Cold weather events to persist as planet warms

Current projections estimate that the globe will be about 2-5°C (3.6-9°F) warmer by the end of the century, depending on future emissions of greenhouse gases. It's sometimes assumed that climate changeimplies a smooth, linear march up the thermometer, with each season slightly warmer than that of the previous year, without exception. Seen this way, any abnormal cold snap would appear to falsify the predictions of climate science. Obviously, that's a simplistic view of the climate, so what do climate models really project the future to be like? A recent paper published in Geophysical Research Letters takes a look at how cold weather events are expected to change in a warming climate.

Climate projections are based on models that incorporate every bit of physics and chemistry we are able connect to Earth's climate, and they do the difficult work of calculating everything out for each grid cell on the planet at each time interval. A number of research groups (such as NASA and the National Center for Atmospheric Research) develop their own models, so the average of multiple models is often used to generate more robust projections, like those published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The authors of this recent paper used nine of those models to compare cold events during the last decade of the 21st century with those of the last decade of the 20th century, based on a middle-of-the-road greenhouse emissions scenario (IPCC scenario A1B).

The team characterizes "extreme cold events" for each year in three ways: intensity, duration, and frequency. Intensity is calculated as the lowest 3-day average of maximum daily temperatures. Duration is defined as the greatest number of consecutive days that dip below freezing each year. Frequency is simply the total number of days that reach freezing temperatures in that year.

Model projections for the years 2091-2100 were compared to the average annual intensity, duration, and frequency for the decade of 1991-2000, and the researchers counted the number of times (for each individual grid cell) that a year exceeded that 1991-2000 average.

In the end, they find that while the frequency of cold events decreases everywhere, the duration and intensity of cold events in the future don't look that much different from the present. Roughly half the globe experiences at least one year in the 2090s with cold events more intense than the 1991-2000 average, and portions of the planet (particularly North America and Europe) go through events of greater duration. The exact details of the number of years or land area affected have a pretty wide spread among the models, so the authors focus on a more general conclusion: we'll still need to be prepared to deal with cold weather events even as we focus on mitigating the effects of warming.

This is a good example of the complexity of the climate system. Climate warming is ultimately measured by global mean annual temperature. At smaller spatial and temporal scales, there is bound to be variation—weather is a dynamic thing. The relevant message from the paper is this: the same models that project a warming planet also project the continuation of regional extreme cold weather events.

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Brain training boosts working memory, but only in some people

When last we tackled the topic of brain training software, the prognosis did not look good. Although proponents of this software claim that it results in a general boost in mental performance, detailed testing failed to show this general effect, and for some topics, the software was bested by a trivia quiz. Now, a new study has revisited the topic, with its authors finding that some brain training can boost general performance—but only a specific type of exercise, and only among a subset of users.

The study builds off a well-established relationship between general reasoning and spatial memory. The ability to perform abstract reasoning and solve problems you've never seen before is termed fluid intelligence. It's not clear what provides the basic mental horsepower for this ability, but a number of studies have shown that performance in tests that stress fluid intelligence is related to a testee's working memory, which stores basic information for use without committing it to long-term memory. Working memory, for example, is where you hold intermediate sums when you're adding a large column of numbers.

Although we don't know whether it's possible to improve general reasoning, some studies have indicated that it is possible to boost working memory by taxing the system. So the authors created a set of simple games that emphasized working memory, and set a group of nine-year-old children on them.

These games forced the children to solve what the authors term "n-back" problems. In one example, the children were shown a pond in which a frog would appear at random on a number of lilly pads. As the frog vanished and reappeared, the kids would have to recall where it was had been previously. So, for example, the third time the frog showed up, the children would need to remember where it had been the first time. Continued exposure to these games should boost working memory performance. And, on average, it did, with scores improving over time.

On its own, however, this seemed to have a very limited impact on the performance of the children when they were given a test of fluid intelligence, with no statistically significant trend in performance. By this measure, brain training had failed.

But it hadn't, at least not entirely. The authors noted that the children who had undergone training saw variable boosts to their working memory, so they split the trained children into high- and low-improvement groups and reran the numbers. Now, a significant effect appeared: fluid intelligence improvements had occurred among the children who saw the biggest changes in working memory. Their lead over their control peers (who had played a vocabulary-focused game) persisted even after three months, although it shrank a bit over that time. In contrast, the ones who saw little improvement in working memory lagged both their trained peers and the control population.

"Furthermore, there was a significant positive correlation between improvement on the training task and improvement on [fluid intelligence]," the authors note, "suggesting that the greater the training gain, the greater the transfer."

What drove the difference between the two groups? The authors asked the children how they felt about the game, and found that both groups considered it enjoyable. But the ones who saw a boost considered it a fun challenge, while the ones who improved less tended to find it far too difficult, and ended up frustrated by it. Separating out cause and effect there would seem to be a nightmare—were they frustrated because they simply couldn't keep up with something beyond their abilities, or did their abilities not ramp up because of a general lack of interest?

In any case, it's important to emphasize that the authors tracked the improvements in working memory and fluid intelligence, not the absolute values. The high-improvement group ended up statistically no better off than their peers when it was all over. In fact, the kids who began with the highest fluid intelligence scores started off with higher working-memory scores, but ended up seeing less improvement with training. Thus, on some levels, it appears that training is simply leveling the playing field.

In the end, the study seems to have shown that brain training can work, but whether it will or not is highly sensitive to the type of training and the individual being trained. Those are pretty significant limitations, and we could probably benefit from having a better sense of what the limits of training are. As such, the author's conclusion—"Future research should not investigate whether brain training works" (emphasis theirs)—seems a bit premature. Yes, we should investigate the factors that influence how well it works, as the authors propose. But we could also benefit from learning more about when it's going to be effective at all.

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Brain training boosts working memory, but only in some people

When last we tackled the topic of brain training software, the prognosis did not look good. Although proponents of this software claim that it results in a general boost in mental performance, detailed testing failed to show this general effect, and for some topics, the software was bested by a trivia quiz. Now, a new study has revisited the topic, with its authors finding that some brain training can boost general performance—but only a specific type of exercise, and only among a subset of users.

The study builds off a well-established relationship between general reasoning and spatial memory. The ability to perform abstract reasoning and solve problems you've never seen before is termed fluid intelligence. It's not clear what provides the basic mental horsepower for this ability, but a number of studies have shown that performance in tests that stress fluid intelligence is related to a testee's working memory, which stores basic information for use without committing it to long-term memory. Working memory, for example, is where you hold intermediate sums when you're adding a large column of numbers.

Although we don't know whether it's possible to improve general reasoning, some studies have indicated that it is possible to boost working memory by taxing the system. So the authors created a set of simple games that emphasized working memory, and set a group of nine-year-old children on them.

These games forced the children to solve what the authors term "n-back" problems. In one example, the children were shown a pond in which a frog would appear at random on a number of lilly pads. As the frog vanished and reappeared, the kids would have to recall where it was had been previously. So, for example, the third time the frog showed up, the children would need to remember where it had been the first time. Continued exposure to these games should boost working memory performance. And, on average, it did, with scores improving over time.

On its own, however, this seemed to have a very limited impact on the performance of the children when they were given a test of fluid intelligence, with no statistically significant trend in performance. By this measure, brain training had failed.

But it hadn't, at least not entirely. The authors noted that the children who had undergone training saw variable boosts to their working memory, so they split the trained children into high- and low-improvement groups and reran the numbers. Now, a significant effect appeared: fluid intelligence improvements had occurred among the children who saw the biggest changes in working memory. Their lead over their control peers (who had played a vocabulary-focused game) persisted even after three months, although it shrank a bit over that time. In contrast, the ones who saw little improvement in working memory lagged both their trained peers and the control population.

"Furthermore, there was a significant positive correlation between improvement on the training task and improvement on [fluid intelligence]," the authors note, "suggesting that the greater the training gain, the greater the transfer."

What drove the difference between the two groups? The authors asked the children how they felt about the game, and found that both groups considered it enjoyable. But the ones who saw a boost considered it a fun challenge, while the ones who improved less tended to find it far too difficult, and ended up frustrated by it. Separating out cause and effect there would seem to be a nightmare—were they frustrated because they simply couldn't keep up with something beyond their abilities, or did their abilities not ramp up because of a general lack of interest?

In any case, it's important to emphasize that the authors tracked the improvements in working memory and fluid intelligence, not the absolute values. The high-improvement group ended up statistically no better off than their peers when it was all over. In fact, the kids who began with the highest fluid intelligence scores started off with higher working-memory scores, but ended up seeing less improvement with training. Thus, on some levels, it appears that training is simply leveling the playing field.

In the end, the study seems to have shown that brain training can work, but whether it will or not is highly sensitive to the type of training and the individual being trained. Those are pretty significant limitations, and we could probably benefit from having a better sense of what the limits of training are. As such, the author's conclusion—"Future research should not investigate whether brain training works" (emphasis theirs)—seems a bit premature. Yes, we should investigate the factors that influence how well it works, as the authors propose. But we could also benefit from learning more about when it's going to be effective at all.

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Clean, cheap hydrogen production from water using cobalt catalyst

For years, proponents of the hydrogen economy have argued that hydrogen will replace traditional hydrocarbon fuels for transportation purposes. But, so far, a lack of new, inexpensive methods for hydrogen production and storage has impeded this goal. Over the last several years, an MIT professor has been pushing cobalt catalysts as a cheap replacement for the expensive metals typically used to split water. A paper in this week'sProceedings of the National Academies of Science describes the latest progress here: integrating the cobalt catalyst with a silicon solar cell to create a device that uses the sun to split water.

Hydrogen is a desirable fuel, because when it is burned or otherwise consumed (as in a fuel cell), it only produces water, although combustion results in small amounts of nitrogen oxides as by-products. However, unlike traditional liquid or gas fuels, hydrogen doesn't exist in its molecular form on Earth, so it must be produced from other sources—it is an energy carrier, rather than an energy source.

The primary industrial method for hydrogen production is steam reforming of hydrocarbons such as oil, coal, and natural gas, where high-temperature steam reacts with the fuel to produce hydrogen and carbon monoxide. But this method is unattractive for a few reasons: the resulting hydrogen is more expensive than the starting fuel, carbon dioxide is still produced (although easier to capture and store at a central location than on a vehicle), and it relies on fossil fuel sources. Due to these limitations, researchers are developing clean and renewable methods of hydrogen production, focusing on solar-based approaches.

Photoelectrochemical water splitting, also known as artificial photosynthesis, essentially combines a photovoltaic solar cell with electrolysis, the process of using electrical current to break water into oxygen and hydrogen. The most efficient devices of this nature, tandem GaInP2/GaAs cells, use platinum catalysts to significantly reduce the energy required to split the water. They can achieve a solar-to-hydrogen conversion efficiency of 16.5 percent. However, both the cell and the catalyst are extremely expensive, and require a high-pH (basic) electrolyte solution to operate, which degrades the materials over time.

Silicon, another semiconductor traditionally employed in photovoltaics, has also been used in less-efficient photoelectrochemical cells (2.5-8 percent so far), but they can be significantly less expensive than the gallium-based cells due to the abundance of silicon. The Si-based devices developed up to this point use the semiconductor surface as a catalyst, but this setup also requires an extremely basic solution—so these suffer the same stability problems over time. To this end, the authors of the current paper integrated a silicon-based photoelectrochemical cell with a cobalt-phosphate (Co-Pi) catalyst that can operate in a neutral pH solution. In addition to avoiding the degrading properties of a high-pH environment, the cobalt-based catalyst is inexpensive compared to a traditional platinum catalyst.

The Co-Pi catalyst acts like—and is structurally similar to—the oxygen-evolving (or water-splitting) complex (OEC), the enzyme used in photosynthesis to break down water. Like the OEC, it also exhibits high activity at room temperature in both seawater and fresh water, and operates under neutral pH conditions. This means that, unlike the previous designs, this device doesn't run into any stability problems over time. When combined with an np-Si junction, the catalyst can increase the efficiency of photoelectrochemical water splitting. We'vecovered this catalyst before being used with zinc oxide, but this is the first demonstration with silicon.

This device in its current configuration looks like a sandwich: a 10 μm photoresist, a 140 nm patterned metal contact (Ti/Pd/Ag), n-type Si, p-type Si, a 1.5 nm SiO2 interface, a 50 nm indium tin oxide (ITO) protective layer, and the Co-Pi catalyst film. The photoresist on the n-side protects the metal contacts and silicon from water, while the ITO layer on the p-side protects the silicon from water that penetrates the catalyst. The sunlight or artificial illumination hits the n-side, passing through the photoresist.

The primary result of this paper (other than demonstration of the new catalyst integrated with a silicon cell) is that most of the generated potential was used towards the water splitting. As a proof-of-concept, this device is promising, but significant effort will still be needed to develop this concept into a functioning photoelectrochemical cell.

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Building a better way of Understanding Science

Anyone who has gone through the US public school system has undoubtedly been exposed to the textbook version of science as a linear process that takes researchers straight from a hypothesis through gathering data and on to reaching conclusions. Anyone who has actually taken part in science, however, knows that this presentation bears almost no resemblance to reality, where science is a community endeavor, anything but linear, and, as a result, much more exciting. A newly developed website calledUnderstanding Science is intended to capture a bit of that excitement and, in doing so, change how the US public learns science.

Judy Scotchmoor of UC Berkeley's Museum of Paleontology described the site in a talk at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting, and Ars talked separately to MIT's Natalie Kuldell, one of the people involved in its design. Scotchmoor said the effort grew out of Berkeley's excellent Understanding Evolution site. When doing some audience testing of that site, she said that it became clear that the public's issues went way beyond the primary topic. "It wasn't an evolution problem," she said, "it was a science problem." With that in mind, she obtained money from the National Science Foundation to tackle this problem.
Giving science a facelift

Scotchmoor showed the evolution of how science is typically presented. Back in 1986, it was introduced as a five-step program: identify the problem, gather information, form a hypothesis, test it, and reach conclusions. (I can personally confirm that this presentation significantly predates 1986.) As she moved to more recent textbooks, this definition picked up color and pictures, but remained essentially unchanged. Unfortunately, it's nearly unrelated to science as it is practiced. The centerpiece of Understanding Science is a new diagram of the scientific process that emphasizes its non-linearity and dynamic, iterative nature.

The Scientific Process (click for a larger version)

The Exploration and Discovery section emphasizes that research topics don't simply drop out of the sky. Luck, new instrumentation, and unexpected results all play a role, as does personal motivation—lots of scientists are in their current field because of the equivalent of "I think dinosaurs are neat." Once motivated, the process of getting to the point where you can actually test ideas involves everything from initial observations to talking to other people in the field. It's anything but a dry "gather information" bullet point and Understanding Science brings that out.

Testing ideas remains central to the new presentation, but it's no longer a one-pass, thumbs up or down on a hypothesis. Instead, the data need to be interpreted, and researchers are often forced to go back and either revise their hypothesis, or the assumptions on which the hypothesis is based. No matter what happens, the arrows in the diagram make it clear that this isn't a one-shot deal, as multiple rounds of testing and revision are needed to refine ideas.

The traditional presentation of science might lead students to believe that it is a solitary activity, conducted by researchers acting in isolation. But it's not simply enough to convince yourself; to achieve anything significant in science, you have to build a consensus and convince your field (see: Mendel, Gregor for an example of what happens when you don't). Kuldell emphasized the importance of ensuring that Understanding Science captures this social aspect, and it does, noting that everything from discussions with the guy down the hall to the peer review of grants and publications play critical roles in developing scientific ideas, and that the community feeds back into all parts of the process.

Finally, Understanding Science recognizes that the process doesn't simply end with a body of knowledge. Instead, scientific results help foster new technology, solve societal problems, and inform public policy. These factors also feed back into the basics of the scientific process—researchers are as likely to be motivated by the thought that they can develop a treatment for a disease as they are by the fact that dinosaurs are neat.
Integrating the improvements into education

This new presentation of science was a joint effort of everyone from high school teachers to philosophers of science, as well as a few practicing scientists, so it shouldn't be a surprise that it gets so much right about the scientific process. But, as the example of Mendel shows, it's one thing to be right, and another thing entirely to be useful. Fortunately, the site is about far more than simply the scientific process, as a quick trip through some of the additional material there should make clear.

There are sections about various aspects of science—why science matters, what constitutes scientific evidence, science as a human endeavor, etc.—and each of these are interlinked. For example, the What is Science page links to both a page on Misconceptions about Science and a checklist that helps students identify whether a process is scientific or not. The interconnections among these topics are intended to help reinforce the basic aspects of science, as a one-off mention may not really bring home how important many of these things are.

Also available on most pages are links to teaching material relevant to that topic. These include lesson plans targeted at different grade levels, as well as advice on how to integrate the material within a larger course. All of the graphics and PDFs are provided with a license that allows their noncommercial use, so teachers can grab pretty much anything on the site.

The path taken during the development of the impact/extinction theory demonstrates the iterative and nonlinear nature of science

My favorite aspect, though, is its description of some major scientific discoveries, all of which also link back to teaching material and on-site resources. Its section on the discovery of the structure of DNA makes it clear that this was truly a community effort. It also doesn't shy away from noting that some parts of the community were dragged into the process through behavior that's widely seen as unethical. Its section on how the father-son team of Alvarezes developed the impact theory for the dinosaur extinction is truly excellent, and ends with an animation showing their path through the scientific process diagram that's central to the site. As Scotchmoor put it, "it's messy, it's complicated, but that's science."

MIT's Kuldell argued that it's the messiness that makes science compelling. "If you presented it in its truthful form, it's so fun and so exciting, and yet it's presented in this simplified, stripped down version," she said, "It's not that it's out and out wrong, it just doesn't adequately reflect what's really exciting about it. I do have to believe that if you teach people how fun science is, you will get more people interested in science. Kids love science and at some point they stop liking it and I think it's because they are told there's a right answer, and they either get it or they don't. They lose the query, the 'I wonder what would happen if.' And that's a pity."

The last part of being useful, however, is making sure people know this resource is out there. Scotchmoor ended her talk at AAAS by saying that, although the NSF funded putting the site together, that money did not include any way of informing the wider educational community. Which is where her talk at AAAS, which led to this article, may come in. If you find the content at Understanding Science compelling, then it would be great to make any educators you know aware of its presence.source

This list looks at ten apes (individual apes, not whole species) that exemplify extraordinary mental faculty or physical skills, for which they deserve recognition. Each earns a spot on the list for a unique reason, and examples from all the extant ape groups are featured; including gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutans and gibbons. To review, apes belong to the same classification order (primates) as monkeys, lemurs and marmosets, but are generally distinguished from these by a lack of a tail and/or other traits.

Not surprisingly, most ape populations are currently endangered as a result of habitat loss, and so it is in a spirit of conservation and protection that I offer this top ten. Please enjoy.

10

Koko

Koko is a female lowland gorilla who was born into captivity in the San Francisco Zoo, in 1971. She is famous for having learned over 1,000 signs in American Sign Language (technically, it’s a slightly modified version of ASL, which her trainer Penny Patterson calls GSL, Gorilla Sign Language). Although almost all the signs she knows are nouns and adjectives, and she is unable to construct sentences, she has demonstrated aptitude by inventing new signs based on her existing vocabulary. For example, she combined the words “water” and “bird” to describe ducks and swans. She also has used the language to communicate emotion, signing “frown,” “cry,” and “sad” when her pet cat was killed by a car. In addition to her prowess in signing, Koko can also understand about 2,000 words in spoken English. While many of the claims about her capacity to communicate have been contended, she is, nonetheless, an impressive specimen and her progress has raised important questions about our gorilla relatives.

9

Ken Allen

Also known as the “hairy Houdini,” Ken was a male Bornean orangutan born into captivity (also in 1971) in the San Diego Zoo. He achieved celebrity status in the summer of 1985, by outsmarting his keepers and escaping from his enclosure on three separate occasions, and also helping other orangutans escape from the same enclosure.

Zoo personnel were baffled at how the ape managed the feat, resorting to installing hidden cameras (which proved nothing as Ken somehow knew when he was under surveillance) and hiring professional rock-climbers to examine the enclosure inch-by-inch to find every possible exit. Ken spent his short-lived periods of freedom strolling leisurely around the zoo, admiring the animals and behaving congenially with human zoo goers. Eventually, the orangutan home was rendered escape-proof, but not before this esc-ape artist had captured the hearts of the public, inspiring at least one known song, a work of short fiction, and various t-shirts and bumper stickers. In the year 2000, Ken was diagnosed with cancer and euthanized.

8

Zippy

Zippy was a chimpanzee actor and regular feature on the Ed Sullivan Show, the Howdy Doody Show and other American comedy television shows in the 1950’s and 60’s. He entertained audiences with his bike riding, roller-skating and genuinely handsome smile. Indeed, Zippy was so popular that a line of stuffed dolls were produced in his likeness and, today, these toys are among the most cherished vintage items. Other chimpanzee actors meriting a brief mention are Jiggs, the first “Cheeta” from the 1930’s Tarzan movies, Evie from Battlestar Galactica, Punkun from the Japanese show Tensai Shumira Zoo, and Mikey from the Manchurian Candidate, Saturday Night Live and the World Series of Poker.

7

Anonymous

In 1996, while filming a wildlife documentary in the remote jungles of Borneo, actress Julia Roberts was overpowered by a 300-pound (130 k) male orangutan, who was, apparently, intent on mating. Forced copulation is quite common in orangutan societies and it accounts for a large part of their reproduction. Exploits of orangutans upon human women are also well documented, however referring to these occurrences as acts of rape is somewhat incorrect, as it would ascribe criminal motives to a blameless animal. In any event, Julia was removed from the orangutan’s grasp with the help of five crew hands who were present, and she escaped the incident unscathed. In her own words, “He wanted to play as though I was a doll, or carry me off and have a smooch. It got a bit out of hand, but I knew his intentions were playful, and so I think that he paid me a compliment. He had the strength of an entire person’s body in one finger. He could have crushed me.” There’s also video footage of this encounter.

Where there’s no harm, there’s no foul, and so despite an unsuccessful try, this nameless ape earns his spot on our list for simply setting his hopes high.

6

Tião

Tião was a chimpanzee from the Rio de Janeiro Zoo, who was a candidate for the office of mayor in Rio de Janeiro, in 1988. Representing the “Brazilian Banana Party,” the event was a farce perpetrated by the comedy duo Casseta & Planeta, who gave the campaign the slogan “Vote Monkey, Get Monkey.” The chimp, who also gained notoriety for throwing feces at various politicians at the zoo, ultimately received over 400,000 of the votes, or about 9.5%. All of these were officially recorded as “null” but it was enough for him to finish in a respectable third place.

5

Michael

Michael was an orphan silverback gorilla from Cameroon who, as a baby in the wild, survived the violent poaching of his mother. After this he was brought to California, where he learned sign language at the Gorilla Foundation under the tutelage of Koko. Experts believe Michael witnessed the attack on his mother, and used signs to describe the traumatic event.

At the Foundation, Michael also learned how to paint and his works have been deemed “impressionist” (as opposed to the abstract works of other gorilla artists, including Koko). He always picked his own colors, and he often made a handprint on the canvas, as a signature. One of his most distinguished pieces is a portrait he painted from memory of his pet dog, a border collie whom he named Apple. Michael died of heart failure in the year 2000, and his works are currently available for purchase online.

4

Buddy

Buddy was a larger-than-average Congolese lowland gorilla who joined the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus in the 1930’s. Renamed Gargantua and advertised as “The Largest and Fiercest Gorilla Ever Brought Before the Eyes of Civilized Man,” this capable ape is credited with single-handedly saving the iconic circus company from financial ruin during the Great Depression.

Most remarkable about Buddy is the fact that he overcame two brushes with death in his captive childhood. The first event occurred was when he was living in the custody of a sea captain, and a sailor cruelly splashed nitric acid in his face, permanently scaring him physically and emotionally. This trauma caused a lifelong pattern of intense aggression towards humans, adding to his imposing Gargantua persona. The second hardship was a bout of Double Pneumonia from which Buddy suffered greatly, but recovered with the help of a fringe ape veterinarian named Gertrude Lintz, who also helped repair his damaged face.

Buddy’s size was indeed a marvel, and his skeleton now resides with the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University.

3

Jacco Macacco

Jacco Macacco was a blood-sport champion who competed in the 1820’s at the Westminster Pit dog-fighting arena, in London. During his prestigious career, Jacco wowed spectators with his unique throat-slitting style, defeating some of the most touted dogs in epic struggles (several upwards of twice his weight), and became the subject of many celebratory drawings and paintings.

It should be noted that Jacco’s exact species is unknown, and although the moniker Macacco [sic] is Portuguese for “monkey” and his vocation was categorically “monkey-baiting,” given the detailed descriptions of him most believe he belonged the Siamang gibbon group of apes of Southwest Asia.

Jacco’s heyday was at the height of animal-baiting popularity, an attraction that soon after dissipated and was legally banned by parliament’s Cruelty to Animals Act, of 1835.

2

Ham

Ham was a chimpanzee astronaut who was launched into Earth’s outer orbit on January 31, 1961, from Cape Canaveral, Florida. His historic mission, part of the American Mercury Project, lasted roughly 17 minutes before splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean.

Calling him a “space explorer” might be a stretch, but he certainly qualifies as a pioneer, comparable to the goat, duck and chicken that went up in Montgolfier’s hot air balloon in Paris, in 1783.

NASA was hesitant to name their chimpanzee too early, for fear that bad PR that might ensue with his death (had the experiment failed), and so prior to his safe return he was known solely as #65. Although an important milestone among apes (he preceded Alan Shepard’s Freedom 7 ascent by three months) his entry into the final frontier was not the first by an animal; that distinction belonging to a dog named Laika, who was launched by Soviet Russia, in 1957.

1

Sir Isaac Newton

Sir Isaac Newton was a Homo sapiens born in England in 1643, who ranks among the world’s most renowned figures in science (or “natural philosophy” as it was called during his lifetime), physics and astronomy. His works include, most famously, his eponymous law of universal gravitation and his eponymous three laws of motion, which, when published in his 1687 masterpiece Principia, provided humankind with an understanding of the physical universe for centuries, and which continue to be the foundational standards for all modern mechanics and engineering. Newton also made advancements in the fields of light and color theory, sound and of powers and roots in mathematics.

It would be nigh impossible to overstate his contribution to civilization as he is often regarded as having one of the greatest impacts of any genius in history (together with Albert Einstein.) An inscription on his monument tomb reads as follows (Latin translated to English):

“Here is buried Isaac Newton, Knight, who by a strength of mind almost divine, and mathematical principles peculiarly his own, explored the course and figures of the planets, the paths of comets, the tides of the sea, the dissimilarities in rays of light, and, what no other scholar has previously imagined, the properties of the colors thus produced. Diligent, sagacious, and faithful, in his expositions of nature, antiquity and the holy scriptures, he vindicated by his philosophy the majesty of God mighty and good, and expressed the simplicity of the gospel in his manners. Mortals rejoice that there has existed such and so great an ornament of the human race.”

Bonus

Jack

Disqualified as a non-ape, Jack was a capable baboon from South Africa, who worked as the personal assistant to a Cape railroad employee named Jumper Wide, who had lost both his legs in a train accident. Working at the station, Jack initially helped with the day-to-day mobility of the crippled Wide, but was subsequently trained by Wide to operate the trains’ switches, essentially to perform all of the duties of a hired, human signalman.

Understandably, many arriving at the station were amazed to see a baboon at the controls, and one woman fainted at the sight. The situation was investigated by the governmental authority, and Jack proved to be extremely proficient and reliable at his post, and was allowed to keep the job. He was even given an employee number and compensation.

The story of Jumper Wide and Jack is a tender tale of human-animal friendship, and Wide was deeply grief-stricken when Jack succumbed to tuberculosis and died, in 1890. Jack’s skull remains on display at the Albany Museum at Rhodes University near Port Elizabeth.

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