although the activities involved exerting effort or spending resources without the anticipation of profit, researchers found that altruistic subjects experienced feelings of reward equivalent to winning or earning money. Findings from the study were published in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

I've always said that people who are altruistic get pleasure from doing such works and it looks like this study might prove that. If altruistic people do gain pleasure from their gifts, it would also explain why some people do a lot of charity work while others do only a little.

I still think altruism and compassion are important values we have to teach our children, both through lessons and by example. One of the reasons I'm a big proponent of scouting (both Boy and Girl Scouts) is their emphasis on community service. I think if you make children aware early on that they are blessed to have so much and that they have an obligation to help those less fortunate, you can help awaken that inner altruistic sense.