Humans have evolved specialized skills of social cognition: the cultural intelligence hypothesis

Humans have many cognitive skills not possessed by their nearest primate relatives. The cultural intelligence hypothesis argues that this is mainly due to a species-specific set of social-cognitive skills, emerging early in ontogeny, for participating and exchanging knowledge in cultural groups. We tested this hypothesis by giving a comprehensive battery of cognitive tests to large numbers of two of humans' closest primate relatives, chimpanzees and orangutans, as well as to 2.5-year-old human children before literacy and schooling. Supporting the cultural intelligence hypothesis and contradicting the hypothesis that humans simply have more "general intelligence," we found that the children and chimpanzees had very similar cognitive skills for dealing with the physical world but that the children had more sophisticated cognitive skills than either of the ape species for dealing with the social world.     

Early signs of language in child and chimpanzee

In a sequel to Project Washoe, chimpanzees are being taught American Sign Language from birth by humans who are fluent in the language, including persons who are themselves deaf or whose parents were deaf. The first two subjects began to use signs when they were 3 months old, and these early results indicate that the new conditions are significantly superior to the conditions of Project Washoe. More valid comparisons can now be made between the acquisition of language by children and by chimpanzees.     

Co-residence patterns in hunter-gatherer societies show unique human social structure

Contemporary humans exhibit spectacular biological success derived from cumulative culture and cooperation. The origins of these traits may be related to our ancestral group structure. Because humans lived as foragers for 95% of our species' history, we analyzed co-residence patterns among 32 present-day foraging societies (total n = 5067 individuals, mean experienced band size = 28.2 adults). We found that hunter-gatherers display a unique social structure where (i) either sex may disperse or remain in their natal group, (ii) adult brothers and sisters often co-reside, and (iii) most individuals in residential groups are genetically unrelated. These patterns produce large interaction networks of unrelated adults and suggest that inclusive fitness cannot explain extensive cooperation in hunter-gatherer bands. However, large social networks may help to explain why humans evolved capacities for social learning that resulted in cumulative culture.     

Anti-idiotypic antibody vaccine for type B viral hepatitis in chimpanzees

Anti-idiotypic antibodies (anti-Id) that contain an internal image component that mimics the surface antigen of hepatitis B virus (HBsAg) were used to immunize chimpanzees. Four injections of the rabbit anti-Id preparation elicited an antibody response to HBsAg (anti-HBs). The antibody specificity appeared to be against the anti-Id, since the anti-Id immunogen was shown to bind the chimpanzee anti-HBs. Two chimpanzees immunized with the anti-Id, along with two control animals that were either untreated or received a nonimmune rabbit immunoglobulin G preparation, were challenged with infectious hepatitis B virus. Both control chimpanzees developed clinical and serological characteristics consistent with an active hepatitis B virus infection, whereas the two anti-Id treated chimpanzees were protected from infection. Since chimpanzees provide a relevant model of a human response to hepatitis B virus immunization and infection, these results indicate that anti-Id preparations such as that described here might be candidates for vaccines against human diseases.     

Altruistic helping in human infants and young chimpanzees

Human beings routinely help others to achieve their goals, even when the helper receives no immediate benefit and the person helped is a stranger. Such altruistic behaviors (toward non-kin) are extremely rare evolutionarily, with some theorists even proposing that they are uniquely human. Here we show that human children as young as 18 months of age (prelinguistic or just-linguistic) quite readily help others to achieve their goals in a variety of different situations. This requires both an understanding of others' goals and an altruistic motivation to help. In addition, we demonstrate similar though less robust skills and motivations in three young chimpanzees.     

Acquisition and testing of gestural signs in four young chimpanzees

Two male and two female chimpanzees were each taught ten signs of American Sign Language. The acquisition rates of the signs were compared on the basis of the number of minutes required in training to reach a criterion of five consecutive unprompted correct responses. After the ten signs had been acquired, the chimpanzees were tested in a double-blind procedure for nine of the signs. All four chimpanzees acquired all of the signs. Some signs were consistently easier to acquire than others, and individual differences between the four chimpanzees were found in the acquisition rates and tests.     

Seroprimatology of chimpanzees: blood-group distribution as a "racial" characteristic

Significant differences in the distribution of human-type and simian-type blood groups have been demonstrated in chimpanzees classified into subspecies or "races" on the basis of morphological traits. The differences in chimpanzees are analogous to racial differences in the distribution of blood groups in man.     

花药培养技术在寒地水稻育种中的应用研究

详述了寒地粳稻花药培养技术,并介绍了黑龙江省农科院水稻研究所开展花培育种所取得的成就,育成了合江21号等9个花培水稻品种,累计推广面积150多万hm2,还创造了大批新种质,这些新种质被广泛用于水稻新品种改良。实践证明,粳稻花培育种具有群体规模小、稳定世代早、选择效率高等优点,将花药培养技术应用于水稻育种是行之有效的。     

A fine-scale chimpanzee genetic map from population sequencing

To study the evolution of recombination rates in apes, we developed methodology to construct a fine-scale genetic map from high-throughput sequence data from 10 Western chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes verus. Compared to the human genetic map, broad-scale recombination rates tend to be conserved, but with exceptions, particularly in regions of chromosomal rearrangements and around the site of ancestral fusion in human chromosome 2. At fine scales, chimpanzee recombination is dominated by hotspots, which show no overlap with those of humans even though rates are similarly elevated around CpG islands and decreased within genes. The hotspot-specifying protein PRDM9 shows extensive variation among Western chimpanzees, and there is little evidence that any sequence motifs are enriched in hotspots. The contrasting locations of hotspots provide a natural experiment, which demonstrates the impact of recombination on base composition.     

植物组织培养中褐变的产生机理及抑制措施

褐变是植物组织培养中经常遇到的问题 ,已经成为影响组培成功的重要因素。结合近几年的研究 ,对产生褐变的影响因素、产生褐变的机理 ,以及抑制褐变的措施等方面进行了综合评述。     

Technique for differential reinforcement of rate of avoidance responding

The length of the gestation period in 118 births in a colony of chimpanzees was found to be 226.8 days, with a standard deviation of 13.3 and a range of 196 to 260 days. Six pairs of twins were born in 120 parturitions; thus the apparent twinning rate is higher than that in man.     

用文化塑造独特的企业精神

从培养企业精神强化职业道德、独特的企业文化是成功法宝、建立以人为主体的管理理念3个方面,具体阐述了如何用文化塑造独特的企业精神,提出了企业文化建设不能千篇一律,应该根据自己企业的特点、经营环境进行具体的设计定位。     

Rapid change in the symbolic functioning of very young children

A remarkable difference in the understanding of the symbolic relation between a scale model and the larger space that it represented was displayed by two age groups of young children. Three-year-old children who observed an object being hidden in a model knew where to find an analogous object hidden in the corresponding location in a room, but 2.5-year-old children did not. The success of the group of older children reveals an advance in their cognitive flexibility: they think of a model in two ways at the same time--both as the thing itself and as a symbol for something else.     

植物组织培养中的褐化现象及解决途径

外植体褐化是植物组织培养过程中经常遇到的问题,这已成为影响组培成功的主要障碍。结合近几年的研究,对导致植物组织培养中外植体发生褐化的形式和发生机理、影响褐化的内外因素以及防止和减少褐化的基本途径等进行了阐述,并对解决组织培养中褐化这一难题提出了展望。     

农民工“留守子女”教育问题思考

“留守子女”教育问题是伴随着农民工的出现而出现的。大量的农民工留守子女面临着教育危机,他们心理压力大,家教薄弱,少年犯罪现象时有发生。应改革户籍制度,让有条件的农民工将子女带入城市,就近入学;搞好农村义务教育和幼儿教育;留守子女父母应经常与临时监护人、学校及老师沟通。     

Chimpanzee bipedalism: cineradiographic analysis and implications for the evolution of gait

Bipedal chimpanzees reorient the pelvis to achieve an upright posture but retain the same pattern of femoral flexion and extension as in quadrupedal walking. Major differences from human gait are the abducted, relatively more flexed excursion of the femur and the timing of pelvic tilt, which raises during the swing phase. The femoral head morphology in the fossil hominid Australopithecus robustus is evidence of an approximately vertical excursion of the femur in contrast to the adducted pattern of modern man and the abducted pattern of chimpanzees.     

Chimpanzees recruit the best collaborators

Humans collaborate with non-kin in special ways, but the evolutionary foundations of these collaborative skills remain unclear. We presented chimpanzees with collaboration problems in which they had to decide when to recruit a partner and which potential partner to recruit. In an initial study, individuals recruited a collaborator only when solving the problem required collaboration. In a second study, individuals recruited the more effective of two partners on the basis of their experience with each of them on a previous day. Therefore, recognizing when collaboration is necessary and determining who is the best collaborative partner are skills shared by both chimpanzees and humans, so such skills may have been present in their common ancestor before humans evolved their own complex forms of collaboration.     

子房切片技术获得百合杂交种

以不同杂种系的百合品种进行远缘杂交,采收授粉后5～20 d的子房,用子房切片培养方法挽救杂种胚,培育杂种.试验结果表明:百合远缘杂交中,采用子房切片方法挽救杂种胚,培育出杂种苗的关键是合适的胚龄:7～12 d的胚龄比较合适,这一胚龄段中,胚龄越小,胚萌发需要的时间越长.通过品种远缘杂交,培育出了少量的百合远缘杂种.     

Cultivation in vitro of the quartan malaria parasite Plasmodium inui

The simian guartan malaria parasite Plasmodium inui (OS strain) was cultured in a continuous flow system with rhesus monkey erythrocytes and RPMI 1640nmedium supplemented with Hepes buffer and rhesus serum. Over a 10-week period, the growth of the parasite permitted a 61,000-fold cumulative dilution of the original inoculum. After 5 weeks in culture, the parasites were still infective to the monkey Saimiri sciureus and to Anopheles freeborni mosquitoes.