bright 4.bri.000203 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire . Progressively larger brains evolved in primates of all stripes, not just humans. We can thank a common capacity for solving a broad range of problems, from coordinating social alliances to inventing tools, according to a new study.Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire . http://ljsheehan.livejournal.com

This conclusion challenges a popular theory that big, smart brains arose primarily because they afforded advantages when it came to negotiating complex social situations during human evolution.http://ljsheehan.livejournal.com

"The ability to learn from others, invent new behaviors, and use tools may have [also] played pivotal roles in primate-brain evolution," say Simon M. Reader of McGill University in Montreal and Kevin N. Laland of the University of Cambridge in England. In an upcoming report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the two zoologists chronicle links between an array of intelligent behaviors and enhanced brain size in primates.http://ljsheehan.livejournal.com

Reader and Laland examined approximately 1,000 scientific studies of behavior in 116 of the world's 203 known primate species. They identified 553 instances of animals discovering new solutions to survival-related problems, 445 observations of individuals learning skills and acquiring information from others, and 607 episodes of tool use.

The researchers then consulted previously obtained data on brain size relative to body size in different primates. In particular, they focused on the volume of the structures that make up what scientists call the executive brain, a frontal region thought to be crucial for complex thinking.

Species that have the proportionately largest executive brains are the ones that most often innovate, learn from others, and use tools, Reader and Laland contend. These three facets of intelligence vary together as primate brains enlarge, they say. There's no evidence in any species of an evolutionary trade-off between these traits, such as an increase in innovation accompanying a decline in social learning.

A related report by neuroscientist Barbara L. Finlay of Cornell University and her colleagues concluded that different brain regions in mammals enlarged all together during mammalian evolution, not in piecemeal fashion related to specific functions. Whole-brain evolution was driven by changes in the timing of early brain development in individuals, says Finlay. In all species, late-generated structures�including the executive brain�have grown the largest, Finlay's team asserted in the April 2001 Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

Reader and Laland provide "important new evidence" that wide-ranging thinking skills shared by many primate species encouraged the evolution of large brains, comment psychologist Robert M. Seyfarth and biologist Dorothy L. Cheney, both of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, in a comment published with the new report.

They suggest that intellectual accomplishments unique to people, such as language use, may have playe

face 6.fac.000200 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire . Something strange recently happened to me in Tennessee. I wasn’t actually in Tennessee when it happened. The strangeness emanated from there–actually, from one spot in Tennessee–and eventually reached me here up in New England.

It started with a column I wrote in the October issue of Discover, about the evolution of the human face. Sometimes people write letters to the magazine about my pieces. My editors dropped a note to let me know that all at once they got 40 60 letters about my column. All from the outskirts of Memphis.http://louis3j3sheehan3esquire.wordpress.com All pretty much identical in style and substance. Some had been written on a computer, but some were written by hand–young hands, judging from their appearance.

Here’s a sample…

“I enjoyed reading your article and was interested in the research done on how the face and its muscles work to make expressions. I however believe that the brain and facial expressions are not a byproduct of years of evolution but instead a fingerprint of intelligent design. You claim in your article, that the muscles of the face are the result of the transition of life from land to water, but where is the fossil record for the jump? None have been found. There is no proof of the evolution of water to land creatures.”

And a second…

“I would like to show you what I think may have happened. First off, there is the law of entropy. This law states that everything is in a state of going deeper into chaos. The brain could not have formed going from a blob of amino acid to a highly complex organ that is capable of generating the power that is does. That is going into a state of unity and order. According to natural laws, this is impossible. Only a creator is capable of doing this.”

And a third

“If the face is an irreducibly complex machine, which it is, it cannot evolve because the original face would be missing parts, which would make the whole machine non-fuctioning. This rules out the possibility of evolution in human faces.”

I don’t know if all these letters came from a single class or club. http://louis3j3sheehan3esquire.wordpress.com In any case, the folks at Discover asked me if I’d write something in response. So–to my correspondents from Tennessee:

Thank you all for your letters. I appreciate that you took the time to read my article. While I can’t write to all forty sixty of you individually, I want to respond to the overall gist of your letters.

A number of you stated that there is no evidence that the human face–or even humans, period–evolved. For instance, one writer claimed that there is no fossil record of the transition of life from water to land.

new-tetra600.jpg

Actually, there is a fossil record, and it’s getting more and more detailed every year. The best source of information at the moment is a new review written by three experts on the subject. They explain how paleontologists have found a number of fossils of fish with some–but not all–of the features found in land vertebrates. They’ve also found a lot of early land vertebrates that still had not yet evolved some of the anatomy found on land vertebrates today. The illustration above, from the review, shows just how many fossils of these early land vertebrates and their relatives have been discovered in rocks between 400 and 300 million years ago.

This is what you’d expect if life evolved.

When scientists compare the traits on all those species, they can judge which species are most closely related to each other, and use that information to draw an evolutionary tree. The land vertebrates alive today, including mammals, reptiles, and amphibians are represented by the brown and green arrows. The closest living fish relatives, according to this research, are lungfish and coelacanths (Dipnoi and Actinistia on the tree). As the tree shows, there are 19 different lineages paleontologists have discovered the branched off between our common ancestor with lungfish 410 million years ago, and the common ancestor of all land vertebrates alive today, which lived some 350 million years ago. Those extinct lineages mark the evolution, step by step, of our legs, arms, wrists, ankles, fingers, and toes. Do they mark every generation through this transition? Of course not–but no paleontologist would ever dream of finding fossils of every individual that ever lived. Instead, they judge how well each new fossil fits into the overall picture.

Scientists can also use other lines of evidence to test their hypothesis for how vertebrates came on land. http://louis3j3sheehan3esquire.wordpress.com The tree I’ve reproduced here makes it clear that our closest living aquatic relatives are lungfish and coelacanths–two very rare lineages that make up a half dozen species or so all told. Recently scientists compared a lot of DNA from from several species of fish–including lungfish–and land vertebrates. They got the same result looking at genes that paleontologists get looking at bones: lungfish are our closest relatives.

The support that comes from different studies gives scientists confidence that they can look at fish to track the evolution of our faces. http://louis3j3sheehan3esquire.wordpress.com On fossils, they can look at scoops and troughs in bones that mark the places where muscles attached. And they can study muscles in the heads of living fish. A lamprey doesn’t have a dimpled smile, let alone a jaw. But it does have some of the same muscles as we have in our faces. These muscles develop from the same place in the heads of lamprey embryo and a human embryo. More closely related animals share more face muscles with us. Our closest relatives, the chimpanzees, have just about every muscle in our own face, and they produce the same expressions when they are stimulated. (See the illustration at the top of the post, from this review of face evolution from fish to humans.)

This is, again, the sort of pattern you’d expect from evolution. So there is, in fact, a lot of evidence documenting the evolution of the face from our fish ancestors–and more coming to light each year.

But many of you also make a different sort of claim: that evolution could not have possibly produced the face.

Let me explain why this is not the case.

One person wrote in that the laws of entropy, which drives the universe to chaos. “The brain could not have formed going from a blob of amino acid to a highly complex organ.”

But think about what happens every time a brain develops from nothing in a human embryo. How can this order emerge, if entropy rules? Because the laws of entropy do not prevent order from arising in a particular place. An embryo takes in energy to form its complex body, and it pumps out heat, increasing the entropy in the environment. Entropy is likewise not a problem for evolution, if there is enough energy to increase local order and a place to push the disorder. And our planet, getting energy from the sun and releasing heat back into space, provides just those conditions.

Some of you claimed that the face could not evolve because it is an “irreducibly complex” system. If you take one part away from it, it does not work. But that’s not actually the case. Think about it–chimpanzees and other primates have most of the facial muscles that we do–but not all of them. In other words, they are missing some parts of the human face. But their faces are not “non-functioning” as one letter-writer claimed. They make plenty of faces–although they cannot make as many faces as we can.

You don’t even have to leave our own species to see that our faces are not “irreducibly complex.” Many people are lacking one or more muscles in the face, but their faces work normally. http://louis3j3sheehan3esquire.wordpress.com Botox paralyzes some muscles in the face–knocking out several parts of this supposedly irreducibly complex face. It may be hard for people with Botox to frown, but they can still smile and produce other facial expressions. That’s hardly non-functional.

The links in my response take you to several scientific papers. Actually, there are many, many more on the topics I’ve discussed. I’d encourage you to take the plunge and learn more about the face and its evolution. I’d hope you’d find it as fascinating as I do.Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

ragweed 88.rag.20 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire. People with seasonal allergies know that some months can be tougher than others. An unprecedented 15-year study conducted in the New York City area charts how air concentrations of different types of pollen vary throughout an average year.

Ragweed pollen, the most significant cause of allergy, is airborne mainly during August and September, report researchers at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey–New Jersey Medical School in Newark. http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-jmbPCHg9dLPh1gHoZxLG.GpS

By contrast, tree pollen is most abundant during May and is nearly absent from the air after the end of June. Grass-pollen concentrations peak in June and rise again, albeit to a lesser extent, in September.

Contrary to what some people with allergies might think, pollen abundance has decreased—at least in the New York City area—over the past decade.

The new data might help some people avoid unnecessary outdoor exposure at times when their allergies are most likely to be active, Leonard Bielory and his colleagues say in the May Annals of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology. They note that seasonal pollen patterns are likely to differ from one region of the country to the next. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

under 99.und.0 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire To protect right whales in the northwest Atlantic—one of the most depleted cetacean populations worldwide—the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has proposed seasonal speed limits for large, ocean-going vessels. Currently, ship strikes pose the greatest threat to the population, NOAA says, with at least one or two deaths reported from such collisions each year. http://www.blog.ca/user/Beforethebigbang

Under the new proposal, ships 65 feet and longer could travel no faster than 10 knots in eastern U.S. waters near areas where the whales have been spotted. Normally, such vessels travel at 15 knots or faster. http://www.blog.ca/user/Beforethebigbang

Although protected from hunting since 1935, the species' population off the eastern United States and Canada is around only 300. This population's calving rate has risen in recent years to about 20 annually. Still, it doesn't fully compensate for adult-whale deaths sustained over the past 2 decades, NOAA reported in a June 26 Federal Register announcement of the proposed new rule.

The locations and sizes of go-slow zones will vary by season, and their duration will always be at least 15 days.

Roughly 70 percent of large commercial ships traveling along the East Coast passes through the right whale's critical habitat, researchers reported last year in the July-September Coastal Management. They found that most of those vessels moved at "speed[s] at which large whales may be critically injured." Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

eruptions 4.eru.2 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

Volcanologist Andrew McGonigle walks through clouds composed of mist, steam, carbon dioxide (CO2), and sulfur dioxide (SO2) on Vulcano, an active volcanic island off the coast of southern Italy. To predict eruptions, volcanologists typically use distant ultraviolet spectrometers to measure SO2 released by active volcanoes. McGonigle has developed a remote-controlled helicopter called Aerovolc 1 to do it better. http://louis3j3sheehan3esquire.wordpress.com By accurately measuring CO2, which escapes magma earlier than SO2, scientists could predict eruptions sooner, helping to implement timely evacuations for nearby populations—but measuring CO2 is a challenge. McGonigle’s method requires that sensors capture gases directly above a volcano, a major problem for static instruments, which are easily destroyed by magma. But a remote-controlled helicopter can gather data from a safe distance. McGonigle, who recently won the $100,000 Rolex Award for Enterprise, plans next to outfit a fully automated helicopter, akin to the unmanned aerial vehicles used by the military. http://louis3j3sheehan3esquire.wordpress.com/

married 55.mar.1 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

More from Cynthia Tucker:

* GOP NEEDS A BETTER CANDIDATE THAN PALIN FOR FUTURE SUCCESS
* SUN IS SETTING ON THOSE WHO PREFER AN AMERICA OF INEQUALITY
* GEORGIA SENATE RACE HIGHLIGHTS WHAT'S ON MANY MINDS IN U.S.

Read all the columns »
About The Author:

Cynthia Tucker is editorial page editor for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and a syndicated columnist whose commentary appears in dozens of newspapers across the country.

President-elect Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, are members of a minority: They are a black married couple.

Wed 16 years in October, the Obamas conceived their two daughters, Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7, after the wedding. While traditional couplehood such as the Obamas' is losing popularity in every corner of the country, it has all but disappeared in black America, where more than 70 percent of children are born outside marriage.

In 2006, The Washington Post published an op-ed essay by writer Joy Jones with the provocative headline, "Marriage is for White People." The headline didn't reflect Jones' views; it repeated "what one of my students told me some years back when I taught a career exploration class for sixth-graders at an elementary school in southeast Washington (D.C.).http://louis-j-sheehan-esquire.blog.friendster.com/

"I think I'll invite some couples in to talk about being married and rearing children," she told the class." 'Oh, no,' objected one student. 'We're not interested in the part about marriage. Only about how to be good fathers.' And that's when the other boy chimed in ... 'Marriage is for white people.'"

That sixth-grader was likely reflecting his environment, which may not have included many black married couples. While 62 percent of white adults and 60 percent of Latino adults are married, only 41 percent of black adults are.

The Obamas are already burdened by the baggage of cultural expectations, but I'll go ahead and add another sack to their load: Here's hoping their presence on the national stage will erase that sixth-grader's wrongheaded notion. Marriage ought to be an equal-opportunity institution, no matter color, creed or sexual orientation.

"I was really excited when I saw the Obama family on the (TV) screen (on Nov. 4) because I meet so many young African-Americans who, frankly, have never seen an intact family like this," said Leah Ward Sears, chief justice of the Georgia Supreme Court and board member of the Institute for American Values, which promotes marriage. "I'm hopeful (the Obamas) will be a brand-new model of what the ideal is, even if many, many of us will fall short of the ideal," she added.

Certainly, there are millions of law-abiding and accomplished adults who grew up in non-traditional households -- reared by single moms or single dads or grandparents. It's also true that many non-custodial parents, who are usually fathers, are actively involved in their children's lives, boosting their chances for successful lives. Still, a significant body of research emphasizes that, all other things being equal, children are better off with two loving, responsible parents who are married to each other. Those kids are less likely to engage in drug abuse or risky sexual behavior and more likely to do well in school.

Moreover, fathers are more likely to stay connected with their children if they are married to the kids' mom. "There is a saying in social research: 'A mother is a mother all of your life, but a father is a father only when he has a wife,'" Justice Sears said.

Indeed, research also suggests that marriage is good for adults.

"Compared with unmarried people, married men and women tend to have lower mortality, less risky behavior, more monitoring of health, more compliance with medical regimens, higher sexual frequency, more satisfaction with their sexual lives, more savings and higher wages," according to "Cohabitation, Marriage, Divorce and Remarriage in the United States," a 2002 study sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.http://louis-j-sheehan-esquire.blog.friendster.com/

Yet, the institution of marriage is under severe stress. Though the idealized intact family remains a mainstay of popular culture, married couples represent only half of all households in the United States. And the trend toward unmarried parenthood has affected white and brown America, too, a fact highlighted by Sarah Palin's pregnant daughter, Bristol. About 27 percent of white children are now born outside marriage, as are about 42 percent of Latino children.http://louis-j-sheehan-esquire.blog.friendster.com/

There isn't much a President Obama can do about that except continue to present his family as an alternative -- a very attractive alternative. Who knows? The new, new thing could be marriage.

panic 55.2.pan.1 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

“I was driving home after work,” David reported. “Things had been very stressful there lately. I was tense but looking forward to getting home and relaxing. And then, all of a sudden—boom! My heart started racing, and I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I was sweating and shaking. My thoughts were racing, and I was afraid that I was going crazy or having a heart attack. I pulled over and called my wife to take me to the emergency room.”

David’s fears turned out to be unjustified. An emergency room doctor told David, a composite of several therapy patients seen by one of us (Arkowitz), that he was suffering from a panic attack.

The current edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) defines a panic attack as an abrupt and discrete experience of intense fear or acute discomfort, accompanied by symptoms such as heart palpitations, shortness of breath, sweating, trembling, and worries about going crazy, losing control or dying. Most attacks occur without obvious provocation, making them even more terrifying. Some 8 to 10 percent of the population experiences an occasional attack, but only 5 percent develops panic disorder. Contrary to common misconception, these episodes aren’t merely rushes of anxiety that most of us experience from time to time. Instead patients who have had a panic attack typically describe it as the most frightening event they have ever undergone.

Research has provided important leads to explain what causes a person’s first panic attack—clues that can help ward off an attack in the first place. When stress builds up to a critical level, a very small additional amount of stress can trigger panic. As a result, the person may experience the event as coming out of the blue.

Some people may have a genetic predisposition toward panic, as psychologist Regina A. Shih, then at Johns Hopkins University, and her colleagues described in a review article. The disorder runs in families, and if one identical twin has panic disorder, the chance that the other one also has it is two to three times higher than for fraternal twins, who are genetically less similar. Although these findings do not rule out environmental factors, they do strongly suggest a genetic component. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

Panic disorder imposes serious restrictions on patients’ quality of life. They may be plagued by a persistent concern about the possibility of more attacks and may avoid situations associated with them. To receive a diagnosis of panic disorder, patients must also worry that they might have another attack where it would be embarrassing (say, in a public setting such as a classroom), difficult to escape (such as when one is stuck in traffic), or difficult to find help (for example, in an area with no medical facilities nearby). Panic disorder accompanied by extensive avoidance of these situations results in a diagnosis of panic disorder with agoraphobia; in extreme cases, sufferers may even become housebound.

From Normal Anxiety to Crippling Fear
What are the roots of such incapacitating attacks? Psychologist David H. Barlow of Boston University, who has conducted pioneering research on understanding and treating panic disorder and related disorders, and others believe that panic attacks result when our normal “fight or flight” response to imminent threats—including increased heart rate and rapid breathing—is triggered by “false alarms,” situations in which real danger is absent. (In contrast, the same response in the face of a real danger is a “true alarm.”) Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

When we experience true or false alarms, we tend to associate the biological and psychological reactions they elicit with cues that were present at the time. These associations become “learned alarms” that can evoke further panic attacks.

Both external situations and internal bodily cues of arousal (such as increased breathing rate) can elicit a learned alarm. For example, some people experience panic attacks when they exercise because the physiological arousal leads to bodily sensations similar to those of a panic attack.

Why do some people experience only isolated attacks, whereas others develop full-blown panic disorder? Bar­low has synthesized his research and that of others to develop an integrated theory of anxiety disorders, which states that certain predispositions are necessary to develop panic disorder:

• A generalized biological vulnerability toward anxiety, leading us to overreact to the events of daily life.
• A generalized psychological vulnerability to develop anxiety caused by early childhood learning (such as overprotection from our parents) that the world is a dangerous place and that stress is overwhelming and cannot be controlled.
• A specific psychological vulnerability in which we learn in childhood that some situations or objects are dangerous even if they are not.

Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire. Panic disorder develops when a person with these vulnerabilities experiences prolonged stress and a panic attack. The first attack activates the psychological vulnerabilities, creating a hypersensitivity to external and internal cues associated with the attack. As a result, even medication containing a mild stimulant can provoke an ­attack.

Still, there is good news. Two findings in particular can provide reassurance for those with panic disorder. The first is that all panic attacks are triggered by known events, even though the sufferer may be unaware of them. This knowledge can reduce the anxiety associated with the sense of unpredictability. Second, it can be reassuring to learn that a panic attack is a misfiring of the fight-or-flight response in the absence of danger. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

Basic research not only has helped us understand panic disorder but also has led to effective treatments. In particular, Barlow and his associates developed panic-control treatment, described in their 2006 book Mastery of Your Anxiety and Panic. It involves education about panic disorder and somewhat gradual exposure to the internal and external cues that trigger panic attacks, along with changing the catastrophic interpretations of bodily cues so that they no longer trigger the attacks. This treatment has in most instances surpassed drug therapies for the disorder over the long term. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire