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Friday, June 22, 2012
These Swiss Wrist Watches Are Contemporary, Classic, and Utterly Crave-able [Beautiful]
Improve the Exterior Appearance of Your Home
If the outside of your home has fallen into disrepair, you can make improvements that are easy and inexpensive. For the resale value of your home, the exterior appearance is incredibly important. Some potential home buyers will not stop to look at a home whose exterior is worn out and unattractive.
Use landscaping to highlight specific areas of your home. Trim bushes, trees and shrubs to make sure your home is visible beyond these plants. If you have a front porch or steps that lead to the front door, use potted plants to increase the charm of your home. Use plants or stepping stones to enhance the walkway and plant some perennials so you can enjoy bright, colorful flowers.
Remove excess dirt, chipping paint, spider webs and debris by power washing the entire exterior of your home. You can rent a high powered pressure washer to give your house a clean appearance.
These washers are available from your local hardware store and are relatively inexpensive. Remember to clean the entire exterior of your home, including your roof, deck and porches while you have the equipment.Painting your front door can give your home a whole new look. Avoid painting your door a color that makes it blend into the rest of the home. Choose an attractive contrasting color for the best results. If you are unsure of a good color, compare your exterior paint color with the possible colors for your door with swatches. Some hardware stores organize their paint swatches so that coordinating colors are close to each other. You can also drive around your neighborhood to get ideas for paint colors.
Consider installing replacement windows.? Not only will you increase the value of your home and improve it's appearance but you will also save a great deal of money on your heating and cooling bills.
Using solar lights is a great way to highlight pathways in your front and back yards.
Solar lights are inexpensive, easy to install and do not require electricity. They soak up the sun all day and use the power from the sun to stay bright all night. Solar lighting is available in a wide variety of styles to enhance the appearance of any type of landscaping.Loose roof tiles, gutter and trim make your home look old and in need of repair. You can easily replace or repair these problems yourself at a minimal cost. Make sure to match shingles and tiles exactly for a uniform look. Use high quality construction nails to repair loose trim and hanging gutters. You should also take the time to clean your gutters. Even though you cannot see what is inside your gutters, debris can be quite dangerous.
If you have not done much gardening lately, now is a great time to spruce up your flower beds. Use a small rake to remove weeds, add fertilizer and replant flowers and plants that no longer look healthy. Brighten up the flower bed with new mulch, rocks or wood chips.
Updating the exterior of your home is possible with a lot of hard work and a little bit of expense. From painting to gardening, you can make improvements by yourself. These improvements will increase the curb appeal of your home.
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Nano-infused paint can detect strain
Thursday, June 21, 2012
A new type of paint made with carbon nanotubes at Rice University can help detect strain in buildings, bridges and airplanes.
The Rice scientists call their mixture "strain paint" and are hopeful it can help detect deformations in structures like airplane wings. Their study, published online this month by the American Chemical Society journal Nano Letters details a composite coating they invented that could be read by a handheld infrared spectrometer.
This method could tell where a material is showing signs of deformation well before the effects become visible to the naked eye, and without touching the structure. The researchers said this provides a big advantage over conventional strain gauges, which must be physically connected to their read-out devices. In addition, the nanotube-based system could measure strain at any location and along any direction.
Rice chemistry professor Bruce Weisman led the discovery and interpretation of near-infrared fluorescence from semiconducting carbon nanotubes in 2002, and he has since developed and used novel optical instrumentation to explore nanotubes' physical and chemical properties.
Satish Nagarajaiah, a Rice professor of civil and environmental engineering and of mechanical engineering and materials science, and his collaborators led the 2004 development of strain sensing for structural integrity monitoring at the macro level using the electrical properties of carbon nanofilms ? dense networks/ensembles of nanotubes. Since then he has continued to investigate novel strain sensing methods using various nanomaterials.
But it was a stroke of luck that Weisman and Nagarajaiah attended the same NASA workshop in 2010. There, Weisman gave a talk on nanotube fluorescence. As a flight of fancy, he said, he included an illustration of a hypothetical system that would use lasers to reveal strains in the nano-coated wing of a space shuttle.
"I went up to him afterward and said, 'Bruce, do you know we can actually try to see if this works?'" recalled Nagarajaiah.
Nanotube fluorescence shows large, predictable wavelength shifts when the tubes are deformed by tension or compression. The paint -- and therefore each nanotube, about 50,000 times thinner than a human hair -- would suffer the same strain as the surface it's painted on and give a clear picture of what's happening underneath.
"For an airplane, technicians typically apply conventional strain gauges at specific locations on the wing and subject it to force vibration testing to see how it behaves," Nagarajaiah said. "They can only do this on the ground and can only measure part of a wing in specific directions and locations where the strain gauges are wired. But with our non-contact technique, they could aim the laser at any point on the wing and get a strain map along any direction."
He said strain paint could be designed with multifunctional properties for specific applications. "It can also have other benefits," Nagarajaiah said. "It can be a protective film that impedes corrosion or could enhance the strength of the underlying material."
Weisman said the project will require further development of the coating before such a product can go to market. "We'll need to optimize details of its composition and preparation, and find the best way to apply it to the surfaces that will be monitored," he said. "These fabrication/engineering issues should be addressed to ensure proper performance, even before we start working on portable read-out instruments."
"There are also subtleties about how interactions among the nanotubes, the polymeric host and the substrate affect the reproducibility and long-term stability of the spectral shifts. For real-world measurements, these are important considerations," Weisman said.
But none of those problems seem insurmountable, he said, and construction of a handheld optical strain reader should be relatively straightforward. "There are already quite compact infrared spectrometers that could be battery-operated," Weisman said. "Miniature lasers and optics are also readily available. So it wouldn't require the invention of new technologies, just combining components that already exist.
"I'm confident that if there were a market, the readout equipment could be miniaturized and packaged. It's not science fiction."
###
Rice University: http://media.rice.edu
Thanks to Rice University for this article.
This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.
This press release has been viewed 35 time(s).
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Google pimps out Gmail with custom themes
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Thursday, June 21, 2012
The Dollmaster's Key
Hello, so this is the third collaborative GM attempt from Cienpher and I, and this is the product of our work: The Dollmaster's Key. If all go as we imagine, this ought to be fun and interesting. *crosses fingers*
This world is different from most, with its scattered cities and strange little towns. There is nothing that binds the inhabitants of this world save for the land and the language that they speak. There is no far-reaching ruler. There are no wars to be fought. There are no kingdoms, countries, or states at all, unless each town could count as its own. What sort of world is this? It is one far different and diverse from those familiar to most, a world united through disparity? However, these are all insignificant details. About this world, there is only one thing you need to know:
History:
Once upon a time, there was a lonely man - a dollmaker he was, and back then, dolls were simply lifeless things that took on a human form. They were beautiful, precious creations, but merely a child's plaything. However, he was the maker of those dolls, and he made each of them with the utmost care. One day, this man all but disappeared. He drew into himself first, and then into his home. He refused to speak to anyone, and no one saw him for many years to come. The people were not even sure he was still living. Now, the real events that occurred is hazed in the mists of time gone by, but there are many stories regarding them. Some say that a sort of madness came over this man, and he became obsessed with something that did not exist... and perhaps, these people have the truth closest at hand. One day, laughter was heard from the house, and he emerged from his house with a smile too bright to be of this world. Beside him was a timid child, with features fair and clothes fit for the most priceless of any doll.
Plot:
Now, to put it simply, our story revolves around these keys.
World:
This is the realm, the world that this story takes place ? it has neither true name nor form. Rarely have people ventured beyond the natural borders of their land, and so no one knows the true shape of the world. It may very well be flat... but such things do not matter.
About:
Cast:
Have we piqued your interest enough to make you want to join our cast? We're looking for both dolls and their human companions, of either gender. As long as your character is original and interesting, we'd love to have them running around this world of ours. ^^
Other Information of Note:
Who and What We Want:
We're once again experimenting with the idea of post-by-post roleplaying, so it might turn out a bit weird at times - but we hope that you give this a try.
Okay... I suck at writing introductions, and borrowing Cienpher's previous wording like I usually do feels a bit awkward, so I'll just stop and let the roleplay speak for itself.
The Dollmaster's Key
Recommended Playlist:
Dolls - Kagamine Rin
La Redecouverte - Yann Tiersen
This world is different from most, with its scattered cities and strange little towns. There is nothing that binds the inhabitants of this world save for the land and the language that they speak. There is no far-reaching ruler. There are no wars to be fought. There are no kingdoms, countries, or states at all, unless each town could count as its own. What sort of world is this? It is one far different and diverse from those familiar to most, a world united through disparity? However, these are all insignificant details. About this world, there is only one thing you need to know:
This settlements of this world have two kinds of inhabitants: those who die and those who do not...
Perhaps another way to put it is this: there are those who live, and those who do not.
Or putting aside all airs of mystery, this world is inhabited by humans, familiar to most... and the it is also inhabited by dolls. Yes, we mean those shells that took to human form that people once thought of as mere playthings. We mean those of flawless features and beautiful clothes that collectors coveted and children loved... and at the same time, we don't.
Those dolls of old still exist, are still loved by the people.
The dolls of which we speak are not always so fortunate.
In this society, there are dolls that are said to 'live'. As large as ordinary humans, they move and speak to their individual wills. Once their wooden textures and jointed limbs gave away their true nature, but now it is near impossible to tell a human from a doll. For this reason, there are wide opinions on their existence. Some humans accept them for what they are, and the dolls of these societies are integral to daily life. They call each other friends, family, and the odd few settlements have legalized marriage between a doll and a human. However, other communities shun them, despise them, call them demons or monsters. Unnatural. The dolls of these societies are often even killed. Shattered. Burned. The dolls are forced to hide, unable to leave for fear of persecution. Other societies use them as machines in favor of profit, leaving the dolls to suffer such abuse.
Now, everyone knows that dolls do not create themselves!
These dolls are no different - they too have an origin.
History:
Once upon a time, there was a lonely man - a dollmaker he was, and back then, dolls were simply lifeless things that took on a human form. They were beautiful, precious creations, but merely a child's plaything. However, he was the maker of those dolls, and he made each of them with the utmost care. One day, this man all but disappeared. He drew into himself first, and then into his home. He refused to speak to anyone, and no one saw him for many years to come. The people were not even sure he was still living. Now, the real events that occurred is hazed in the mists of time gone by, but there are many stories regarding them. Some say that a sort of madness came over this man, and he became obsessed with something that did not exist... and perhaps, these people have the truth closest at hand. One day, laughter was heard from the house, and he emerged from his house with a smile too bright to be of this world. Beside him was a timid child, with features fair and clothes fit for the most priceless of any doll.
Fitting... for that was what the child was. The clothes could hide the wooden joints, but not the hardness of his skin, nor the glass surface of his eyes. That boy was a doll, one moving but not alive, one who spoke but did not live... one who 'lived' but would not die. He was the first of many to come.
Now, countless years have past, countless turns of the hourglass, countless turns of the sun... and dolls now populate the world. They live amongst the human settlements as it was the will of their creator. This man of legend from eras past - people now call him the Dollmaster. Yet, strangely still, dolls continue to appear, to live on, as if they were humans themselves. The Dollmaster should have died long before, so who keeps making these dolls, so life-like that they now can laugh and cry as humans can?
Over the years, they become more and more like humans, with socket joints replaced with smoother curves, and wooden flesh replaced with softer clay. The old and the new both live on, never aging, never dying, yet still slowly growing more human. The human heart already exists - it is the body that will not follow, for after all, the dolls move not from food and drink...
... but simply the turn of a key.
Plot:
Now, to put it simply, our story revolves around these keys.
Although societies differ from town to town, most regions make use of the key-keeper or winder system, where the dolls entrust their precious keys to a human they collectively deem trustworthy. When the time comes for them to be winded, they stop by the key-keeper's shop, often located between several villages or towns, and leave once rewound. It is at one of these shops that our story begins.
You are a doll. It doesn't matter how long you've lived, how much you remember, or how much you've seen - all that matters is that you entrusted your key to one of these shops, and as the time limit approaches, you had come to be rewound. That's all that matters... because when you returned to the shop that day, the store-keeper was gone... as were all the keys entrusted to him. For the first time, you have reason to fear death. Injuries can be repaired, and most humans aren't hostile to dolls, so there was no reason to fear such a thing... until now. The store is deserted, with everything of value gone - almost everything of value. Left behind is an abandoned letter, half burnt away, but important because it leaves you two clues.
These two clues are enough to inspire a small group of dolls to fight against their impending 'death', and leave on a search for their keys on their own. However, they'll find that there is much they do not know to the nature of their keys, life, death, and themselves.
Unlike some other roleplays, in here, the roleplayers will learn several things along with the characters - after all, who exactly has taken the keys? What do they want to accomplish? Why do they need the keys? Is every doll and human you meet... really who it seems?
What will happen?
You will find out as your character does, and hopefully experience similar emotions along the way and get the most out of the roleplay experience. There are many directions to go... you could aim for the elusive 'master key'... or you could chase after these strange few who have taken the keys for reasons yet unknown...
This roleplay starts at the key-keeper's abandoned shop. Someone has just discovered and pieced together the remains of this strange and cryptic letter. The only ones left to see the message are the ones who had not yet lost hope. The other dolls visiting that day left in despair. Some would have been crying if they could. Most did not truly understand the severity of the problem. However, those are the ones who left. The ones remaining, they are the ones who would unearth not only the circumstances of their existence, but the changing world around them.
As they journey, people come and go, both companions and enemies. However, exactly how many of them are trustworthy in a society that is slowly corroding away?
PLEASE NOTE: THE PLACES TAB WILL BE USED. FOR THE SAKE OF PLOT AND KEEPING THINGS COHERENT, WE INSIST THAT YOU POST IN THE PROPER PLACES.
World:
This is the realm, the world that this story takes place ? it has neither true name nor form. Rarely have people ventured beyond the natural borders of their land, and so no one knows the true shape of the world. It may very well be flat... but such things do not matter.
This tale focuses on a small portion of this world, with blue expanses to the north and west and mountainous terrain to the east. As stated before, there are no kingdoms or nations, for every city is their own. Each city with its own laws and beliefs, its own unique culture, these settlements are scattered throughout the world. Yet still, they are connected through the delicate means of the people - trade, information, entertainment... they unite this world in all its diversity.
Our story starts in a simple town in the north, or perhaps more accurately, a village. With no firm political standing or economic benefits, this village called Terota acts as a rest stop or cross roads of sorts for several major city-states. All of use that can be found here is a small inn for the weary, a diner for the starved, a general shop for the wanderers... and a now abandoned key-keeper shop.
As for the rest of the world? Well, there are so many settlements so different from the other that it would take ten years to describe them all. Perhaps as the characters of this tale move forth, there will be reason and time to explain.
For now, there are only three names one ought to know:
Belerise - a city famous for its prosperity and wealth
Sagen - a port town where wayfarers may set for open sea
Eidings - the only all-doll settlement known in these parts
About:
The Dolls
The life of a doll is not as simple as it may seem. There are many kinds, many forms that they take, with the most common distinction being this: ball-jointed or not.
Jointed - The dolls of old, the Dollmaster's first creations are easily identified by their smaller statures and visible joints. Their eyes of glass catch the sun as they move and speak, although more haltingly than their successors. However, for their less human-qualities, they are granted a different benefit... that of a longer 'life'. One winding can last one of these older-generation dolls at least twice as long as it does these newer humanesque figures.
Jointless - Now all this title means is that the doll does not have visible ball and socket joints. Instead, like humans, they have skin that covers their skeletal frame. Over the years, the Dollmaster has learned, and the newest generation is so very close to human. Their movements are fluid, their speech well-rehearsed, and they are in all appearance, like any living boy or girl. However, these advancements come with a price, for the jointless generation have a shorter 'life', needing windings far more frequently from their predecessors.
Of course there are those from times between who carry traits from both generations, for the Dollmaster is slow to change his ways. However, even still, there is not only the hatred between the dolls and the humans - the dolls discriminate as well. The newer generations scorn their olden counterparts, calling them obsolete. The older claim themselves the originals, and also the Dollmaster's favorites.
What will happen to these dolls?
Well, who knows?
That story has not yet been told.
Cast:
Have we piqued your interest enough to make you want to join our cast? We're looking for both dolls and their human companions, of either gender. As long as your character is original and interesting, we'd love to have them running around this world of ours. ^^
Other Information of Note:
So the format of this roleplay is... well, I'm not quite sure what, but what'll happen is that GM posts will show a timer counter on the top, and then proceed to describe interactions with NPCs and your surroundings. Anything we mention can be interacted with and examined in further detail, although we won't guarantee exactly what it will reveal. This also means that depending on what you choose to notice, you might miss some vital information. If you look carefully, you'll encounter clues and strange pieces of evidence to help piece together this mystery.
Also, your character can come and go as they wish. Hopefully, that'll make it so that this roleplay will never fill up, forcing you to wait for a vacancy and dropping it, due to real life, won't induce the same cringe-inducing guilt from letting the entire group down. ^.^
Who and What We Want:
1. Our posting requirements are as follows: it must be sufficiently detailed, original, and interactive. Each post should move the plot of the roleplay forward by some small extent. We understand that not everyone is the best when it comes to grammar, so all that we ask is that we see a visible effort. No blazing malapropisms, no obvious spelling or punctuation errors, and no internet/text jargon is sufficient. We have a tendency to write longer posts ourselves, so as a result, we prefer longer posts from others as well, but in the end it's your choice. Detailed, original, interactive, and moves the plot forward - then we'll all be happy ^^
2. As for characters, please make your characters original! No one enjoys a cookie-cutter personality... take the time to give your creation life. Make it so that you would be able to pluck them out, set them down, and see them make it off into the world.
3. People who participate in the OOC would be much participated. A quiet OOC thread is boring... but also, there is often vital information that could be discussed there.
4. People with a good deal of common sense and courtesy. Some people with sanity would be nice as well, seeing as we all lack it quite a bit XD
Notes:
A large thank you to randomness, as that is what gave birth to this wonderful RP! More thank you's to the artists of the pictures we have used, but we apologize for not being able to quote your names! One last thank you to those who read all of this and feel interested enough to join!
Also, please do realize that your character has a high probability of completely unwinding, especially in the later phase of this roleplay. Please try your best to not have this occur or they become a body... hopefully your character has enough personal ties with the others so their body doesn't get ditched. XD
So hopefully, we've garnered some of your attention. If you're interested, drop us a note over at our OOC. We look forward to seeing you and your creations~
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Types of Daemons
Fire:
Full Daemons:
Full Daemons:
-Avatar (A bipedal creature with high intelligence, usually prone to mischief and trickery, rather nasty when angered and can conjure all forms of fire)
-Hell Fiend (A Quadrupedal races of creatures prone to destroying everything they see and attacking anything not associated with fire)
-Ruler of Flame (The master of the flame realm and the destroyer of all others)
Half Daemons:
-Blaze (He who makes a pact with the Ruler of Flame become a Blaze, half Fire Daemon, half Human)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Water:
Full Daemons:
-Aveyond (A bipedal creature with high intelligence, cares little for physical violence and can conjure all forms of water)
-Ythlim Walker (A small quadrupedal creature prone to mischief but usually isn't dangerous untill attacked in which case it becomes a water sprite)
-Ruler of Oceans (The master of the aquatic realm and the healer of the weak)
Half Daemons:
-Riverwalker (He who makes a pact with the Ruler of Oceans become a Riverwalker, half Water Daemon, half Human)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Earth:
Full Daemons:
-Golem (A bipedal creature with high intelligence, Extremely strong and tough, respects those with high physicle strength and can conjure all forms of earth magics)
-Dweller (A race of creatures that move under the earth and can cause earthquakes or even open paths through the making of tunnels, they attack anything they find threatening)
-Ruler of Stone (The master of the Stone realm and the protector of all)
Half Daemons:
-Shardling (He who makes a pact with the Ruler of Stone become a Shardling, half Earth Daemon, half Human)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Air:
Full Daemons:
-Genie (A flying creature with high intelligence, usually associated with luck and good omens, rather nasty when angered and can conjure all forms of the Wind)
-Specter (A ghostly races of creatures that roam the world after death attacking those with an evil aura around them)
-Ruler of Gusts (The master of the Wind realm and the observer of all events)
Half Daemons:
-Wisp (He who makes a pact with the Ruler of Gusts become a Wisp, half Air Daemon, half Human)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Light:
Full Daemons:
-Incarnation (A bipedal creature with high intelligence, has white feathered wings, is very calm and respects wisdom and can conjure all forms of light)
-Seer (A flying beast of small size capable of diving at high enough speed to pierce through solid steel)
-Ruler of Blinding Light (The master of the light realm and the guide to prosperity)
Half Daemons:
-Saint (He who makes a pact with the Ruler of Blinding Light become a Saint, half Light Daemon, half Human)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Shadow:
Full Daemons:
-Apperition (A bipedal creature with high intelligence, kills anything with a small amount of taint in its heart, can shift through time currents and can conjure all forms of shadow)
-Seeker (A ghostly creature created from the shadows to kill anything whos shadow it can cling to)
-Ruler of Shadows (The master of the Shadow realm and the killer of the corrupt)
Half Daemons:
-Shade (He who makes a pact with the Ruler of Shadows become a Shade, half Shadow Daemon, half Human)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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The Better Bonobos of Our Nature
In contrast to ?killer-apes,? the latest evidence suggests our peaceful primate cousins may be a better model for human origins.
Author?s note: A new study published in the journal Nature has sequenced the genome of bonobos and compared them to chimpanzees as well as humans finding some surprising results. The following is an article I wrote last year for Times Higher Education entitled ?Ariel Casts Out Caliban? that explored the evidence then available that bonobos were a better model than chimpanzees for understanding human origins.
"Bonobo Shakespeare" by Nathaniel Gold
In 1607, after being held captive by the Portuguese in West Africa?s Congo Basin for nearly 18 years, the English sailor Andrew Battell returned home with lurid tales of ?ape monsters?. The larger of the two creatures Battell described, according to the edited volume later published by travel writer Samuel Purchas, Purchas His Pilgrimes, ?is in all proportion like a man?, but ?more like a giant in stature?and has a man?s face, hollow-eyed, with long haire upon his browes?. These marauding beasts ?goe many together, and kill many (villagers)?they are so strong, that ten men cannot hold one of them?. Battell?s narrative, much of which was received second hand and sure to be highly imaginative, was nevertheless one of Western society?s earliest introductions to our evolutionary cousins, the great apes.
Simia quam similis turpissima bestia nobis (?How similar the ape, this ugliest of beasts, is to ourselves?). What the Roman poet Ennius presented in the 2nd century BC was a refrain that could be heard repeatedly during the subsequent two millennia whenever Europeans encountered this being that so threatened the line separating human and animal. The common depiction of non-human primates in the West as representations of sin and the Devil, wickedness, frivolity, impulsivity and violence would ultimately say more about our own discomfort at being reminded of similar qualities in ourselves than their nature.
But it is the depiction of the ape as monster that is even more revealing. When Bishop John Bramhall challenged Thomas Hobbes? position on free will in 1645 by insisting that ?Nature never intends the generation of a monster,? he wasn?t referring to apes but to what today we would call a mutant; something fundamentally unnatural and far removed from ourselves. For Battell, and those who came after him, to use this term repeatedly for describing great apes suggests that the experience was so profoundly disturbing that the only recourse was to relegate them to some narrow island of the mind where any similarities with humans could be ignored. The ape, to adopt lines from Shakespeare written at the time, was ?a perfidious?howling?abominable monster?, little more than ?a born devil, on whose nature nurture can never stick?.
As it turns out, William Shakespeare?s The Tempest (1611), generally accepted to be the Bard?s final production, was ideally timed for the playwright to have encountered the story of these ape monsters. As science writer Dale Peterson has shown, enclosed in the same edited volume that contained Battell?s narrative was the report of a tragic shipwreck in the Bermuda islands that Shakespeare is known to have used while developing his script. While the play has been widely interpreted as a commentary on 17th-century British colonialism, the relationship between the part-human, part-animal Caliban and his master Prospero ? a deposed duke, marooned on an island prison, who has learned to manipulate the natural world ? suggests that Shakespeare may have been asking deeper questions about human nature during a time of systemic change. Caliban, portrayed as an ugly, selfish and disloyal wretch who forges a plot to murder his master in his sleep, embodies nearly all of the characteristics usually imposed on apes and is referred to as a ?monster? no fewer than 45 times.
The kind of exotic travel narrative that Purchas sought out in Battell or that Shakespeare chose as his swansong came at a unique time in Western history, between the publication of Nicolaus Copernicus? new model of the Universe in 1543 and Galileo Galilei?s confirmation of his insights in 1632. As the new physics and cosmological discoveries were destabilising humanity?s central position in the celestial order, biology and the discovery of great apes began to fracture a previously ordered hierarchy in the natural world. In time, the ?beasts? and ?killers? that travellers such as Battell encountered in distant lands would give rise to a new generation of monsters, ones that would only loom closer as a disoriented public struggled to maintain their balance during a period of rapid change.
While it seems clear that the larger of Battell?s two ?monsters? was most likely a gorilla, the ?lesser? figure he referenced could have been either a chimpanzee or a bonobo, since both are endemic to that region of Africa. All three species, along with humans and orang-utans, comprise the Hominidae family, more commonly known as great apes (the more distantly related gibbon, the only ape with a consistently monogamous lifestyle, is in a separate taxonomic category).
Research published in March, 2011 by the online journal PLoS Genetics is the latest to emphasise our close relationship to the great apes. In direct contradiction to the idea of apes as monsters (or even perhaps its ultimate rationale), it adds to the multiple genetic analyses carried out over the past 20 years that found that the two Pan species ? P. troglodytes (chimps) and P. paniscus (bonobos) ? share about 98.8 per cent of their DNA with humans. The ?monsters? of yore are but minor variations of ourselves. However, the latest study moves the percentage even closer and raises intriguing questions about what the rate of evolutionary change in our closest relatives might tell us about human origins.
The study was the product of an international team who, for the first time, constructed a comprehensive family tree of all living primate species from the mouse lemur to the great apes. By conducting a comparative analysis of 54 nuclear gene regions ? DNA that is passed on through sexual reproduction ? the resulting phylogeny creates a temporal map that places each of the 186 species into an evolutionary relationship with all the others over a period of 90 million years.
As the genetic and fossil data have shown, Homo and Pan shared a common ancestor until about 6.5 million years ago. Following this speciation event, bonobos and chimpanzees then split from their common ancestor approximately 1.5 million years ago. Conventional wisdom has always been that humans are equally related to both species, the same way that you would be equally related to cousins born to different aunts on the same side of your family. Despite this identical relationship, however, chimpanzees have long been the preferred models for testing assumptions about what the Homo-Pan ancestor would have been like.
?Until now the strategy of many anthropologists has been to marginalise the bonobo,? says Frans de Waal, a leading primatologist who studies great ape behaviour and cognition at Emory University?s Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta, Georgia. De Waal has done more than any other researcher to bring attention to this close relative: among its ranks, female alliances intimidate males, sexual behaviour is as diverse as our own, and cooperation replaces aggression as the norm in social interactions.
?Perhaps this new genetic analysis will finally open the eyes of many that we have for four decades been hearing an overly narrow perspective on human evolution,? he says.
?Ever since Raymond Dart, anthropologists have been seriously invested in a theory of humans as aggressive, tying human progress to warfare and all of our accomplishments to defeating so-called ?lesser? tribes.?
Dart was the progenitor of this ?we are the champions? literature, beginning in 1925, when he built his dark vision of human evolution on the back of one of the most important scientific discoveries in history, made the previous year: the 2.8 million-year-old hominin fossil Australopithecus africanus, then the earliest known member of the human lineage ever discovered. Ironically, he had never wanted to go to Africa and viewed his position there as a demotion, marooned to the backwaters with little hope for career advancement. His fortuitous discovery of a juvenile skull, the ?Taung child?, was a major breakthrough that confirmed a prediction made by Charles Darwin as early as 1871.
But if Dart thought his ship had come in, it was an illusion. Few of his colleagues were looking to Africa for important discoveries, and certainly not to South Africa. Asia is where hominin evolution was expected to have occurred and Dart, along with his child-sized skull, was a laughing stock. Isolated and rejected by his colleagues, but sitting on a treasure trove of readily accessible fossil material, Dart began to imagine. Like the deposed Prospero, manipulating the reality of his island prison and populating his loneliness with phantasms, he fashioned a monstrous creature that would serve him in the years to come.
Caves are ideal environments for fostering the transformation of bone into rock and maintaining stable conditions for the preservation of fossil remains. It was in just such a cave that Dart?s ?killer-ape? was born. As more australopithecine fossils were discovered, protected in these subterranean lairs, it was revealed that they were often associated with the discarded remains of partially consumed mammals. It was unlikely that such an assemblage could have developed by chance and Dart interpreted these animals as victims of our hominin forebears, who were now revealed to be ?confirmed killers?.
As Dart would describe in the article ?The predatory transition from ape to man?, the human lineage was therefore descended from ?carnivorous creatures, that seized living quarries by violence, battered them to death, tore apart their broken bodies, dismembered them limb from limb, slaking their ravenous thirst with the hot blood of victims and greedily devouring livid writhing flesh?. Standing over the imagined carnage, Dart saw that Man had emerged, red in tooth and claw, with a lust for death.
This ancestral Caliban, a creature that longed for bloody violence (to ?batter his skull, or paunch him with a stake, or cut his wesand [windpipe] with thy knife?) was, for Dart, the beginning of human domination over nature. But he was far from the only anthropologist depicting violent and predatory habits in the human past. The horrors of the Second World War offered such stuff as nightmares are made on, and in the following decades researchers increasingly turned to the ?Dark Continent? to find causal explanations for the worst excesses of human violence.
For the American primatologist Sherwood Washburn, Australopithecus africanus was ?already a hunter?, but through him emerged a killing instinct honed by evolution. ?Man is naturally aggressive,? wrote Washburn in Man the Hunter. ?He naturally enjoys the destruction of other creatures?Other human beings were simply the most dangerous game.? Joining him was Nobel prizewinning ethologist Konrad Lorenz, who wrote in On Aggression that our tool-bearing australopithecine ancestors ?promptly used their new weapon to kill not only game, but fellow members of their species as well?. Completing the raiding party was the science populariser Robert Ardrey, who recrafted Dart?s vision for a new generation of readers in the 1960s with his book African Genesis. ?We were born of risen apes, not fallen angels,? he wrote, ?and the apes were armed killers besides.?
That there was little in the way of fossil evidence supporting these pessimistic conclusions didn?t seem to have been noticed. ?Virtually all our theories about human origins were relatively unconstrained by fossil data,? says David Pilbeam, a palaeoanthropologist at Harvard University, in Current Argument on Early Man (1980). ?Our theories have often said far more about the theorists than about what actually happened.?
What actually did happen, something that would have to wait until the mid-1970s to be established, was altogether different. The animal remains that Dart found scattered throughout hominin caves were actually the leftovers from African carnivores such as lions and leopards. Australopithecines had not been the predators; they were the prey. While some of them may have fashioned basic stone tools, they most likely used these as cutting implements to carve up animals that had already been killed by larger, more dangerous hunters.
But by then the myth of the killer-ape had caught hold and Dart?s conjuration had mesmerised millions. Already popular in comic books and adventure novels, now moviegoers witnessed the origin story of this monster in the opening sequence of Stanley Kubrick?s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Choreographed by Dart?s student Phillip Tobias, the scene depicts a ragged australopithecine who raises a discarded femur against his brother and employs it to commit the world?s first murder. Afterwards, in an ecstasy of violence, this would-be Cain hurls the bone skywards where, in a multimillion-year jump, it becomes an orbiting spacecraft. The metaphor is unmistakable: through aggression, selfishness and the tools of violence lay the secret to humanity?s success. The wages of sin may be death, but the compound interest was paid out in dividends of human progress.
?Then suddenly,? says Jane Goodall, pioneering primatologist, in Reason for Hope, ?we found that chimpanzees could be brutal ? that they, like us, had a dark side to their nature.? Previously the killer-ape had to be imagined and their tools of violence manipulated to create the monster. But now the carnage was real. The earliest long-term field studies in the 1960s began to reveal P. troglodytes as the monster we?d always known him to be, confirming the worst fears about our own nature. Chimps would engage in all-male raiding parties to patrol their territory and murder outsiders who strayed too near. There were documented cases of infanticide, cannibalism, the murder of group members, as well as the orgiastic ferocity of the hunt. That later research showed these cases to be rare or exaggerated in the media didn?t seem to matter. The story to explain humanity?s Fall had already been written and the new ?killer-ape? could now step into the role.
?Chimpanzee-like violence preceded and paved the way for human war,? explains Harvard primatologist Richard Wrangham in his 1996 book Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence, ?making modern humans the dazed survivors of a continuous, 5-million-year habit of lethal aggression.?
After being confined her whole life to the same island prison as her embittered father, Prospero?s youthful daughter Miranda was overjoyed at the prospect of a new life. ?How many goodly creatures are there here!? she announced. ?O brave new world, that has such people in?t!? For those who had grown up expecting monsters, the discovery of bonobos provoked a similar hopeful response in the generation after Dart. The tragedy for many is that they were known about all along but were ignored because they didn?t fit the story crafted for human origins.
Even before bonobos were identified as a distinct species in 1929, it was clear that something was different about these apes. In 1925, the same year that Dart was summoning his killer-ape from the subterranean caves of Africa, Robert Yerkes, the American psychologist and primatologist, encountered a remarkably different chimpanzee he named ?Prince Chim?. This individual was notably more sensitive, altruistic and intelligent than any ape Yerkes had ever encountered. What the great psychologist did not know at the time was that Prince Chim was a bonobo.
?Doubtless there are geniuses even among the anthropoid apes,? Yerkes observed. ?Prince Chim seems to have been an intellectual genius.? Yerkes was so struck by his behaviour that he titled the book based on his encounter Almost Human (1925).
Anatomically, bonobos were also found to be strikingly human-like and many initially doubted Dart?s claim that Australopithecus africanus was a human ancestor precisely because the skull was so similar to that of the newly discovered bonobo. Subsequent research on bonobos has found regular bipedalism, face-to-face mating (requiring a more ventral orientation of the vagina), reduced limb and body proportions, reduced canines, greater breadth of diet, larger group sizes and reduced competition within groups; all traits shared more closely with humans than chimpanzees. Recent research has also found that bonobos are closer to humans in the genetic expression of hormones promoting sociability and in the brain regions that give rise to empathy. As early as 1933, Harold Coolidge, the anatomist who gave P. paniscus its eventual taxonomic status (and who did the post-mortem on Prince Chim), concluded that this ape ?may approach more closely to the common ancestor of chimpanzees and man than does any living chimpanzee?.
Bonobos directly contradict the monstrous reflection of human nature reproduced over the subsequent 80 years. While they are far from passive, they reveal a species that succeeds more through mutual aid than through aggressive violence. ?From the point of view of individual survival, they are the most successful species among the higher primates,? says Takayoshi Kano, a Japanese primatologist who has overseen the longest continuous field study of bonobos in the wild. ?They prove that individuals can coexist without relying on competition and dominant-subordinate rank,? he writes in The Last Ape (1992).
Such differences suggest that chimpanzees and bonobos have undergone very different selection pressures since they diverged from a common ancestor, unique environments that inscribed unique patterns of genetic information over time. According to Kano, the differences between bonobos and chimpanzees are likely the result of the bonobo habitat remaining ?a relatively stable forest environment?, whereas chimpanzees adapted to more variable conditions. These differences in habitat may be reflected in the recent PLoS Genetics analysis that suggests chimpanzees have undergone more alterations in their genetic code than the bonobos, an estimated divergence of 12.4 per cent from our Homo-Pan ancestors.
?If that were true,? says de Waal, ?then bonobos would be our closest relative, with the chimpanzee a close second and gorillas in third place.? Statistically, the 12.4 per cent difference does not make bonobos significantly closer to humans than chimpanzees (both Pan species remain sister taxa), but it has evolutionary researchers puzzled over what this could mean about human origins.
?They?ve found that chimpanzees have one extra substitution for every six between humans and bonobos, and that?s strange,? says John Hawks, biological anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Chimpanzee nucleotides ? the A, C, T or G base pairs that make up the vocabulary of DNA ? have been evolving faster, substituting one for another at a higher rate since the two species separated from their common ancestor.
Jonathan Eisen, evolutionary biologist at the University of California, says this coincides with additional research (such as that published in Nature by Tomas Marques-Bonet et al. in 2009) showing an increased genetic substitution rate in chimpanzees compared with humans. More research is needed before any conclusions can be reached, but the study raises important questions about the emphasis on chimpanzees as the model for human origins. ?If the rate is higher then they should have indeed diverged more from a common ancestor,? says Eisen. ?Bonobos might be more similar to the common ancestor of humans, chimps and bonobos than chimpanzees are and thus make a better model for learning about early human evolution.?
In the final scene, Shakespeare has Prospero come to recognise himself in his monster and free him from bondage. ?This thing of darkness,? he says of Caliban, ?I acknowledge mine.? Prospero?s journey is much like our own. Whatever reason Western society had to be repulsed by apes, whether for destabilising our position at the centre of the natural world or merely because they were so ?disproportion?d in manners and in shape? as to remind us of our lowly origin, prithee never mind. The killer-ape is our own creation and by holding on to this myth we are chaining ourselves to a pessimistic vision of human nature. We may be risen apes, but this need not reduce the better angels of our nature. In the end, by releasing Prospero?s monster, we are releasing ourselves.
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