The Brains and Brawn Behind Splitting Water

The brains behind the brawn

SOME things never change, but muscles are not one of them. As the glistening torsos on the covers of body-building magazines so amply testify, the fibres that power the human skeleton are mutable. Extremely mutable. Even without resorting to anabolic steroids, by lifting weights the proverbial seven-stone weakling can put on 50 per cent more muscle within a year or so. The human physique, you c...

Software: The Brains Behind U.S. Defense Systems

Linking brains and brawn: exercise and the evolution of human neurobiology.

The hunting and gathering lifestyle adopted by human ancestors around 2 Ma required a large increase in aerobic activity. High levels of physical activity altered the shape of the human body, enabling access to new food resources (e.g. animal protein) in a changing environment. Recent experimental work provides strong evidence that both acute bouts of exercise and long-term exercise training in...

Brains vs. Brawn – Comparative strategies for the calibration of a Cellular Automata – Based Urban Growth Model

The need for good modelling tools to simulate urban growth are a planning tool necessary in today’s age of widespread urban growth and the natural and human disasters that quickly follow. The SLEUTH urban growth model is a CA-based urban change model that simulates urban growth according to a calibrated set of parameters. The following work compares two methods of calibration. The first, “Brute...

Brains over brawn: experience overcomes a size disadvantage in fish social hierarchies.

Life experiences can alter cognitive abilities and subsequent behavior. Here we asked whether differences in experience could affect social status. In hierarchical animal societies, high-ranking males that typically win aggressive encounters gain territories and hence access to mates. To understand the relative contributions of social experience and physical environment on status, we used a hig...