Born On A Cusp

We now know more to realise that IQ (more precisely, a high intelligence quotient) is not the most important thing in a person’s life. We know about multiple intelligences — that you and I could both be described as “intelligent” though in different manners: you in body and I in music, for instance. We also know how EQ, emotional quotient — or the ability to deal with one’s self, peers, and the world — is equally, if not more, important than being smart.

Yet the human brain continues to fascinate us. There doesn’t seem to be an end to the ways in which we poke around this 3-lb-grey matter between our ears to discover more about how it works, and how to make it work better.

The e-magazine, Wired, carries an article about boosting one’s intelligence. Quoting doctors, research institutions, studies, the article says there’s more than one way to get smarter, and none of them is rocket science. Excerpts:

Distract yourself. Distract yourself by studying stuff that’s slightly different from whatever you’re trying to learn. Your brain will then work harder to permanently store the original information.

Caffeinate with care. For optimal brain gain, regular tea breaks are more effective than a 20-ounce French roast sucked down at Starbucks in lieu of breakfast. Even better, add a lump of sugar or have a carbohydrate-rich snack for an extra cognitive kick. Glucose and caffeine together do more to enhance cognition than either does alone.

Think positive. It’s a virtuous circle: When you think you’re getting smarter, you study harder, making more nerve-cell connections, which in turn makes you … smarter.

Embrace chaos. One way to learn better: Mix yourself up. Volunteers in his experiments exhibited superior recall when they learned information in randomly ordered chunks.

Slow down. Studies show that fast readers fare worse than slower ones when questioned about the text. So, to get smarter, slow down. The motor response of the retina, and the time it takes the image of a word to travel from the macula to the thalamus to the visual cortex for processing, limits the eye to about 500 words a minute.

More of the Wired piece here.

China acts to counter the negative publicity from protests that marred the Olympic torch’s stops at various cities, and sends a team to take the flame to the summit of Mt Everest.

News sites show screen grabs from official Chinese television showing the team of mountaineers reaching the peak this morning, 9.20 local time. They held up banners and the Olympic logo, cheering, “Beijing welcomes you!” and “One world, one dream”, the official slogan of the Beijing Olympics.

The torch’s international relay was met with highly publicised protest actions in several cities — Paris, San Francisco, and London — by activists critical of China’s human rights record.

I’ve always thought the platypus looked odd.

And, apparently, so does the rest of the world. Such is the curiosity about the platypus that scientists have been hard at work trying to learn more about it. They spent years decoding the platypus genome and analysing it. They’re done, and have shared with the world what they learned — that the platypus is, indeed, no simple creature: it is part bird, part reptile, and part lactating mammal. A genetic hodgepodge, in other words.

The platypus is classified as a mammal because it produces milk and is covered in coat of thick fur. It has reptile-like attributes too: females lay eggs, and males can stab enemies with a venom that flows from a spur tucked under its hind feet. The bird-like qualities, meanwhile, include webbed feet, a flat bill similar to a duck’s, and the gene sequences that determine sex: humans have two sex chromosomes, platypuses have 10.

“It is much more of a melange than anyone expected,” said one of the genome analysts.

Suddenly you feel so ordinary.