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Quirks & Quarks May 10, 2003
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Nature Via Nurture
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Nature Via Nurture |
What is it that makes a human being? Are we creatures whose essence is innate, whose personalities, skills, strengths and weaknesses are determined by qualities inside of us? Or are we blank slates, our minds constructed and our minds developed from influences outside of us, through the experiences of our growth and learning? Is what we are determined by nature or nurture? A great deal of scientific research has gone into understanding our minds, our behaviour, and our bodies -- especially our genes.
Science writer Matt Ridley has weighed in with a new book on the subject, called "Nature via Nurture." In it he points out that much of what we're learning implies that Nature and Nurture are not separate. Their interaction is what builds us. Development is programmed by genes, but directed by environment.
Environmental stimuli influence the way genes work by the day, hour and minute. Nature and Nurture continually interact, subtly determining what it is we become, and how we behave. It turns out that the old dichotomy - either or - is really more of a complex mushy middle.
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Robo-Rat
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Imagine using a real brain to control a robot. Dr. Steve Potter has done just that. He's an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University School of Medicine. He's created something he calls a "hybrot". It's a hybrid robot: part robot, part rat. And it actually uses rat brain neural cells to control a small mechanical devise. He hopes it will help us understand how brains learn, as well as helping develop smarter computers and prosthetic devises.
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Ants Go Smelling One by One...
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Photo courtesy Alex Wild |
The organization of an ant colony is a wonder. Thousands of individual ants act together in a well-coordinated pattern of activities, accomplishing all the various business of the colony. This organization is accomplished, however, without any central intelligence or direction, and individual ants are really not all that bright.
Dr. Deborah Gordon, a biologist at Stanford University, has been working to understand how individual ants following very simple rules of behaviour and cues, leads to this organization. Her latest work has shown that foraging ants decide to go out searching for food only if they smell the chemical signal on enough returning patrolling ants (the scouts). Returning patrollers signal that it's safe to go outside.
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Trout and Cadium
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Rainbow Trout. Courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, Alaska Region. |
Rainbow trout rely on their noses to sniff out signs of predators. But if they're swimming around in water contaminated with a toxic metal called cadmium, they keep on swimming around even if there are signs of a predator. Graham Scott of the University of British Columbia and his colleagues have found that the cadmium dulls the fish's sense of smell so that they can't tell if there's a predator around. Scott says the cadmium may not directly kill the fish, but could still harm the population by changing their behaviour.
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Question of the Week: Sense of Motion
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Meagan McIvor of Red Deer, Alberta, asks, "After a day of swinging on a swing, or swimming in the waves, why does my body continue to feel the motion when it is no longer moving?"
For the answer, we go to the Centre for Vision Research at York University in Toronto, where Jim Zacher is a project scientist.
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