Like us, elephants can see truth

By: ANDREW BRIDGES Washington. New test results sug gest elephants are able to distinguish themselves from others, a trait that has so far only been shown in humans, chimpanzees, and to a limited extent, dolphins. A 34-year-old female Asian elephant in the Bronx Zoo named Happy showed researchers that pachyderms can recognise themselves in a mirror — complex behaviour observed in only a few other species. That self-recognition may underlie the social complexity seen in elephants, and could be linked to the empathy and altruism that the big-brained animals have been known to display, said researcher Diana Reiss of the Wildlife Conservation Society, which manages the Bronx Zoo. In a 2005 experiment, Happy faced her reflection in an mirror and repeatedly used her trunk to touch an “X” painted above her eye. The elephant could not have seen the mark except in her reflection. Furthermore, Happy ignored a similar mark, made on the opposite side of her head in paint of an identical smell and texture, that was invisible unless seen under black light. “It seems to verify for us she definitely recognised herself in the mirror,” said Joshua Plotnik, one of the researchers behind the study. Details appear this week on the website of the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Still, two other zoo elephants, Maxine and Patty, failed to touch either the visible or invisible “X” marks on their heads in two runs of the experiment. But all three adult female elephants at the zoo behaved while in front of the jumbo mirror in ways that suggested they recognised themselves, said Plotnik, a graduate student at Emory University in Atlanta. Maxine, for instance, used the tip of her trunk to probe the inside of her mouth while facing the mirror. She also used her trunk to slowly pull one ear toward the mirror, as if she were using the reflection to investigate herself.

The researchers reported not seeing that type of behaviour at any other time. “Doing things in front of the mirror: that spoke volumes to me that they were definitely recognising themselves,” said Janine Brown, a research physiologist and elephant expert at the Smithsonian National Zoological Park in Washington. She was not connected with the study but expressed interest in conducting follow-up research.

Gordon Gallup, the psychologist who devised the mark test in 1970 for use on chimps, called the results “very strong and very compelling”.

But he said additional studies on both elephants and dolphins were needed.

“They really need to be replicated in order to be able to say with any assurance that dolphins and elephants indeed as species are capable of recognising themselves. Replication is the cornerstone of science,” said Gallup, a professor at the State University of New York at Albany, who provided advice to the researchers.

The three Bronx Zoo elephants did not display any social behaviour in front of the mirror, suggesting that each recognised the reflected image as itself and not another elephant.

Many other animals mistake their mirror reflections for other creatures. That divergent species such as elephants and dolphins should share the ability to recognise themselves as distinct from others suggests the characteristic evolved independently, according to the study.

Beautiful Game - Milan derby serves up lovely

Rarely has the hype preceding a derby matched the actual fare dished out in the middle. But it did on Saturday night at, of all the places, the San Siro where Milan powerhouses traded heavyweight blows in a fantastic, free flowing derby. The irony of the match wasn’t lost on anyone: the clubs that made defence an art form were also capable of going for the jugular when the situation demanded it. A punter putting his money on a seven-goal thriller would have been greeted with derisive laughs. It indeed rained goals in the riveting endto-end contest. More important than Inter’s three points for their 4-3 win was the shattering of the stereotype that the fashion capital of Europe lacked creativity on the football pitch.

Given the presence of a large Latin American contingent in the Serie A, there has been no shortage of style in the Italian league. The problem was the shackling defensive system imposed by a legion of managers over the years. Players have no choice other than toeing the line of their bosses. It was, however, a day Inter manager Roberto Mancini and his Milan counterpart Carlo Ancelotti broke free of their mental barriers.

The Saturday classic was a match of two halves containing everything that makes a football contest compelling: crunching tackles, flying headers, spectacular pile drivers, suspensions and disallowed goals.
The first half belonged to a rampaging Inter, while the second 45 minutes to a resilient Milan. The historic stadium filled to its capacity of 79,000 provided a perfect stage for two fierce rivals from the same city to battle it out. And fight they did from the kick-off in their shared home turf.

Though Milan’s lively defender Kakha Kaladze missed a glorious opportunity as early as the 40th second, it was Inter who took the match to their opponents with two quick goals. After Hernan Crespo gave the Nerazzuri the lead with a looping header, Serbian midfielder Dejan Stankovic struck a long-range scorcher, which left Milan custodian Dida petrified. Despite being 1-4 down at one stage, Milan never gave up.

Their Brazilian midfielder, Kaka, in particular ran as if he possessed two hearts. His 90th minute lob gave his team a flicker of hope for a draw, but it was not to be in the end. There was no shame in losing a game like that.

English-speaking Indians prosper in America

When Gangadhar Chirravuri and his wife, Kalpana Seethepalli, meet Americans in the neighbourhood here, they are sometimes asked whether they come from northern or southern India. The question would have been highly unusual five years ago, but much has changed in that time. The ethnic Indian population of the United States has soared, boosted by a demand for English-speaking scientists, technicians, engineers, doctors, and other professionals. From 2000 to 2005, it swelled by 640,000, to 2.3 million, a 38 per cent growth rate, according to the US census bureau. That pushed the population of IndianAmericans past that of ethnic Filipinos, with only ethnic Chinese more numerous among Asian immigrant groups.

By comparison, from 1948 to 1965, the population of “Asian Indians” — as the bureau calls immigrants from India to differentiate them from Native Americans — grew by a mere 7,000.

While Indians arriving in years past often encountered ignorance and misunderstanding, and sometimes discrimination, people like Mr Chirravuri and Ms Seethepalli represent a new wave of extremely well-educated and ambitious young professionals who seem to have little trouble fitting in.

Mr Chirravuri, 32, is a software engineer with two master’s degrees from Villanova University, in suburban Philadelphia, and ambitions for a third. Ms Seethepalli, 31, finished a doctorate in economics at George Washington University in Washington last year and now works at the World Bank.

The Indian population has mushroomed in areas like Fairfax county, Virginia, in the suburbs of Washington, where people like Chirravuri and Ms Seethepalli live, drawn by jobs in technology companies and international organisations like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

The area’s Indian population has grown 50 per cent in five years, from 70,000 to about 107,000, and a high level of education sets this local group apart. In the 2000 census, 72 per cent of Indians in the Washington area aged 25 and older had a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared with 24 per cent of the overall US population.

What is more, Indian Americans are now the country’s richest ethnic group.
Median household income for all Asians in the United States was $57,518 in 2004, the highest among all racial groups, including whites, the US census bureau reported in March.
And for Indians, it was even higher: $68,771. The overall median household income, nationwide, was $46,326.

Amid the rapid growth, neighbourhoods in Fairfax county that were nearly all white a decade ago now have significant Indian populations. Hindu temples like the Rajdhani Mandir in Chantilly, Virginia, are bustling.
“It is not hard at all,” Mr Chirravuri said, “to find Indian food or to rent a Bollywood movie.” Rani Varna, owner of the Bombay Tandoor restaurant here, was “lonely, very lonely,” she said, when she arrived from India 40 years ago.

Now the comfort level is far higher, she said in an interview at her large and popular restaurant, as a group of young Indian girls, regular patrons, sang gaily behind a carved wooden partition.

“Do I need a temple?” Mr Varna asked. “It’s here. Do I need family? It’s here. Do I need a business? I have it.” Like many immigrant groups, Indians have come far since first making their way to the West Coast about a century ago to work on farms or in lumber mills. Many were uneducated Sikhs who spoke little English; they were often looked down on, referred to dismissively as “Hindus.” In 1917, a law barred nearly all Asian immigrants from the United States, and few Indians arrived until a law in 1965 set a limit of 20,000 immigrants a year from each country. The quota remains but is often exceeded, for a variety of reasons.

From India, 85,000 people came to the United States legally last year, said Jane Delung, president of the Population Resource Centre in Princeton, New Jersey. More than half of those arrived on the employer-linked work visas that bring many technology workers and professionals. Most of the rest have family members in the United States.

In the six years since Ms Varna opened the Bombay Tandoor, “the population has exploded,” she said. She frequently rents out her restaurant for large wedding parties, often mixed Indian-American couples, and her friends want her to open a second place.

Mr Chirravuri and Ms Seethepalli came above all for the education.
As a young girl, Ms Seethepalli said, she “very briefly toyed with the idea” of pursuing a career in classical dance — her erect, graceful posture still bespeaks years of training — but it was not meant to be. “Indian parents are very particular about education,” she said. “They would rather not let anything else — dance, music or sports — get in the way.” After receiving her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in economics in New Delhi, she looked to the United States for her doctorate.

“Very few countries do a Ph.D. as well as the US does,” she said. The American universities also provide more financial support than do universities in India, Ms Seethepalli said.
She was not alone. Nearly every member of her master’s programme at the Delhi School of Economics came to the United States for further study.

Mr Chirravuri and Ms Seethepalli recently bought a house here and they hope someday to have a child. Mr Chirravuri is applying for a green card, or work visa.
Permanent residency in the United States? They both hedge a bit.

“Being Indian in America,” said Mr Chirravuri, is “much easier now than when his cousins came years ago. The support network is much larger, and easy communications,” he said, are “an absolute boon.” E-mail helps, especially when one’s parents in India are e-mail savvy, said Ms Seethepalli. Indians used to call home with a calculator in hand, Mr Chirravuri said, but now calls cost 8 or 10 cents a minute, not $3 or $4.
Mr Chirravuri is optimistic about the future and takes pride when someone like the Indian-born Indra Nooyi is tapped to head PepsiCo.

But he knows that in the technology world, he will constantly need to update his knowledge. He worries about outsourcing, too, he said without irony, before noting that even Indian companies are now thinking of outsourcing to places like Vietnam.
He plans to stay agile. “Our generation has become the generation of opportunities,” he said — quick to adapt, learn or move.

Ms Seethepalli would be open to returning to India someday. “I have this very, very deep bond with my country” and to family members there, she said. Still, she added, “The longer we stay here, the deeper the roots we strike.” As for Mr Varna, she has three complaints about the United States: Domestic help is too expensive, the transit system is inferior and support for older people is not what it is in India.
“If America could improve those things,” she said, “it is a heaven.”

Brad Pitt Builds a House for underprivileged

Cementing Relations: Hollywood actor Brad Pitt Builds a house together with others as part of the 23rd Jimmy Carter project in Patan Village, 100 kilometres south east of Mumbai, on Monday. The project will build 100 homes in a week for the underprivileged section of the society.(AP)

Flirt Prank

These guys cant believe thier luck.

Broken Heart

This poor little Japanese boy is about to have his heart stomped on by a girl for the very first time. Plenty more to come buddy.

Funny Bicycle Accidents

Series of Funny Bicycle Accidents