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Missile Defense

Technology has always found its greatest consumer in a nation's war and defense efforts. Since the last attempts at a "Star Wars" defense system, has technology changed considerably enough to make the latest Missile Defense initiatives more successful? Can such an application of science be successful? Is a militarized space inevitable, necessary or impossible?

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lchic - 05:53pm Apr 22, 2003 EST (# 11388 of 11500)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

body mass fell, largely because we became more gracile — or thinner boned. Certainly, this is the explanation favoured by Daniel Lieberman, one of Wrangham’s Harvard colleagues and a professor of biological anthropology. “I have great respect for Richard but I don’t agree with him,” Lieberman says. “The majority of the evidence shows that our brains have got smaller because our bodies have got smaller.

“Some animals that have been domesticated do have smaller brains than those in the wild. It could be that there’s a link between aggression and bigger brain size, but we don’t know it. ”

Professor Leslie Aiello, a biological anthropologist at University College London, calls Wrangham’s idea “pretty provocative”. She says: “My take on this is that falling brain size is to do with falling body size.”

Wrangham says that he doesn’t buy the “gracility” argument — that shrinking brains stem simply from shrinking bodies and thinning bones. He does not dispute the link, but thinks it is incidental (domesticated species also tend to be more gracile than their wild cousins). He wonders if there isn’t a third element missing from the equation, a fundamental factor driving both brain shrinkage and bone-thinning.

In an essay for Edge, the influential internet salon hosted by the American literary agent John Brockman, Wrangham writes: “I think that we have to start thinking about the idea that human beings in the past 30, 40, or 50 thousand years have been domesticating ourselves . . . People who are antisocial, for example, have their breeding opportunities reduced. They may be executed, imprisoned, or punished so badly that they’re kept out of the breeding pool . . . Just as there is selection for tameness in the domestication process of wild animals, or just as in bonobos there was a natural selection against aggressiveness, here there’s a sort of social selection against excessively aggressive people within communities. This puts human beings in a process of becoming increasingly a peaceful form of a more aggressive ancestor.”

Wrangham expanded on his ideas last week, in a telephone interview. “I don’t think that there is any case of animal domestication where a drop in robustness and corresponding drop in brain size has not been accompanied by behavioural changes. What sense does it make that a drop in body mass means your brain gets smaller? There’s no obvious reason why losing muscle means losing brain mass.

“However, in species which develop a reduction in impulsive violence (those which have been domesticated), there’s a corresponding drop in musculature and bone robustness.”

Wrangham mentions the work of the Russian geneticist Belyaev, who took wild foxes and bred them for tameness: “Within 20 generations, they were behaving like puppies. But the next amazing thing was the appearance of traits that were not deliberately selected for. It turns out that, 40 generations later, we have individuals whose tails are short, whose ears are fluffy and whose toes are white. They’re all the characteristics you see in other tame animals, such as the white spot in the middle of the forehead in horses, and the white toes you see in your tabby cat. So the selection of tameness has many correlated consequences. I’m predicting that we’ll also see smaller brains in these animals.” He has already seen encouraging data suggesting that their skulls are smaller.

In other words, the gradual taming of a species drives brain size downwards, and other physical characteristics hitch along for the ride. Wrangham makes a key distinction between the aggression within communities and that between communities, ie, warfare. He associates the former with brain size: “I’m talking about impulsive violence, where someone chatting up someone else’s woman leads to a fist fight.”

While other scientists may be cautious about Wrangham’s ideas, they are intellectually excited by them. As Aiello says: “Richard is a great mi

lchic - 05:55pm Apr 22, 2003 EST (# 11389 of 11500)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

While other scientists may be cautious about Wrangham’s ideas, they are intellectually excited by them. As Aiello says: “Richard is a great mind. If he comes up with the data to prove it, a lot of people are going to have fun.”

lchic - 05:57pm Apr 22, 2003 EST (# 11390 of 11500)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

SARS - China stops some people movements.

One hour test for SARS - has this been developed yet?

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