Word: signallers
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...teachers give each child a stalk of a fragrant flower. The principal raises a microphone and calls all of the kids into rows, regimented by grades. Then, at exactly the same time across the country, an official strikes a metal plate with a small hammer, the aural signal for the year to begin. The kids pass under a Koran and into their new classrooms, redolent with the smoky swirl of burning esfand, a fragrant herb for warding off bad spirits...
...coup participants. They may also help restore President Obama's standing among Latin American leaders, who have unanimously condemned the coup, as Obama has, but who have questioned the U.S. President's commitment to matching his rhetoric with action. U.S. officials called the latest sanctions "a strong signal" that Obama has reversed Washington's historic tendency to abide if not back coups carried out against its foes (the leftist Zelaya is a critic of the U.S.) and that he's defending democratic process in the hemisphere. (See pictures of protests against the military-backed regime of Honduras...
...Administration also sent a significant mixed signal. It didn't use the m-word: Military. Its lawyers have determined that while Zelaya's overthrow was a coup d'etat, it was not technically a military coup. The main reason: even though soldiers threw Zelaya out of the country at gunpoint, in his pajamas, he was not replaced with a military leader. Instead, Micheletti, a civilian who headed Honduras' Congress, was made President. Other "complicating factors," as the U.S. calls them, include lingering questions about which Honduran institution - Congress, the Supreme Court or the Army - actually ordered Zelaya's removal after...
...know that change is at hand? The Nature researchers noticed one potential signal: the sudden variance between two distinct states within one system, known by the less technical term squealing. In an ecological system like a forest, for example, squealing might look like an alternation between two stable states - barren versus fertile - before a drought takes its final toll on the woodland and transforms it into a desert, at which point even monsoons won't bring the field back to life. Fish populations seem to collapse suddenly as well - overfishing causes fluctuations in fish stocks until it passes a threshold...
...study's author Meredith Young, a cognitive psychologist, says the social comfort of a same-sex lunch partner probably makes a difference - but evolutionary instincts are also at play. The women are using food as a signal of attractiveness. "In past studies, when you compare the exact same woman either eating a meatball sub or a dainty salad, people find the salad eater more alluring and more desirable as a friend," she says. Young thinks that men, on the other hand, are probably focused on spending more money on the food instead of eating it, because evolutionary biology says that...