Scientist nose why mammal have big brains

It’s long been known that mammals have proportionally big brains in comparison to other creatures. Now new scanning technology suggests it may be linked to the sense of smell.

A research project led by Professor Timothy Rowe of the University of Texas at Austin involved scanning the fossilised skulls of two of the earliest known mammals, Morganucodon and Hadrocodium. The former is considered one of the evolutionary links between reptiles and mammals, while the latter is less than two inches long.

The problem in the past has been that it’s difficult to get information on what would have been inside the skull without damaging the fossil, which, to put it mildly, seems a bit of shame for something that’s around 200 million years old.

Now though, Rowe and company were able to use computed tomography, a technique that uses multiple two-dimensions X-rays to produce a three-dimension image. The technique is more commonly known as the CT scan used in medicine.

The data from the scans suggested that when mammal brains first started getting proportionally bigger, it was the areas associated with smell that grew most rapidly, possibly by a factor of 10. It also appeared that the cerebellum, which controls movement, increased in size at a similar time.

Rowe’s theory is that mammal brains didn’t simply grow as a whole, but rather that the process was driven by particular sections growing in response to particular needs. The first of these looks to have been the need to develop a stronger sense of smell in order to hunt at night time rather than go out for food during the day and compete with dinosaurs.



Survey Says: People Like the iPad

So, Apple has this tablet–maybe you’ve heard of it, this iPad thing–and as it turns out, people really like and use it. In a survey of 850 iPad and iPad2 owners published on The Atlantic (conducted by Business Insider), results show that, on average, people use their tablets between two and five hours a day, primarily for web browsing. A not-so-small margin of 11.2% report using the iPad between five and “more than eight” hours a day.

In other unsurprising news, people are buying apps–lots of ’em. Most iPad owners have between 20 and 50 apps, primarily of the not-free variety, which is good news for Apple.

Seventy-two percent of surveyed say they use their iPad for reading, with around 38% of these buying Kindle titles on the iPad and about 45% reporting that they prefer iBooks. You can check out the rest of the results on The Atlantic.

So, aside from browsing reddit and answering email, what do you guys do with your iPad? (And should I get one? I’ve been holding out.)

[The Atlantic] [image (CC)]



Kindle book sales overtake print at Amazon

In the past six weeks, Amazon passed a major milestone: it now sells more Kindle books than printed books.

The statistic doesn’t come as a major surprise: by July last year Kindle book sales beat hardbacks, while in December they began outselling paperbacks. Now the Kindle outsells both paperback and hardback combined by a 105:100 ratio.

As usual, there are plenty of potential caveats. Leaving aside the fact that this is hardly representative of the entire book market, it’s not clear whether Amazon is including printed books sold through its Marketplace scheme, including second-hand titles.

Also, although the Kindle sales figure doesn’t include public domain books that are given away free of charge, there are plenty of titles (including many in the bestseller list for Kindle titles) that are around a dollar or even less. So it’s very likely that the revenue (if not the profit margin) from printed books is still much higher for Amazon.

One possible explanation for the apparent speeding up of the trend may be the recent release of Kindle with Special Offers, a version of the entry level Kindle that carries limited advertising and retails for $114, a $25 discount on the standard price. That’s proven something of a hit and is currently the best-selling electronic device at Amazon, so it may be that the overall number of Kindle users has had a significant boost.

There is some good news for lovers of the traditional printed page however: despite the changing proportions, the actual number of printed book sales is still on the rise, suggesting the medium isn’t going away any time soon.

Brazilian Children Break LEGO Tower Record [Video]

Five-hundred thousand LEGO blocks later, Brazil has broken the Tallest LEGO Tower record.

At 102-feet and 3-inches tall, the tower was built by 6000 volunteers (mostly children) and a couple of guys with a crane. My question is, who gets to knock it down? And can I come help?

[Picture Source]