Dolphins may be closer to humans than previously realised, with new research showing they communicate by whistling out their own ‘names’. The evidence suggests dolphins share the human ability to recognise themselves and other members of the same species as individuals with separate identities. The research, on wild bottlenose dolphins, will lead to a reassessment of their intelligence and social complexity, raising moral questions over how they should be treated. The research was carried out by Vincent Janik of the Sea Mammal Research Unit at St Andrews University, who has found bottlenose dolphins to be among the animal world’s quickest learners of new sounds. He said: ‘Each animal develops an individually distinctive signature whistle in the first few months of its life, which appears to be used in individual recognition.’ The research has its origin in the 1960s when dolphin trainers first noticed that captive animals each had their own personal repertoire of whistles. This prompted speculation that dolphins had their own language and might even have individual ‘names’. However, the theory was controversial among whale and dolphin researchers, and until now, there had been no means of testing it. Janik’s work was based […]
MOSCOW — The Russian government has hit back at accusations by US vice-president Dick Cheney of using its energy resources as ‘tools of intimidation and blackmail’. It called on the west to recognise Russia’s progress towards market principles and democracy. Writing in Monday’s Financial Times, Viktor Khristenko, the Russian energy minister, says Russia is ‘deeply puzzled by recent commentary in the west that distorts Russian energy policies’. He calls on international leaders to work together at the G8 summit Russia will host this summer to establish a plan to achieve global energy security. ‘The truth of the matter is that Russia has moved away from Soviet-era arrangements of subsidising energy prices to our neighbours and turned to market-based pricing mechanisms,’ Mr Khristenko says. ‘We are aware that old impressions fade slowly, but it is time for the west to recognise and acknowledge the maturing role and state of progress that Russia has achieved.’ Also this weekend, Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, issued a direct rebuttal of Mr Cheney’s speech in Lithuania last week – even suggesting he had been misinformed by advisers. President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, is expected to deliver a toughly worded state of the […]
Contraception use has declined strikingly over the last decade, particularly among poor women, making them more likely to get pregnant unintentionally and to have abortions, according to a report released yesterday by the Guttmacher Institute. The decline appears to have slowed the reduction in the national abortion rate that began in the mid-1980’s. ‘This is turning back the clock on all the gains women have made in recent decades,’ Sharon L. Camp, the president of the institute, said. Among sexually active women who were not trying to get pregnant, the percentage of those not using contraception increased to 11 percent from 7 percent from 1994 to 2001, the latest data available, according to numbers Guttmacher analyzed from the National Survey of Family Growth, a federal study. The rise was more striking among women living below the poverty line: 14 percent were not using contraception in 2001, up from 8 percent in 1994. Better-off women - those who earned more than twice the poverty rate - were also less likely to use contraception: 10 percent did not use any in 2001, up from 7 percent in 1994. The number of white women not using contraception increased […]
The first-ever national estimate of the prevalence of autism in the United States finds the behavioral disorder affects up to one in every 175 school-age children — a total of more than 300,000 youngsters. That finding comes from researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, who presented their conclusions at a press conference on Thursday. The agency’s estimates are based on interviews conducted in 2003 and 2004 with the parents of nearly 98,000 children aged 4 to 17. In two national surveys — the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) and the National Survey of Children’s Health (NCHS) — parents were asked: ‘Has a doctor or health-care provider ever told you that [your child] has autism?’ ‘Estimates of diagnosed autism from these surveys were 5.7 per 1,000 school-age children from the NHIS, and 5.5 per 1,000 school-age children from the NSCH,’ said Laura Schieve, an epidemiologist with the CDC’s National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities (NCBDDD). Those ratios correspond to about one in every 181 children and one in every 175 children, respectively, the researchers said. ‘Together, these two national surveys of parents suggest that over 300,000 school-age children […]
MOSCOW — A speech by Vice President Dick Cheney strongly critical of the Kremlin marks the start of a new Cold War that could drive Moscow away from its new-found Western allies, the Russian press said on Friday. In shocked reaction to the harshest U.S. criticism of Moscow for years, commentators said Washington had created an anti-Russian cordon of Western-aligned states stretching from the Baltic almost to the Caspian Sea. The Kremlin, in a reaction within hours of Cheney’s delivery in Vilnius, said the speech, which was full of accusations that Moscow was limiting human rights and using its energy riches to blackmail the world, was ‘completely incomprehensible.’ Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov declined to comment directly on Friday when asked about Cheney, but said the meeting of former communist satellites that the vice president had addressed appeared to be ‘united against someone.’ The Russian press agreed, comparing Cheney’s words to a 1946 speech by British statesman Winston Churchill in Fulton, Missouri, when he said Europe was divided by an ‘Iron Curtain.’ ‘Enemy at the Gates. Dick Cheney made a Fulton speech in Vilnius,’ said business daily Kommersant’s front page headline. ‘Vice President Dick Cheney […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
