Here's the article.
The finding will help researchers better understand the conditions under which a certain type of stellar explosion occurs. Some astronomers have suggested type 1a supernovas -- the variety apparently seen by Tycho Brahe -- might be the result of stellar collisions between two white dwarfs, rather than the mass-transfer idea.
"If we accept that the companion has been identified, then we now know for the first time that not all type-Ia supernovae are produced by coalescence of white dwarfs," writes University of Oklahoma physicist David Branch in an analysis of the work forthe journal.
All this is important in part because type 1a supernovas are rare in our galaxy but common in the universe as a whole. All of them achieve an almost identical maximum brightness, then fade at a nearly identical rate. So astronomers use them as "standard candles" to measure distances to faraway galaxies.
No wise cracks today.
Brain Size and IQ Evolution
If you believe this sort of thing is important, here's the article.
As little as we know about our own intellectual history, we know even less about other, clearly brainy species, such as dolphins. Correction: make that past tense. Some research just published by behavioral biologist Lori Marino (of Emory University and the SETI Insitute), together with her colleagues Dan McShea and Mark D. Uhen, has, for the first time, mapped out the intelligence of toothed whales and dolphins over the past 50 million years. This map may lead us to some real research treasure: uncovering just what it is that provokes evolution to select for high intelligence. How could Marino and her team measure the IQ's of animals that breathed their last millions of years ago? She used what has become an accepted standard for gauging the intelligence of animals both dead and alive: the so-called 'encephalization quotient', or EQ.
Simply put, this is the mass of the brain, as a fraction of body weight. If you have an average-sized brain for your body weight, then your EQ is one. If you have twice as massive a brain as the average species your size, then your EQ is two - and you move, if not to the head of the class, then at least a few rows forward.
If you believe in such studies...
I am sceptical.
- Art Neuro
1 comment:
Given that we have found NO correlation between brain size and 'intelligence' in either humans or living animal species this is a truly stupid 'standard' and a probably worthless peice of research. Should never have been funded on such a premise.
-db sourgrape?
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