A remarkable new study on how whales behaved when attacked by humans in the 19th century has implications for the way they react to changes caused by humans in the 2Ist century.

The paper is authored by Whitehead and Rendellt at Dalhousie University and their research addresses an age- -old question: if whales are so smart, why did they hang around to be killed? The answer? They didn't. Using newly digitised   (数字化的) logbooks detailing the hunting of whales in the north Pacific, the authors discovered that within just a few years, the strike rate of the whalers’ harpoons(捕鲸者的鱼叉) fell by 58%. This simple fact leads to an astonishing conclusion: that information about what was happening to them was being collectively shared among the whales, who made vital changes to their behaviour. They learned quickly from their mistakes.

“Sperm whales have a traditional way of reacting to attacks from orca (杀人鲸),” notes Whitehead. Before humans, orca were their only predators (捕食者), against whom sperm whales form defensive circles, their powerful taills held outwards to keep predators at bay, “But such techniques just made it easier for the whalers to kill them,” says Whitehead.

Sperm whales are highly socialised animals, able to communicate over great distances. Information about the new dangers may have been passed on in the same way they share knowledge about feeding grounds. They also possess the largest brain on the planet. It is not hard to imagine that they understood what was happening to them.

The hunters themselves realised the whales’efforts to escape. They saw that the animals appeared to communicate the threat within their attacked groups. Abandoning their usual defensive formations, the whales swam upwind to escape the hunters, ships, themselves wind-powered.

Now, just as whales are beginning to recover from the industrial destruction by 20th-century whaling fleets, whose steamships and grenade harpoons no whale could escape from, they face new threats created by our technology. “They’re having to learn not to get hit by ships, cope with the depredations (劫掠) of long line fishing, the changing source of their food due to climate change,”Whitehead says. “The same sort of urgent social learning the animals experienced in the whale wars of two centuries ago is reflected in the way they negotiate today's uncertain world.”

If the great dinosaurs hadn’t gone extinct, would they have dominated Earth today? There has been a debate about this possibility for decades. Recently two analyses have put the surprising cognitive (认知) abilities of dinosaurs — and their potential limitations — in a new light.

In one study, Suzana Herculano-Houzel at Vanderbilt University calculated the likely number of neurons (神经细胞) in dinosaurs’ pallium, a brain structure that is responsible for advanced cognitive functions. Research suggests that it is the number of neurons in these areas, rather than the brain size, that indicates an animal’s cognitive potential. For example, despite having a very small head, birds have more densely packed brain cells than many mammals (哺乳动物) and so can possess roughly as many neurons as monkeys. The result is that some birds show great cognitive abilities, comparable to the smartest non-human mammals. And it is precisely birds, being the only surviving lineage (宗系) of dinosaurs, that are Herculano-Houzel’s foundation. By comparing the relationship between brain size, number of neurons and body size in numerous existing birds and available fossils of dinosaurs, Herculano-Houzel concludes that a large dinosaur such as T. rex could have housed two billion to three billion neurons in its pallium. If so, dinosaurs could have had the capacity for tool use and planning for the future.

But neurons’ number may not be enough. For intelligence, brain architecture also matters. And this could be the weakness of dinosaurs, argues Anton Reiner from the University of Tennessee. Over 350 million years of separate evolution, mammals and dinosaurs found two rather different ways to organize cognitive functions. The mammalian neurons are organized in a relatively thin layer formed by compact columns. In each column, different parts can communicate with one another over short distances. In contrast, in the dinosaurs that survive today, namely birds, the organization is less compact. According to Reiner, expanding brain capabilities beyond a certain point could make the structure far more complex and less efficient than it is in humans. If this were the case, an increase in brain size would correspond to a greater distance between different parts of the brain, slowing down their communication.

The issue remains open to debate. Herculano-Houzel and Reiner each published a paper with rejections to the other’s argument. Meanwhile, other scientists have entered the fight. For example, neurobiologist Giorgio Vallortigara assumes that speed in transmitting information between networks of neurons is probably one of dinosaurs’ strengths.

Whatever the truth is, understanding how and if brain architecture imposes limits on the development of cognition could reveal much about the evolution of abilities and behaviors of various animals. Also, this debate may tell us more about our own species than about dinosaurs.

The connection between people and plants has long been the subject of scientific research. Recent studies have found positive effects. A study conducted in Youngstown，Ohio，for example, discovered that greener areas of the city experienced less crime. In another，employees were shown to be 15% more productive when their workplaces were decorated with houseplants.

The engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology(MIT)have taken it a step further changing the actual composition of plants in order to get them to perform diverse，even unusual functions. These include plants that have sensors printed onto their leaves to show when they’re short of water and a plant that can detect harmful chemicals in groundwater. ＂We’re thinking about how we can engineer plants to replace functions of the things that we use every day,＂explained Michael Strano, a professor of chemical engineering at MIT.

One of his latest projects has been to make plants glow(发光)in experiments using some common vegetables. Strano’s team found that they could create a faint light for three-and-a-half hours. The light，about one-thousandth of the amount needed to read by，is just a start. The technology, Strano said, could one day be used to light the rooms or even to turn trees into self-powered street lamps.

In the future，the team hopes to develop a version of the technology that can be sprayed onto plant leaves in a one-off treatment that would last the plant’s lifetime. The engineers are also trying to develop an on and off＂switch＂where the glow would fade when exposed to daylight.

Lighting accounts for about 7% of the total electricity consumed in the US. Since lighting is often far removed from the power source(电源)-such as the distance from a power plant to street lamps on a remote highway-a lot of energy is lost during transmission(传输).Glowing plants could reduce this distance and therefore help save energy.