Scientists taught monkeys the concept of money

Scientists trained seven capuchin monkeys how to use money.  Instead of the dollar, however, a silver disc with a hole in its center was employed a means of currency for the capuchins. It took several months of repetition for the capuchins to learn that they could exchange such a token for fruit.

After they understood this, each monkey was given 12 tokens to decide on how to spend it in her best interest on food valued at different prices. Researchers observed that the monkeys could very well budget. Researchers then changed the market and put Jell-O at a lower price, to see if monkeys would buy less grapes and more Jell-O. They acted exactly like the current laws of economics dictate for humans as well.

They then taught them how to gamble, and saw they made the same irrational decisions a human gambler would make as well. It was also observed how one of the monkeys exchanged money to another for sex. After the act was over, the monkey which was paid immediately used it to buy a grape…

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Oldest living thing on earth' discovered

Photo: Getty Images

Ancient patches of a giant seagrass in the Mediterranean Sea are now considered the oldest living organism on Earth after scientists dated them as up to 200,000 years old.

Australian scientists sequenced the DNA of samples of the giant seagrass, Posidonia oceanic, from 40 underwater meadows in an area spanning more than 2,000 miles, from Spain to Cyprus.

The analysis, published in the journal PLos ONE, found the seagrass was between 12,000 and 200,000 years old and was most likely to be at least 100,000 years old. This is far older than the current known oldest species, a Tasmanian plant that is believed to be 43,000 years old.

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Different colours of carrot

Have you ever seen a purple carrot? How about white, yellow, red or black? Most people haven't, even though such carrots have existed for hundreds of years. They are available in good health food stores, often called "Rainbow Packs".

Carrots were originally purple or red, with a thin root. Orange carrots arrived from natural mutations of yellow forms, and then by human selection and development, probably in the Netherlands. It is thought that humans made selections from a genepool involving yellow rooted eastern carrots, cultivated white-rooted derivatives of wild carrot and wild unselected populations of adjacent Daucus Carota subspecies in Europe and the Mediterranean. It is thought that Dutch breeders used a mutant seed from North Africa to develop the orange variety into a stable and reliable plant for domestication.

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Mercury's days are equal to about 176 Earth days.

Mercury is the innermost and smallest planet in the Solar System, orbiting the Sun once every 88 Earth days. Due to the speed of its orbit, Mercury has longer days than years! A single day on Mercury is equal to two years on Mercury. It is equal to about 176 Earth days.

Mercury is normally lost in the glare of the Sun. You can see it, however, during a solar eclipse.

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Oxymoron

An oxymoron is a figure of speech that combines contradictory terms. Oxymorons can be divided into expressions that were deliberately crafted to be contradictory and those phrases that inadvertently or incidentally contain a contradiction. Examples of oxymorons are: dark light, original copy, bitter sweet, serious joke etc.

The word oxymoron is itself contradictory. The term “oxymoron" is derived from the Greek words oxy, meaning "sharp" and moron meaning “dull”.

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Hyperthymesia or superior autobiographical memory

Hyperthymesia is a condition in which the individual possesses a superior autobiographical memory, meaning they can recall the vast majority of personal experiences and events in their lives. The term “hyperthymesia" is derived from the Greek words thymesis, meaning "remembering" and hyper meaning “excessive”.

Individuals with hyperthymesia can recall almost every day of their lives in near perfect detail, as well as public events that hold some personal significance to them. Those affected describe their memories as uncontrollable associations, when they encounter a date, they "see" a vivid depiction of that day in their heads. Recollection occurs without hesitation or conscious effort.

Twenty cases of hyperthymesia have been confirmed thus far.

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Canada Clicks

A spellbinding view of the Deer Valley Golf and Estates in Canada's Saskatchewan province.

Watch out more beautiful pictures of Canada.

Towns that “died for France”

Sign indicating the site of the destroyed village of Fleury-devant-Douaumont

During the First World War, many villages in the French département of Meuse were destroyed by the fighting. After the war, it was decided that the land previously occupied by the destroyed villages would not be incorporated into other communes, as a testament to these villages which had “died for France”, as they were declared, and to preserve their memory. While three of the villages were subsequently rebuilt and are governed as normal communes, the other six are entirely unpopulated and are managed by a council of three members, appointed by the prefect of Meuse.

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Russians reach hidden Antarctic lake

Microorganisms have been found
 in the lake's frozen water

Opening a scientific frontier kilometers under the Antarctic ice, Russian experts have drilled down and finally reached the surface of a gigantic freshwater lake, an achievement the mission chief likened to placing a man on the moon.

Lake Vostok could hold living organisms that have been locked in icy darkness for some 20 million years, as well as clues to the search for life elsewhere in the solar system.

Touching the surface of the lake, the largest of nearly 400 subglacial lakes in Antarctica, came after more than two decades of drilling, and was a major achievement avidly anticipated by scientists around the world.

The Russian team made contact with the lake water at a depth of 3769m, about 1300km from the South Pole in the central part of the continent.

Scientists hope the lake might allow a glimpse into microbial life forms that existed before the Ice Age and are not visible to the naked eye. Scientists believe that microbial life may exist in the dark depths of the lake despite its high pressure and constant cold - conditions similar to those believed to be found under the ice crust on Mars, Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's moon Enceladus.

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Teeth of Ancient Mayans

The Mayas were a peaceful people with a highly developed culture who inhabited the Yucatan Peninsula. They were accomplished smelters and forgers of gold, silver, and bronze in addition to being highly skilled in cutting, polishing, and engraving precious and semiprecious stones.

Despite these skills, they did not perform restorative or corrective dental procedures. The skills they developed for working on teeth were for ritual or religious purposes. The Mayas were skilled in the fabrication and placement of beautifully carved stone inlays in precisely prepared cavities in the front teeth. These inlays were made of various minerals, including jadeite, iron pyrites, hematite, turquoise, quartz, serpentine, and cinnabar.

A round, hard tube was spun between the hands or in a rope drill, with a slurry of powdered quartz in water as an abrasive, to cut a perfectly round hole through the tooth enamel. The inlay was then cemented into place. The stone inlay was ground to fit the cavity so precisely that many have remained in the teeth for thousands of years.

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Tools to alter and control human memory

Altering or even creating human memory may soon be possible as the scientists are 'closing in' on areas where memory is stored and a technique for controlling these memories.

Neuroscientists at MIT have discovered a chemical way to make mice forget bad memories.

By deactivating a 'memory gene', Npas 4, they found that mice would 'forget' their fear of a chamber where they had previously been given electric shocks.

The researchers believe that the gene could be important for all types of memory.

To look into the genetic mechanisms of memory formation, researchers gave mice a mild electric shock when they entered a specific chamber.

Within minutes, the mice learn to fear the chamber, and the next time they entered it, they froze.

The gene - Npas4 - activates strongly when this happens and when the researchers removed the gene for Npas4, they found that mice could not remember their fearful conditioning.

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Exploding trees

A tree trunk that exploded after being hit by lightning

Exploding trees occur when stresses in a tree trunk increase leading to an explosion. These explosions can be caused by three different factors: cold, lightning, and fire.

Cold causes maple trees to explode by freezing the sap, because it contains water, which expands as it freezes, creating a sound like a gunshot. The sound is produced as the tree bark splits, with the wood contracting as the sap expands.

Trees can explode when struck by lightning. The strong electric current is carried mostly by the water-conducting sapwood below the bark, heating it up and boiling the water. The pressure of the steam can make the trunk burst. This happens especially with trees whose trunks are already dying or rotting.

Exploding trees also occur during forest fires and are a risk to smokejumpers. In Australia, the native eucalyptus trees are also known to explode during bush fires due to the high flammability of vaporized eucalyptus oil produced by the tree naturally.

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The suit that makes you feel 75 years old

Scientists at MIT have put together a suit that simulates being in one’s mid-70s. By 2030, 20% of the American population will be over the age of 65. By putting on this suit, architects, store designers, and other professionals can get a sense of what old age is like, and design accordingly.

And what does old age feel like? According to the folks at MIT’s Age Lab, where the suit was developed, like having giant rubber bands keeping your limbs from fully extending, braces that make your arms stiff, a helmet that makes your spine curve uncomfortably, and glasses that make small print hard to read, among other impairments. Just watch the video below of students creaking around a grocery store trying to pick up elder-friendly items like low-fat and low-sugar food, and you’ll sense right away how much flexibility and ease of movement will be taken from you as you age.

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