Reality vs. imagination; rhinos vs. poachers; mathematics vs. the Big Bang

This week, Chinese researchers reported a nearly complete skull representing the first known sauropod species from East Asia. A team at the USDA identified viruses from a miticide-resistant parasitic mite causing honey bee colony collapses. And archaeologists report that the Philippines had a technologically advanced maritime culture 35,000 years ago.

Additionally, neurological researchers isolated the brain structure that distinguishes imagination from reality; conservationists are making advances in protecting endangered rhinos from poachers; and the “big bounce” theory of the universe’s origin got some mathematical reinforcement:

Reality apprehended

Typically, people can distinguish between real sensory information and imagination. But under certain conditions, including symptoms of schizophrenia and the effects of hallucinogens, individuals can have difficulty judging what is real and what is not. Now, researchers at University College London have determined that a brain structure called the fusiform gyrus, located on the underside of the temporal lobe, is responsible for determining whether information is from an outside stimulus or is generated by the imagination.

In the study, 27 participants looked at simple visual patterns while simultaneously imagining them. The task involved looking for a specific faint pattern within a noisy background; the real pattern was present in 50% of the images. The participants were also instructed to imagine a pattern either the same as the one they were seeking or different, and to indicate how vivid the mental images were.

In situations when the real and imaginary patterns were the same, and participants reported vivid mental imagery, they were more likely to say they saw a real pattern even in trials that did not include it, mistaking their mental imagery for reality. Functional MRI scanning during the experiments allowed the researchers to identify patterns of brain activity that distinguish reality from imaginary visualizations. The strength of the activity in the fusiform gyrus was a predictor of whether the subjects were judging an experience as real or imagined.

Poachers stymied

Over the decades, countries and organizations have spent large amounts on protecting rhinoceros populations from poaching due to the multimillion-dollar black market trade in rhinoceros horns. Now, researchers report that dehorning individuals of protected populations is a major deterrent to poaching, achieving a 78% reduction in poaching using only 1.2% of the rhinoceros protection budget.

Tim Kuiper of Nelson Mandela University said, “We documented the poaching of 1,985 rhinos (about 6.5% of the population annually) across 11 Greater Kruger reserves over seven years. This landscape is a critical global stronghold that conserves around 25% of all Africa’s rhinos.”

The study offers conservation donors advice for targeting effective interventions; others include reactive law enforcement, including tracking dogs, helicopters and detection cameras. Many researchers believe these types of interventions simply drive poachers to other rhino populations, and the researchers of the current study observe that arrested poachers are often repeat offenders, suggesting that law enforcement is not the most effective deterrent.

Big Bang rebutted

Singularities are theoretical points at which gravity is so intense that spacetime itself breaks down. Though they’re predicted by mathematics, whenever a prediction calls for a mass that increases without limit or becomes infinite, you can be pretty sure that something is missing in the math.

So suppose that singularities can never actually form—that’s the basis of a proposal by an international physics collaborative, who suggested that the Big Bang was actually a “big bounce,” in which an enormous amount of mass reached a quantum-level density and instead of forming a singularity, exploded outward, due to a rule called the quantum exclusion principle. It states that no two identical fermions can occupy the same quantum state.

The researchers demonstrate that the rule prevents the particles in collapsing matter from being squeezed indefinitely, making a bounce inevitable.

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