Word: herdes
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Several thousand miles and a world away, Barack Obama is campaigning to change American politics. But in the tiny farmstead where his father used to herd goats, his Kenyan relatives are praying for anything but more political upheaval. "We are spending sleepless nights praying that peace will prevail," says the 86-year-old woman whom the presidential contender calls Granny Sarah...
...exactly need a hearing aid to know whom he likes. Of the infamous characterization of evangelical voters as "poor, uneducated and easily led," he says, "Evangelicals are actually slightly wealthier than the general public, better educated. And they are about as easy to lead as a herd of tomcats...
...critical-mass hypothesis has merit, Halloy and his co-workers figured they should be able to trick the roaches into doing something unnatural. To do that, they would need a rogue roach to infiltrate the herd. "One way to get them," Halloy says, "would be to create mutants somehow, with abnormal behavior. But we don't have a genetic institute for cockroaches." Instead, the researchers recruited some engineers to build them roach robots that would slip into the crowd and manipulate it from within. "It turns out," he says, "that roaches aren't very discriminating" - they'll accept anything...
...principle, say the researchers, the idea could be extended to other, more complex group-living animals. Although robots would obviously have to be more sophisticated to penetrate and alter the behavior of a herd of sheep or a flock of geese, for example, it's at least conceivable that this could someday be done. In fact, Halloy and his colleagues are already working on a robot chicken to try and manipulate the behavior of chicks...
...kids is really no different from the stock market." Notes Phil Martelli, coach of St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia: "If Michigan does it, then Michigan State has to do it. In Philadelphia, if Temple does it, then St. Joe's has to do it. There's certainly a herd mentality...