Word: ratting
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Shirima Vendeline Emmanuel, who stands in a safe zone a few yards away that he has found a landmine. "Good boy, Samo," shouts Emmanuel, as he scampers over to receive his reward - a banana. Samo is not some exploited child-soldier, however; he is a bristly giant Gambian pouched rat...
...Rats are almost perfectly suited for this type of work, argues Mkumbo. They are easy to train and transport to clearance sites, cheap to feed, and resistant to many of the tropical diseases to which dogs succumb. In the field, they are quick and methodical. Thirty-six rats trained in Tanzania are working on the project so far, and have already cleared thousands of mines across the country. "Two rats can clear a 200-square-meter area in one hour," says Mkumbo. "It takes one [human] de-miner two weeks to do the same area." And all that the rats...
...more encouraging point is that the brain is plastic. It can be trained to respond more appropriately. Less fear makes paralysis less likely. A rat with damage to the amygdala, the primitive part of the brain that handles fear, will not freeze at all - even if it encounters a cat. If we can reduce our own fear even a little bit, we might be able to do better...
...Kentucky blue blood. They're fast-talking New Yorkers. Besides Dutrow, an ex-addict who was once so down and out that he lived in a racetrack barn, take Michael Iavarone, 37, Big Brown's majority owner. An ex--Wall Street banker and Long Island native who left the rat race for horse-racing, Iavarone and his partners arranged to buy control of Big Brown for $2.5 million in September, after watching him race once--once--on TV. "We put our balls on the line," he says proudly. The brash owner is even starting a horse hedge fund, allowing private...
...animal studies, Joseph and his associates developed a series of motor-skills tests that they called the Rat Olympics. Rats had to walk balance beams and stay upright during a log-rolling task. Those raised on special blueberry rat chow did significantly better than those that were not, leading Joseph to conclude that "blueberries were actually able to reverse motor deficits in these aging animals." More remarkably, when mice that had been genetically altered to express Alzheimer's were put on the blueberry diet, they did not experience memory loss. Joseph's research has shown some similar benefits from walnuts...