INTELLIGENCE AND VISUOPATIAL ABILITY LINKED
Psychologists say they have evidence that strong visuospatial skills and working memory may be at least as good as verbal skills and working memory as indicators of general intelligence. The research correlates visuospatial abilities and intelligence -- something less extensively explored than verbal abilities and intelligence. The findings appear in the December issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology. A five-psychologist research team from across the United States tested 167 participants on a variety of tasks to discern the relationships among spatial abilities, visuospatial working memory and executive functioning. Participants who were good at complex visuospatial tasks that involved visually encoding items, or people who had more effective "inner sketchpads" useful in rearranging the furniture also performed better on executive function tasks. Executive functions, somewhat analogous to the functions of company executives, include coordinating multiple tasks, setting up and managing various goals and subgoals, avoiding impulsive response tendencies and inhibiting automatic but incorrect responses.
MAGNETIC TAG TRACKS STEM CELLS
Using tiny rust-containing spheres to tag cells, scientists from Johns Hopkins have successfully used magnetic resonance imaging to track stem cells implanted into a living rat. In the December issue of Nature Biotechnology, the researchers say the neuronal stem cells take up and hold onto the spheres, which contain a compound of iron and oxygen. The iron-laden cells create a magnetic black hole easily spotted by magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI. "Until now, tissue had to be removed from an animal to see where stem cells were going, so this gives us an important tool," says Jeff Bulte, Ph.D., of John Hopkins. "Tracking stem cells non-invasively will likely be required as research advances, although human studies are still some time away." The rusty spheres, known as magnetic dendrimers, represent an important improvement over other magnetic tags, Bulte says. Even though the amount of iron used to label the cells is tiny compared to the total amount of iron in the body, the labeled cells stand out from other cells, "magnetically speaking," according to Bulte.
ANTARCTIC MUD REVEALS GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE
Some scientists concerned about global warming are especially troubled by dramatic signs of climate change in Antarctica -- from rapidly melting glaciers to unexplained declines in penguin populations. Records show that average winter temperatures are 10 degrees higher in parts of Antarctica today than they were 50 years ago. If that warming trend as a result of greenhouse gases continues, according to many climate experts, the vast Antarctic ice sheets could melt, causing catastrophic coastal flooding as the world's oceans rise. However, new geologic evidence unearthed from deep-sea mud deposits strongly suggests that Antarctica experienced periods of extreme warming and cooling long before the invention of the automobile. "We've got a sedimentary record that reveals very significant changes in water temperature and ice melt during the past 7,000 years," says Robert Dunbar, of Stanford University in California. "The cause of these highly variable climate changes is still a mystery."
SOOT HURTS LUNGS AS MUCH AS SMOKING
Soot from power plants, factories and oil refineries may harm children's lungs as much as smoking, says a new study on the effects of air pollution by researchers University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine. They found that changes in air pollution exposure during adolescence has a "measurable and potentially important effect on lung function growth and performance." The researchers studied 110 California children who had moved from communities participating in a study of respiratory health. They found that children who moved to communities with cleaner air showed improved growth in lung function. Those who moved to communities with dirtier air had reduced growth in lung function. The research appears in the current issue of the "American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine," published by the American Thoracic Society. The researchers warn that reduced lung function during "teen years of (lung) development" could translate into respiratory problems later in life.
(EDITOR: For more information, about INTELLIGENCE, call 202 336-5700; about MAGNETIC TAG, call 410 614-5105; about ANTARCTIC MUD, call 650 723-9296.)
