Sentience (“qualia”) is the ability to have subjective perceptual experiences. Scholars differentiate it from qualities such as creativity, intelligence and self-awareness. If you get acquainted with a retired game warden in Africa, he is likely to tell you incredible stories about the sentient interactions between elephants and their dead. The most usually documented behaviour include touching, approaching the dead animal and investigating the carcass. It sends “chills up one’s spine”, because it clearly hints at advanced feeling, said George Wittemyer (Colorado State University). When greeting each other after separation, elephants engage in a prolonged olfactory and tactile investigation. This seems to suggest that they are constantly updating social and spatial information, and it is possible that the carcass-related elephant behaviour serves a similar purpose. A comprehensive understanding of the behavioural framework calls for an exploration of elephant memory and the possibility of grief and emotion in elephants’ responses to death.
SNEAK PEEK
1. Women back: One
The dental plaque of a woman buried in12th-century reveals the presence of a paint made of lapis lazuli (used to illuminate some manuscripts from the European Middle Ages). Who presented it as direct evidence of women’s role in the creation of medieval scripts?
1. University of York archaeologist Dr Anita Radini
2. Women back: Two
An ancient Egyptian healer called Merit Ptah has been celebrated for decades as the first female physician. Actually, she never existed. Who saw Merit Ptah as “a very real symbol of the 20th century feministic struggle to write women back into the history books”?
2. Microbiologist Jakub Kwiecinski (CU School of Medicine)
3. Using just a grain
Nobody has made a lunar trip since the Apollo 17 mission astronauts brought soil samples from the moon, back in 1972 — not accessible to all researchers. Who developed a technique to analyse the chemistry of the Moon’s soil using only a single grain of dust?
3. Jennika Greer (University of Chicago)
4. The ‘steering wheel’
Our foot bones need to be very flexible when we allow the foot to point, twist or flex, but they need to be absolutely rigid when we jump or push off. The key to this ability is the subtalar joint, below the ankle. Who identified this as the ‘steering wheel’ of the human body?
4. Bioengineer Dr Gianluca Tozzi (University of Portsmouth)
5. They don’t go alone
“Some species that are rare or hard to detect may be declining so quickly that we might not even know that we’re losing them.” A study of snakes in a protected area near El Cope says it’s more about the general loss of biodiversity and its impact. Who led the study?
5. Elise Zipkin, MSU integrative biologist
6. Smiling or not
Contrary to common belief, deciphering a person’s intent goes beyond their facial expressions. Context and cultural background assert their influence. Who said that “I would even go to the extreme of saying most people who do not smile are not necessarily unhappy”?
6. Computer engineer Aleix Martinez (Ohio State University)
7. How far can it go?
Bubbles anywhere take you to fluid mechanics. Some street performers make gigantic soap bubbles. Mixing different molecular sizes of polymers in a solution increases the ability of a thin film to stretch without breaking — as far as 100 square meters. Who tested it?
7. Emory University physicist Justin Burton
8. Not catching up
High technology goes into modern military helmets but they don’t do better than their WWI counterparts in protection from ballistics and blunt impacts. Who found that the French Adrian helmet performed better than modern designs in protecting from overhead blasts?
6. Joost Op ‘t Eynde, a Duke University PhD student
9. Empathic potential
Even when people are not directly engaged in a task that involves empathy, brain activity within certain networks can reveal their empathic disposition. Who demonstrated that some machine learning algorithms do have predictive power when applied to brain data?
9. Dr. Marco Iacoboni (David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA)
[ANSWERS]
1. University of York archaeologist Dr Anita Radini
2. Microbiology Jakub Kwiecinski (CU School of Medicine)
3. Jennika Greer (University of Chicago)
4. Bioengineer Dr Gianluca Tozzi (University of Portsmouth)
5. Elise Zipkin, MSU integrative biologist
6. Computer engineer Aleix Martinez (Ohio State University)
7. Emory University physicist Justin Burton
8. Joost Op ‘t Eynde, a Duke University PhD student
9. Dr. Marco Iacoboni (David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA)
QUIZ No. 942
1. Who proposed that light pulsing at 40 hertz may help us fight Alzheimer’s disease?
– Kristie Garza
– John Terrence Cacioppo
– Roderick MacKinnon
1. Kristie Garza
2. Parentese is not “baby talk”. Who noted that “it’s a social hook for the baby brain”?
– Edmund Bourne
– Patricia Katherine Kuhl
– Stephen F. Blinkhorn
2. Patricia Katherine Kuhl
3. Who found that one’s heart rate may vary from others’ by up to 70 beats per minute?
– Dr Giorgio Quer
– Robert Root-Bernstein
– Sean C. Senechal
3. Dr Giorgio Quer
4. Who left Broadway & Hollywood to pick the trails of the drama of human evolution?
– Robert Ardrey
– Howard Emmett Rogers
– Stanley R. Greenberg
4. Robert Ardrey
5. “International law exists only in textbooks on international law.” Who actually said it?
– Ashley Montagu
– William Graham Sumner
– Andrew John Milner
5. Ashley Montagu