Friday, April 24, 2009

Traffic Lights


Traffic lights in Atlanta are the same as everywhere else. We get a lot of thunderstorms here just like the rest of the Southeast and often the traffic lights go out. As I walk by the metal cabinets on the street that house the traffic light controls, I can here the relays clicking. We had these relays on the ship when I was in the navy in the late 1980's. They were an old technology then. They are big, clunky, mechanical things that frequently broke. The springs would wear out. The navy would say that these were used because they were more reliable in harsh environments then microcircuits. This was not true but it got repeated so often everyone believed it. It is inexcusable that, with all the advances in electronics in the past fifty years, we still have traffic lights that regularly break. Traffic lights should also be a whole lot smarter than just simple timers. And the timing of traffic lights in Atlanta has not been adjusted for something like fifty years.

When the traffic lights go out in Atlanta, traffic improves dramatically. The law says that when a light goes out, treat the intersection like a four way stop. But that is not what people do here. We treat it like it was working the way it should. Cars go in one directions for awhile, then some drivers voluntarily stop, then traffic goes in the other direction for awhile. The media will harp on everyone to stop like the law requires but no one listens to them. We all seem to know how to handle the situation. I have never seen an accident due to an out traffic light. I live in the city though and the situation might be different in the suburbs where they have those mega-intersections.

It strikes me as strange that there is no public outcry over the lack of traffic light innovations. I guess everyone is just used to them and does not give them much thought. Or maybe we think that asking the government to innovate will only make the situation worse.

Monday, April 13, 2009

Bottlenose Dolphins


A study was done a few years ago in which bottlenose dolphins were given a mirror in their tank then marked on their bodies. They immediately went to the mirror to see the mark. This awareness that the reflection in the mirror is themselves is rare. Primates have it. Monkeys do not. What I find so interesting about dolphin self awareness is that it means this self-awareness has evolved independently at least twice and is therefore probably not a random event.

Dolphins also easily understand when a human points. They have complex vocal communication that seems to have grammar. They naturally mimic. These are all things chimpanzees have difficulty with. They are also not trivia. They are the basics of learning.

The brain size of bottlenose dolphins is the closest to humans. The encephalization quotient (EQ) is a measure of an animal’s brain size relative to body size for animals of similar size. Humans have the highest EQ. Here are some others:

Human - 7.4
Bottlenose Dolphin - 5.3
Orca - 2.6
Chimpanzee - 2.5
Rhesus Monkey – 2.1
Elephant – 1.9
Dog – 1.2
Rat - 0.4

EQ is a very crude measure of intelligence. The structure of the brain rather than its size has more to do with intelligence. But little is known about how a dolphin’s brain works so EQ is the best we have. It would seem bottlenose dolphins are in a class by themselves, somewhere between humans and other mammal.

Dolphins and humans common ancestor lived about 50 million years ago. Bottlenose dolphins evolved in their current big brain form about 3 million years ago. Humans in big brain form are less than 1 million years old. In evolutionary time scale, the evolution of the human brain and bottlenose dolphin brain is virtually simultaneous.

So the interesting question is what happened on Earth in both the oceans and on land to drive the evolution of big brains. Something must have changed in the environment in the last few million years. And why did humans triple their brain size while bottlenose dolphins merely doubled it.

Dolphins at play