Word: sayed
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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There remains the nagging question of what it means precisely to say that Tsien & Co. have created a smarter mouse. "What is it that is being tested?" asks Gerald Fischbach, director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. "That's the problem with mouse behavior. It's not clear that we're talking about the same thing when we talk about learning in a rodent and learning in a human...
...know smart, sad people; or richer, except that there are wildly successful people who can't remember their phone number. Perhaps it would help us get better grades, land a better job, but it might also take us down a road we'd prefer not to travel. "You might say yes, it would be wonderful if we could all have better memories," muses Stanford University neuropsychiatrist Dr. Robert Malenka. "But there's a great adaptive value to being able to forget things. If your memory improves too much, you might not be a happier person. I'm thinking of rape...
...scientists bred strains of mice with extra copies of a gene coded for a protein that can facilitate communication between neurons. Since one popular theory of memory relates this primary mental capacity to an organism's ability to make associations--say, between a bee's buzz and the pain of its bite--this enhanced communication might promote the recording of associations within the brain, thus creating memories...
...single gene determines even the most concrete aspect of my physical anatomy, say the length of my right thumb. The very notion of a gene "for" something as complex as "intelligence" lapses into absurdity. Intelligence is an array of largely independent and socially defined mental attributes, not a measure of a single something, secreted by one gene, measurable as one number and capable of arranging human diversity into one line ordered by relative mental worth...
...Alexander, who works out of a New York City shop that bills itself as "the world's largest fetish emporium," estimates he's seared more than 150 skin signs over the past five years. "People need memorable symbols when they pass from one stage of life to another," he says. "Some get a brand at the end of a divorce, others on their birthday." Many of his clients are punk rockers and S&M aficionados. About half, he says, are fraternity members, including African-American frats that have used branding for years, sometimes choosing slave designs to connect with their...