Word: human
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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Scientists often warn against anthropomorphism - the attribution of human characteristics to animals or even nonliving things. But it's hard to resist the charm of Labroides dimidiatus, a species of fish otherwise known as the bluestreak cleaner wrasse. These colorful little critters make their living in coral reefs by setting up cleaning stations where larger fish - often predators that might otherwise gobble them up - can stop by to have their skin cleaned. The wrasses busy themselves like car-wash attendants fussing around a sports car, nibbling off parasites, dead tissue and other blemishes and nourishing themselves in the process...
...researchers believe the results are relevant to humans because they may offer clues to how humans evolved their own uniquely complex system of punishment. Despite the centrality of the concept of punishment to human society, evolutionary biologists are stumped as to what selective pressure would have led us to punish people who have cheated or harmed not the person who does the punishing but a third party - even if that party is not a genetic relation. Some biologists suggest that punishers benefit from a boost in social status and are thus more attractive as mates...
...male cleaners probably punish females for biting the client because the male is a secondary victim - the client fish often swims away after being nibbled by the female, and the male wrasse loses his chance for lunch. This rationale, over the course of evolutionary eras, could have led to human society's more diffuse arrangements for punishment. "What we might be seeing is the origin of third-party punishment in human evolutionary history," Bshary says. The line connecting the male wrasse to our criminal courts may be a long and meandering one, but that doesn't mean...
...also a quieter and potentially more profound reaction: Given the skill of this operation, how trustworthy are the other sources the CIA has been using to help target its drone attacks against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan? The standard claim has been that the CIA's human intelligence against al-Qaeda--and other threats--has improved dramatically in recent years. "In a very perverse way, this attack may be the best testimony of all that human intelligence has improved," said the former official. But spies are, by nature, paranoid, and there will be suspicion now that...
Remember the Human Genome Project? Completed in March 2000, the project found that the human genome contains something like 25,000 genes; it took $3 billion to map them all. The human epigenome contains an as yet unknowable number of patterns of epigenetic marks, a number so big that Ecker won't even speculate on it. The number is certainly in the millions. A full epigenome map will require major advances in computing power. When completed, the Human Epigenome Project (already under way in Europe) will make the Human Genome Project look like homework that 15th century kids did with...