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Researchers working in Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda have filmed gorillas dismantling snares set by poachers to catch smaller game. Previously, anecdotal evidence had suggested that silverback gorillas had been seen dismantling snares. In this instance it was two young blackback, mountain gorillas that were involved. The team, part of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund's Karisoke Research Center, filmed first a silverback motioning towards the snare. Next, two young male blackbacks arrived on the scene, surveyed the situation, then proceeded to take apart the snare, avoiding being caught in it in the process.

"super nice kid," "kinda quiet" and "really smart." This is how Holmes is described by a classmate to the LA Times. Reading an essay by Dan Miller Enlightened self-interest and international relations about Bertrand Russell somehow made me think about James Holmes the “Spiderman Killer.” We know so little about what motivates people, but we think we know so much. It’s called projection. We assume that there are universal aspirations and that they match our own. That error is the cause of both personal and global tragedy. On a personal level people assume that if we love someone that love...

Enlarge Image Brain gain. Brain scan data showing regions where two of the newly identified SNPs interact with each other to affect white matter tract integrity. Credit: Paul Thompson/UCLA Researchers have yet to understand how genes influence intelligence, but a new study takes a step in that direction. An international team of scientists has identified a network of genes that may boost performance on IQ tests by building and insulating connections in the brain. Intelligence runs in families, but although scientists have identified about 20 genetic variants associated with intelligence, each accounts for just 1% of the variation in...

The color test is simple. There are 8 screens, and each screen you are given a word and two buttons to choose from.

Despite 40 years of practicing law, I am no expert when it comes to arguing appeals. But I do know enough not to gratuitously insult and try to humiliate the appellate judges who will decide my client's case. Apparently they don't teach those fundamentals at Harvard Law School. How else to explain the absolutely boneheaded attempts by President Obama, a past president of the Harvard Law Review, to intimidate the U.S. Supreme Court as it decides the constitutional fate of Obamacare? And he did this when anyone who could see past his next meal knew that Obamacare, which was being...

(CNSNews.com) - John P. Holdren, the top science adviser to President Barack Obama, wrote in a book he co-authored with population control advocates Paul and Anne Ehrlich that children from larger families have lower IQs. The book—"Human Ecology: Problems and Solutions"—argued that the United States government had a “responsibility to halt the growth of the American population.” “It surely is no accident that so many of the most successful individuals are first or only children,” wrote Holdren and the Ehrlichs, “nor that children of large families (particularly with more than four children), whatever their economic status, on the average perform...

In a new study, bound to stir controversy, researchers have found that people with low IQ tend to have socially conservative ideals and prejudiced attitudes toward others, including people of different races and homosexuals. The new study published earlier this month in the journal Psychological Science found that British children with lower general intelligence factor (similar to IQ) are more likely to be racially prejudiced as adults. "We found that lower general intelligence in childhood predicts greater racism in adulthood, and this effect was largely mediated via conservative ideology," lead researchers Gordon Hodson and Michael A. Busseri of Brock University,...

There's no gentle way to put it: People who give in to racism and prejudice may simply be dumb, according to a new study that is bound to stir public controversy. The research finds that children with low intelligence are more likely to hold prejudiced attitudes as adults. These findings point to a vicious cycle, according to lead researcher Gordon Hodson, a psychologist at Brock University in Ontario. Low-intelligence adults tend to gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies, the study found. Those ideologies, in turn, stress hierarchy and resistance to change, attitudes that can contribute to prejudice.......

Trying to locate the name of a relatively recent movie: The plot line as I remember it from the ad, was that an ordinary Joe, accidental takes a "pill" that causes him to be able to use a large percentage of his brain, in a conscious state, and makes him the smartest man on the planet. The person who made the pill, takes umbrage, and becomes the antagonist. I've been trying out all the permutations of key worhds on IMDB to no joy. Any help appreciated.

How smart do we want our presidents to be, and what does their academic performance tell us about their chances for success? This month Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s college transcript was leaked, and the Republican presidential contender’s academic performance at Texas A&M turned out to be less than stellar. Perry’s critics seized on the document to suggest that he didn’t have the aptitude to serve as leader of the free world. Is there a correlation between success in the White House and a president’s perceived intelligence, or at least between academic performance and Oval Office success?

Genetic differences between people account for up to half of the variation in intelligence, according to a study of more than 3,000 individuals. Intelligence is known to run in families, but no single genes have yet been identified that can be reliably linked to mental ability. Instead, researchers think, many hundreds or thousands of genes could be involved, each with a small influence on a person's overall intelligence. "It has been getting clearer and clearer that any genetic contribution to traits on which people differ – like height and weight – comes about from large numbers of gene differences, each...

Results from an online IQ test taken by over 100,000 people have been reported as indicating the users of Internet Explorer have low IQ and have provoked some IE users to threaten legal action. But the study's findings are valuable ammunition for web developers. A Canadian company that designs, validates and publishes psychometric tests for recruitment, career guidance and staff development, released its report Intelligence Quotient (IQ) and Browser Usage and found itself at the centre of a storm. The survey findings were reported by Jared Newman on PC World with the headline "Internet Explorer Users Are Kinda Stupid" and...

Autum Ashante, a highly academically accomplished 13-year-old from the Bronx, N.Y., planned to start her freshman year at the University of Connecticut this fall. Now, her father says, the school has rescinded her acceptance, the Daily News reports. Batin Ashante said that his daughter was "devastated" after university officials called him yesterday to deliver the bad news. "They said they now feel she's not academically ready," he said. "That's BS!" When the story was first reported in mid-June, UConn spokesman Richard Veilleaux confirmed that Autum had been accepted to the school but said university officials were still waiting for the...

It's racially discriminatory to prohibit racial discrimination. That's the bottom line of a decision issued Friday, just before the Fourth of July weekend, by the United States Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit. The case was brought by an organization called By Any Means Necessary to overturn a state constitutional amendment passed by a 58 percent majority of Michigan voters in November 2006. This was not BAMN's first challenge to the proposition. It staged a mini-riot in the secretary of state's office to try to block submission of the signatures that put the proposition on the ballot. The ballot...

This is a terrific test. And it shows results in a number of ways. It sure indicates that the majority of Americans don't know what's going on. No wonder our politicians take such advantage. Interesting and simple test. It’s astonishing that so many people got less than half right. These results say that 80% of the (voting) public doesn’t have a clue – and that’s pretty scary.

Intelligence tests are as much a measure of motivation as they are of mental ability, says research from the US.Researchers from Pennsylvania found that a high IQ score required both high intelligence and high motivation but a low IQ score could be the result of a lack of either factor. Incentives were also found to increase IQ scores by a noticeable margin. The study is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Firstly, it analysed previous studies of how material incentives affected the performance of more than 2,000 people in intelligence tests. Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania,...

Australian ethicist working at the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics claims that humanity has a “moral obligation” to use in vitro fertilization (IVF) to select the most intelligent embryos for the good of society, with the obvious implication that the less intelligent “surplus” embryos should simply be destroyed. Professor Julian Savulescu of Melbourne made the statement while commenting on an economic modeling research paper by Oxford University ethicists Andres Sandberg and Nick Bostrom, who claim that a rise in humanity’s IQ would result in a reduction in poverty, welfare dependency, crowding of jails, school dropout rates, out-of-wedlock births, and...

It's not just how free the market is. Some economists are looking at another factor that determines how much a country's economy flourishes: how smart its people are. For a study published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, researchers analyzed test scores from 90 countries and found that the intelligence of the people, particularly the smartest 5 percent, made a big contribution to the strength of their economies. In the last 50 years or so, economists have started taking an interest in the value of human capital. That means all of the qualities of the people who make up...

-and see if you're any better than the average idiot! This is a terrific test, albeit a couple months dated... very enlightening. But not in a good way... the pitiful results betray the fact that a solid majority of Americans have absolutely no idea what's going on in this country. 80% of the voting public doesn't have a clue- and got less than half right! This goes some ways towards explaining how a shady post-turtle like Barack Obama found his way into the Oval Office- and how the public can continue to be so easily manipulated by the thoroughly-discredited MSM hacks that...

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