2016 01 02 jan feb mind intl by Editor, MInd

JAN-FEB 2016

From the Editor: We, as descendents of Homo Sapiens, tend to have opinions – on almost all things under the sun – and for almost all such things, we find people with diametrically opposite views. In Mensa discussion groups, the scene is no different. Rather, the opinions come in just as many hues as the world around us offers. The new year issue brings some opinions, some discussions and some talksessions that we have had towards the end of 2015. I’m sure so many would have opinions similar to or completely different from the ones mentioned in the magazine. Say for example ‘: Have Passion? Don’t make it your profession’ might not be what many others feel. And this is why we would like to hear from you and publish as many different ideas that you send us So, keep writing to us… we are listening.  ~Durva Damle, Editor, Mind Contents

About Contributors

Page no. 2

Tech Talk: Cloning Mensa Events: Emotional Intelligence Session and Zentangles Workshop

Shreya Gupta

Mensa Mumbai

Opinion: Have Passion? Don’t make it your profession

Krishnan Iyer

Book Review: The Wonder, R.J. Palacio Lensa: Insect

Krishna Vora

Krishnan Iyer

The Puzzle Page: Farmer-Fox-Goat variation

Anubhav Balodhi

The Puzzle Page: Outside Sudoku

Prasanna Seshadri

Musings: Passage of time

Mensa Group Discussions

On the Cover: Sketch by Tushar Ajgaonkar Medium: Charcoal

Submissions: Send in your articles and contributions in plain text format and pictures in high resolution .jpg format to: editor.mensaindia@gmail.com

Disclaimer: All contents in this magazine are opinions of the individual authors and contributors. Neither Mensa India, the society, its office bearers nor the editors are responsible for any content or views expresses.

Feedback: Like it, love it or hate it? Tell us how to make the MInd magazine better. Write in to the editor at editor.mensaindia@gmail.com

ABOUT CONTRIBUTORS:

Shreya Gupta is a second year student pursuing B.Tech in Electronics and Communication Engineering from IGDTUW. Hailing from New Delhi, she enjoys music along with singing and dancing. A passion for learning about the new technological innovations and presenting her ideas to the world is what inspires her the most. The link to her blog is: http://developmentandopinions.blogspot.in/ Anubhav Balodhi, is a 22 years old, Army Schools' alumnus, MENSAn from Delhi Chapter of Indian Mensa, Final year B.Tech at NIT Allahabad. He loves Mathematics, Science and solving puzzles. Krishnan Iyer is an Assistant Producer at NDTV Limited. Like most Mensans, Krishnan is trying to know how he should categorise himself. He has a plethora of interests and there is little that he doesn’t seem to lay his hands upon. He loves travelling, exploring new places. He likes reading about religion, anthropology, history among other things. He has this extreme knack for solving problems and finding out a way by which anything can be done in a better and simpler way. He thinks he should probably be taking up LEAN projects in his company. Krishna Vora is a Psychologist and a Special Educator by profession. She spends all her free time exploring different genres of reading. Link to her blog: https://krishnasvora.wordpress.com/2015/02/03/the-imitation-game/ PrasannaSeshadri is a Puzzler and Puzzle-Master at Grandmaster Puzzles; was the Indian Double Champion in 2013, having won both the Indian Sudoku and Indian Puzzle Championships. As a puzzlemaker, Prasanna has contributed puzzles to the World Puzzle Championship, the 24HPC, and several other national championships; Associated with Logic Masters India. Blog: https://prasannaseshadri.wordpress.com/ More of his puzzles can be found at: http://www.gmpuzzles.com

TECH-TALK CLONING

Hey soul sister!

needs a surrogate mother and ample time to grow into a fully developed individual.

Is that your twin? How can you possibly be in two places at the same time? AAAAAAAAAAA run.. ghost!! I just saw you walk through that door and now you’re there again, or are you just spamming the doorway again and again?!

Cloning is just so unnatural! For all those who think cloning is unnatural, think again! It was pretty basic high school biology that everyone studied about Asexual reproduction, well recall those processes. Bacteria, yeast, and single-celled protozoa multiply by making copies of their DNA and dividing in two. Like the ditto from Pokémon. Redwood and aspen trees send up shoots from their roots, which grow into trees that are genetically identical to the parent- like roots dividing into more roots and forming more trees In the animal world, the eggs of female aphids grow into identical genetic copies of their mother—without being fertilized by a male.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzJx2dl8MA8 Yeah well this is the expected reactions at present of all earthlings, to what might possibly be the future. Well what I’m talking about here is cloning. Something of the sort that happens in the movie, Island featuring Scarlett Johansson. Remind you of anything? Well it doesn’t happen exactly the way portrayed in the movies; a clone develops exactly the way a normal human does,

If a starfish is chopped in half, both pieces can regenerate, forming two complete, genetically identical individuals. Like chop up Patrick form ‘SpongeBob square pants’ and you’ll get two separate Patricks growing from those two pieces, imagine the horror! Even mammals form natural clones: identical twins are a common example in many species.

De- extinction be the new shiz! Suddenly why do I bring this topic up when we’ve practically been watching movies, documentaries etc. based on this for over a decade now. I know it isn’t a new concept but well some new discoveries caught my interest. The passenger pigeon was hunted to extinction 99 years ago, but researchers are planning to use DNA from museum specimens to bring the bird back to life. How will this happen? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hepoJgGJtNc 3

TECH-TALK CLONING

Step 1: Sequence the genome of the passenger pigeon and compare it to that of the bird’s closest living relative, the band-tailed pigeon, to pick out the most important variations.

Where’s the problem? The nucleus of an egg cell needs to be removed for cloning; this means removing the proteins essential to help cells divide, is removed. Cloning mice is not a problem because they are able to make these proteins again, but this doesn’t happen in primates- so monkey cloning failed. Cloned animals often have different kinds of genetic abnormalities that can prevent embryo implantation in a uterus, or cause the foetus to spontaneously abort, or the animal to die shortly after birth. The extremely high rate of death; and the risk of developmental abnormities from cloning make cloning people unethical.

Step 2: Edit the genome from the germ cell of a

band-tailed pigeon to transform it into that of a passenger pigeon.

Step 3: Implant this germ cell into another

pigeon, likely a rock pigeon, where the researchers hope it will migrate to the gonads to produce sperm or eggs. Two of these birds will be mated to create a passenger pigeon chick. At least that’s the plan.

Let’s just hope that this technological development overcomes obstacles only for the better, and not lead to Human extinction!

~Shreya Gupta

MENSA EVENTS TALKS AND SESSIONS

Rest would be just techniques and details, for which some supplemental reading would help.

Mumbai Mensa organized two events during the months of November and December for members and non-members. 30th November saw an interactive session by Mensan Deep Mody. Deep, an HR professional, enlightened the audience on Emotional Intelligence. Krishna Vora conducted a refreshing workshop on ‘Zentangles’ on 20th December. Some-what like doodling, drawing Zentangles can actually act as brain-relaxant. Some pictures from the events and take-aways that the participant shared with the editorial team:

On Emotional Intelligence Session: Deep’s presentation was a godsend, because though I was curious to know about Emotional Intelligence, I was too lazy to actually look it up.

I found a good book on EQ by Daniel Goleman. It starts from the neuro-circuitry of human brain, explains how emotions and intellect are linked. And takes the reader through a lot of real life examples, studies and practical techniques. Thanks to the framework Deep’s talk provided, the book is making a lot of sense!

Deep gave the crucial idea for mastering/managing emotions in a single line, “You should be able to name the emotion! “ It is not as easy as it sounds At least not when you are in a grip of one! To do this, one needs to be aware. Something that leads to the detachment needed to keep ones cool! Of course, it took some thought to realize this simple thing. Interestingly, it tied well with a similar tip from spirituality. There it is called ‘Sakshitva Bhav’ – a state of being a witness (Sakshi) to one’s own emotions. At least a part of the consciousness then remains detached and unaffected; clinically and critically watching the emotion come and go.

~Ujjwal Rane

MENSA EVENTS TALKS AND SESSIONS

About Zentangles Workshop: The workshop was attended by Mensans across the age spectrum interested in learning unconventional art.

The repetitive designs allow you to mentally calm down and were soothing to the agitated mind. The workshop brought out the latent artist in many of us and shone a ray of hope that not all artists need to have an innate creative streak to create beautiful designs that are intricate and create an illusion before the mind. Kudos to Krishna to get so many mensans to sit and quietly draw! ~Rachita Narsaria

I say unconventional as most art forms ask you to constantly create something new, but Zentangles differs in this by being an art that demands repetition with great consistency.

Krishna Vora was an amazingly patient teacher who taught over 20 styles of basic zentangle motifs that can be amalgamated to create wonderous designs.

OPINION

HAVE A PASSION? DON’T MAKE IT YOUR PROFESSION

If you have a hobby that you are obsessed about, you are very likely to be bombarded with the cliché 'follow your passion'. There have been articles, books, movies depicting 'inspirational' stories about the ones who pursued a passion and made a name in the field. Can you answer this honestly - what you are pursuing as a career now, is that what you wanted to do as a child? If yes, do you love your job? Anyone saying 'I love my job' is seldom honest. If indeed, it is an honest answer, the 'love' is unlikely to last more than a few months of initial euphoria. You see when you monetize your hobby; you lose your control over it. You get forced to comply with the demands of your employer or clients. You have your deadlines to meet and you get forced to think in a way that suits someone else and not you. If you are a painter and sell paintings, you cannot make ends meet if you continue to paint only those things that your heart tells you to. You cannot paint what you want to paint and as per your convenience. If you take up a contract by an art sales company or an art gallery, they want you to paint things that are most likely to be sold. You then are enslaved by a compulsion.

as per the boss's or client's satisfaction - all these over the time tend to associate a task with illfeelings. And eventually, a person starts to hate the same thing that he had desperately craved to do all his life. A child who is obsessed with basketball is likely to be seen spending days and nights dribbling, throwing trash into the bin like flinging a basketball into the net, eats, sleeps, lives basketball with a passion. Try taking a survey by asking the family members of professional basketball players if they carry the same obsession and passion towards the sport like they did during childhood. The player needs to please his sponsor, his team, his coach. He needs to play when he doesn't want to. He craves to see the day when he could finally retire from the game. Why do most sportsperson retire at a very early age even though they are healthy enough to play for decades more? You know the answer. Bouncers, wrestlers, boxers - they probably found they like punching or kicking people around and thought they could make it their profession. A child wanting to be a boxer would be seen making moves like a boxer all the time. The child might spend most his time punching his pillows. But does a professional boxer do that at home? Does he/she beat the living daylight out of people at home? No! They want to break away from their routine. They no longer have a love for the sport. Wrestlers, boxers, bouncers I have noticed are among the most gentle people when dealing with family and friends. The last thing they would like to ever do one more time when they are off-duty is to punch someone in the face.

'I hate my job' is not something that is voiced by those who are in the wrong profession that life took them towards. Ask a commercial pilot if he didn't want to be a pilot when he was a child. When you go back in time, you are most likely to find that he was always fascinated with planes and wanted to fly one someday. But can a pilot fly anywhere as he/she pleases? No. Will the pilot jump with enthusiasm about going on a second trip without a break because the airline is short staffed? No. The bottom-line is that the moment you begin to monetize your hobby, you are killing it. You are killing the zeal and passion for it.

Let’s take another classic example. Industries spend much more on research than any governments. Why is it that the greatest of inventions in the world have been made by scientists with very limited resources and budget? Why isn't any company with its army of researches making any groundbreaking inventions that can change the way of life of mankind?

Psychologically, when a negative feeling gets associated with a task repeatedly, one tends to hate that task. The compulsions, the reprimands, the need to meet deadlines, the stress, the disappointments one faces if the work isn't done 7

OPINION

HAVE A PASSION? DON'T MAKE IT YOUR PROFESSION Anything designed or innovated by companies are minor tweaks or polishes to their existing line of products. Did of the scientists working at major corporations not aspire to become another Edison or Newton? They are compelled to work, their innovations are scrutinized and their thoughts are amended according to the whims of their masters. They do not want to do their research with passion. They are compelled to think and 'innovate'.

that he crosses. Pay a certain sum of money for every online game duel or battle he/she wins. Set targets, follow-up, reprimand, demand you want to reach higher levels sooner. It wouldn't be long before that person craves to take a break from games and not too long before that person cannot bear to hear the word 'video-games' once again. Follow your heart. Do pursue your hobby with passion. But do not try making money out of it or gaining accolades out of it. Even the biggest of personalities in the world became known only after their deaths because they refused to comply to the demands of the society. They did what they wanted. Author Chetan Bhagat has written books and articles on people quitting their high-paying jobs or breaking social norms to do what they wanted and how happy they became. He is meant to be a source of inspiration for millions for being the one who left his high-paying job to pursue his passion for writing. Is he now really happy that he has to write and write? Is he happy to comply with the demands of the publisher who sets targets for him? If given a pen and a paper, or a laptop and enough idle time, does he just write and write? Isn't that what he loves doing? Um… I don't think so.

I am not sure how many people in the sex trade would have aspired to be in the profession. But sex is something pleasurable to all humankind. But do people in sex trade like it? No. They hate having to cater to the whims of clients. They hate having to force themselves to pretend to make love to people they do not even know and most of whom they would never in real life want to make love to. Their minds get tuned to think of sex as something despicable. They can't link passion and love to sex. If anyone is married to a sex worker, ask that person how it went if he/she attempted to have sex with their spouse who had a long day at work. (Woah! I will kill anyone who will ask me to do that again!) If you see anyone obsessed with video games that he/she plays them for as long as three days at a stretch, try this - offer to pay him for every level -----------------------------------

~Krishnan Iyer

BOOK REVIEW

THE WONDER, R.J. PALACIO

Having been on the run lately and stressed out due to work pressures, I haven’t really had the time to finish a book. I have started plenty of them but not managed to finish a single one up until now. It can be hard to focus on the book in hand when you have gazillion thoughts running through your head, each of which demands equal attention. One of the perks of being a teacher is, that you are forced to step out of your comfort zone, constantly expose yourself to new material under time pressure just so that you can deliver quality lessons to your students.

beyond appearance, faith, friendship, struggles, health (physical and mental), education system, growth, etc. This story revolves around the child (August) who was born with severe facial deformities and owing to a lot of surgeries and health issues he was home schooled up until the age of 10. His parents make the hard decision of eventually sending him to middle school despite the fact that his appearance is unpleasant (I hate to say this) and there is a huge risk of him facing rejection. This story helps us understand the journey of this boy as he finishes his first academic year (I will refrain from sharing details) from different perspectives. At the same time we get a sneak peek into the lives of other people. From parents who condemned the presence of this child in the school, a girl caught in the middle of her parents’ divorce, another boy who comes from a poor background but going to a school where majority of his classmates hail from affluent background, bullies who turn protectors, friends who stand up despite losing face in front of other friends, a girl who didn’t care about what the school thought and chose to befriend a physically deformed boy, a father and a middle school director who constantly use humour to save awkward moments and a mother who makes difficult decisions despite being plagued by constant fear and worry.

I was forced to read this book ‘The Wonder’ by R. J. Palacio in under a day for one of my students. I started off believing this is going to be a stressful read as I will have to come up with thought provoking questions at the end of it for her to practice. This was the least of my concerns as though the language is simple and it is easy to read, every short chapter in this book will provoke thoughts, raise questions and arouse empathy in you that didn’t exist before. We live in a world where divergence is looked down upon. Staying in shape, grooming, neatness, presentation- all of it has taken precedence. First impressions have taken large scale importance and in a world where you can either make it or break it, first few minutes is all you have to impress anyone in life. Few (if you are lucky, more) would wait to find out what qualities you are made of, wait for you to shine through dirt. I fear for the future born into a culture where eating disorders, sexual objectification, extreme individualism, prejudice, racism, intolerance, bullying, isolation are becoming common place.

What I love about this story is that we also get to see the struggles through the eyes of August’s sister. We see how she matures faster without receiving any acknowledgement for it, showers her brother with unconditional love, fights for his sake, worries about her social standing if her new high school friends find out about her brother and feeling an overwhelming amount of guilt for it. Another take away from this book is Mr. Browne who introduces the concept of precepts and through which he sows the seeds of kindness. His methods are not direct, he at no point tells the children what to do, he sets examples, he

Luckily for some students this book has been chosen as a part of the curriculum. The beauty of this book is that it touches on a lot of relevant themes, themes that are best fit for adolescent. In just a handful of pages the author addresses issues like bullying, tolerance, acceptance, looking 9

BOOK REVIEW THE WONDER, R.J. PALACIO

introduces ideas and just waits for them to grow on the children, which eventually does. I haven’t yet seen a book that beautifully illustrates the problems faced by children on a daily basis in school. It is a good read for educators because it helps them understand the dynamics between children, to help them look below the surface,

look for strengths even when they don’t seem to exist, give opportunities to children and best of all learn when not to intervene and let children figure things out for themselves.

~Krishna Vora

LENSA CAUGHT UNAWARES

You are not camouflaged, insect! This insect was seated on one of the railings at the viewpoint of Seven Sisters Falls in Meghalaya. Amidst the hustle and bustle of tourists and inspite of heavy winds, the moth was unperturbed. Guess it just forgot to note that the spot wasn't what its camouflage was meant to blend in with.

~ Krishnan Iyer

THE PUZZLE PAGE PUZZLES WITH A TWIST

This variation of the classical Farmer Fox Goat puzzle was told in a puzzle contest at my college two years ago. Here it goes…

The passenger list is: Bruce Wayne Bruce's 2 supermodels Mayor His 2 assistants Mr. Fox The secret case

Mr. Bruce Wayne is very fond of parties. Well, he’s more fond of girls, but, let’s just say that he’s fond of parties. So, he plans a party at an island off the coast of Gotham Bay. All his guests have already reached. And we all know, Mr. Wayne likes to make an entrance. So, he decides to go in the chopper along with two supermodels. But unfortunately for Mr. Wayne, the chopper can hold only two people.

And the constraints are: The capacity of the chopper is two persons. The secret case counts as a person (what, it's important!). Only Bruce, Mayor or Mr. Fox can fly the chopper. The Supermodels won’t stay with the Mayor without Bruce; Assistants won’t stay with Bruce without their Mayor and Mr. Fox won’t leave the case alone. So much for making an entrance, Mr. Wayne! All things said and done, we still have a party to attend to. Now that you’ve understood the situation, help Mr. Wayne and his friends (and the case, too) reach the party.

To add insult to the injury, the Mayor arrives with his two assistants to get a ride in the chopper. And there’s Mr. Fox, but with a secret case. Never mind, let’s just go to the party. But it seems someone doesn't want Mr. Wayne to enjoy tonight because there is no pilot to fly the chopper. And only Mr. Wayne, The Mayor and Mr. Fox know how to fly the chopper. Oh no, wait! That’s not it. Mayor’s assistants won't stay with Mr. Wayne without their Mayor (I don’t know Bruce Wayne freaks them out); the supermodels won’t stay with the Mayor without Bruce (they think the Mayor is a pervert but Bruce isn't!) and Mr. Fox would never leave the case. Let’s revise the situation.

I think I was able to solve this one, can you solve this puzzle?

~ Anubhav Balodhi

Solution: Let's call the models B1 and B2 since

Alternate solution: With Bruce Wayne B, Supermodels (S1 and S2), Mayor M, Assistants (A1 and A2), Mr Fox F and the Secret Case C.

they belong to B and the assistants M1 and M2 and the case F1. B and M B back B and B1 B and M back B and B2 B back M and B M back F and F1 B back B and M M back M and M1 B and M back M and M2 M back Finally M and B

Note: From the comments, Bruce can be with the Case while Mr Fox flys the chopper. Notation: (pilot) and passenger (F) and S1 (F) back (F) and S2 (F) back (M) and B (M) back (F) and C (F) back (F) and M (F) back (F) and A1 (F) back Finally, (F) and A2 11

THE PUZZLE PAGE OUTSIDE SUDOKU

The Outside Sudoku Puzzle:

Place a digit from 1to 9 in each empty cell so that each digit appears exactly once in each row, column and3X3 box. The digits outside the grid must appear in the 1st or 2nd or 3rd cell of the grid from the corresponding direction.

Solution to the previous issue’s puzzle As Easy As ABC:

Theme: I’m particularly proud of this one, because it has a separate theme on each side of the grid. The left – Normal number series * 2. The top – Number series * 2 with odds and evens stacked together. The right – All even digits. The bottom – All Odd digits forming a palindrome. Solved Example with helpful notes: 1. It is clear from the example that the digits aren’t necessarily in order. The most basic step is for corner boxes where both the vertical outside clues and horizontal outside clues contain same digits. This means these digits will always be at the intersection.

1. Range – {D,I,M,N}

2. Range – {A,E,M,N,S)

2. Use the digits as pointers too. If there is a 6 outside row 1 in the top right box, that means 6 can’t be in row 1 in top left and top middle boxes. Additionally, 6 can’t be in rows 2 and 3 in the top right box. Remember these kind of indirect implications when marking possibilities in this variant.

The Outside Sudoku Puzzle:

~PrasannaSeshadri

Note: The solutions to the puzzle of this issue, Outside Sudoku, will be published in the next issue. For more puzzles and Sudokus like this and to know more about the Indian National Championships, you can visit the Indian website for all puzzle matters, Logic Masters India – logicmastersindia.com

MUSINGS

PASSAGE OF TIME

And since you mention of tide, times and man here is something i had written long ago

It happened on the Mensa Yahoo Group… One member shared his poetic musing on the “Passage of time”. And it was enough to set rolling a beautiful cascade of thoughts, poems and even sketches! At such times, one just feels lucky to belong to the Mensa community and to be able to witness such stimulating discussions. Bringing this artistic exchange here, to the readers of MInd… The sketch (by Tushar Ajgaonkar) on the cover of this issue is also a part of this thread.

Times a’ changing, as does the tide From a lowly ebb to a highly ride; While the crest falls, the tide knows That it must re-awaken from the lows. The pride for the tide is not from the highs or the lows But from the fact that it tries constantly to reach a new pinnacle.

Future Past

We are but men with failings, on the outside or at the core. But that does not diminish the fact that we can achieve more.

Some moments, years hence Time will stop for sure You'll see your sons & wonder I was here before With one dearly loved Who is sadly no more This will happen, my son I've seen it and you'll see For a few heartbeats, then You'll find that you are me

To rise from the ashes and fly soaring in the sky That is true human spirit, that tells us to try To overcome our fears of failure Or pangs from our past misdemeanor A man is measured by his character His achievements and his legacy That he leaves behind here after And asserts his unique supremacy

~ Kishore Asthana It’s a short one that sends us thinking a long way…

Achievements are counted when you create something from nothing, When you overcome impediments and build an edifice That stands the test of time.

As a child I was taught to believe in fate, As a man I wonder if I started living too late. As a child I was taught to always have a say, As a man I wonder where my words flew away.

Rise, then, as a man new born! Rise, then, as a man un-torn!! Break the shackles that hold you down And fly into the expanses of famed renown

As a child I was taught to be the most kind, As a man I wonder if I lost my heart to my mind. No one stopped me when I entered this crazy race, Now I wonder have I made the world a better place? Dreams I dreamt, to be fulfilled in my prime, Now I just wish I had a little bit more time...

~Javed Aman

~ Zubin Shah 13

Following pages are from the Mensa World Journal

mensa w o r l d j o u r nal november 2015 issue #034

new member, Julie Jung-Vasseur p2

m ensa wor ld j our na l new member profile: Julie Jung-Vasseur Julie is 16 years old and comes from Sarreguemines, in France. At the time of writing (September), she is one of France’s newest members. One of her friends, a Mensan, suggested she give the test a go and being successful, she joined just a couple of weeks ago. Julie is a final year scientific baccalaureate student and physics, chemistry, biology and mathematics are her favourite subjects. Her joint passions are physics and animals and her aim when she finishes school at the end of the year is to study at the veterinary school Maison Alfort in Paris, whilst at the same time doing a master’s degree in theoretical physics “because physics is my passion and I would like to learn more about this subject. “

Julie plans to take care of animals in a reserve in Africa, Australia or in another country before returning to France to work in a veterinarian clinic. She’s particularly interested in prosthetics for animals, a relatively new field of veterinary science. Among her hobbies, Julie lists visiting castles “because the architecture of the 17th and 18th centuries are of great interest to me”. Other interests include dance, chess, and collecting minerals, seashells, fossils and stuffed animals. Welcome to Mensa, Julie!

Wondering what’s on in the Mensa world? Log into the International website at

www.mensa.org for the calendar of national events. You can also read or download copies of many national journals and the Mensa World Journal. mensa world journal november 2015

from the editor, It’s always uplifting to hear about a Mensan who is helping children reach their full potential and Korean Mensan Zhe Hyoungbeom is doing just that. US Mensan Hal Swindall tells us about his Eden Center on p4. On page 3, MIL Treasurer Rudi Challupner reminds us that there are approximately 139,880,000 people in the world who would qualify for Mensa, and asks for our ideas on how we could attract these potential members. Rudi’s e-address is treasurer-mil@mensa.org; he’s waiting for your ideas! British expat, Ian Mote, a Mensan for close on thirty years, has written a book, From Chicken Feet to Crystal Baths about his life and travels in China. Have a look at the synopsis and details of how to buy it on p9. Other articles that might interest you this month include Apollo Syndrome: dysfunctional high-IQ Society leadership on p5; Why the long face? Horses and humans share facial expressions... on p6, and, Laughter, then love: study explores why humour is important in romantic attraction on p8. Our regular science column by US Mensan John Blinke, Supplementally..., is on pxx, and Therese’s Puzzles are on p12 as usual. Happy reading!

Kate mwjeditor@mensa.org 02

m ensa wor ld j our na l from the executive committee...

Rudi Challupner, Treasurer

139,880,000 What does this number mean? I will explain a little later. Firstly, many thanks for reelecting me for a second term as Treasurer – I am happy to further improve the financial development and transparency by regular reports to you.

tual and social environment for our members. For purpose 3) we do a lot (gatherings, lectures, groups of regulars, …), for purpose 2) some things like MERF, but for 1)?

There we have a big opportunity to become really world-famous. Globally many things don’t go as they should – we could offer our brains and intellectual abilities to work out and promote better solutions and Now, just a few numbers for the fisproceedings. In the “good old days” we cal year 2014 to show what I mean had “other income” (from the use of the (all amounts in GBP): the budgeted Mensa name and brand mainly) of up income from components was 290,000, to 30,000 GBP. This year we had 2,657 the real income was 280,000. In 2014 only. To increase this amount even bewe had the expected very low financial yond the old values for example would resources of 170,000 only, which repre- help us tremendously to keep membersents just 60% of our annual costs. ship fees low. For 2014, the IBD requested an initial But to be successful we would need increase of 30.000 to 200,000. Due to projects which reach out to the “real” some cost savings the final result was an world; it is only then that we can earn even +40,000, so our financial back“real” income in return. We would need ing is 210,000 GBP now. Well done, projects to use our intelligence and our Treasurer, I would say. abilities to find excellent and sustainBut financial funds are good, only if they serve the purposes of Mensa. You all know, we have three main purposes defined in our constitution: 1) to identify and foster human intelligence for the benefit of humanity; 2) to encourage research into the nature, characteristics and uses of intelligence; and 3) to provide a stimulating intellecmensa world journal november 2015

ably effective solutions for the benefit of humanity. To offer the capacity of our brains can bring us a very big step forward towards concentrated attention and a high profile in the general public.

So, 139,880,000 ?

At present around 7 billion people live on the globe. Our potential membership is 2% - which in numbers equates to140,000,000. We have about

120,000 Mensans currently, so there are 139,880,000 out there we could attract. Isn’t this a worthy direction to aspire to? Maybe we should strongly think about improving our structure and administration. At the moment we have an International Chairman and a Treasurer, and Directors of Administration, Development, and Smaller National Mensas. Maybe an additional “Director of World Projects”, capable of initiating and pulling through some things would be an option? I would support this and I strongly believe that to spend some of our funds towards this direction is the best investment we could make. What is your opinion? Please let me know. I will appreciate each single idea! Thank you and kindest regards,

Rudi Challupner treasurer-mil@mensa.org 03

m ensa wor ld j our na l A Haven for Korea’s Highly Gifted Children: the Eden Center by Hal Swindall In Western countries, East Asian students are characterized as whiz kids who study incessantly and achieve top scores on standardized tests, an image borne out by the PISA rankings. Those of us who actually live and teach in this part of the world know, however, that there is a dark side to oriental scholastic achievement, namely a stifling competitive conformity with little room for individual initiative or creativity. That is why many highly gifted East Asian children actually suffer in school, without anyone to recognize and encourage their specialness. Amidst this grim scene there is one beacon of hope, at least in Korea: the Eden Center in the Seoul area, founded by Korean Mensan Zhe Hyoungbeom (pictured above right), who followed an IT career with companies like Microsoft Korea and Hewlett-Packard. In 1999, Hyoungbeom was impressed by an issue of Newsweek dedicated to giftedness that led him to the American psychologist James Webb, whose book he translated into Korean. Ten years later, he founded the Eden Center with modest offices in Seongnam, a city south of Seoul. After five years of counselling highly gifted children and their parents, Hyoungbeom became Director of Administration for the National Institute of Mathematical Science. Therefore, Eden presently only exists as a cybercommunity run by volunteers, with periodic family and parental gatherings on weekends; when he retires

mensa world journal november 2015

from NIMS, however, Hyoungbeom plans to “drive this community to the maximum” in new premises. Hyoungbeom named his institution after Edison, Da Vinci, Einstein and Newton, all of whom were highly unusual. In the ultra-conformist Korean school system, it is precisely the odd behavioral traits of highly gifted children that alienate them from their peers, teachers and even parents. Among Korean pupils, being labeled a “wangtta,” or social outcast, invites both verbal and physical bullying. Many highly gifted children are so treated, and Hyoungbeom believes the “intelligence gap” between gifted and non-gifted kids is actually widening, leading to even greater misunderstanding. He also identifies “teachers with prejudices” as making a bad situation worse by their impatience with constant questions from highly gifted children, who are bored by the slow pace of rote learning that defines the Korean educational system. Parents, for their part, are baffled by their highly gifted children’s sensitivity to stimuli such as noise, as well as their strong personal preferences; at the biweekly parents’ meetings, some mothers weep as they share their ordeals. Hyoungbeom’s remedy for this plight is accelerated learning and creative activities. For example, he claims he taught some gifted children how to add and subtract fractions in half an hour, whereas learning this skill takes place over several years in the regular school system. He

also gives children opportunities for hands-on work making things such as sword replicas and drums. Hyoungbeom believes that Eden’s children need “satisfactory intelligence motivation” just as much as nutrition, so that every day the child should be fed some new knowledge and challenging questions for an individual “intellectual mission.” Eden’s most popular family activity is its Annual House Concert, in which the children perform on stage and participate in a quiz competition; Hyoungbeom plans to hold it twice yearly in the future. About 200 families attend this event, and another 500 have joined Eden online, with more coming every year. Hyoungbeom thus believes his center is needed by many families, and plans to expand nationwide after he retires from NIMS, helped by volunteers from many professions. While he cannot singlehandedly change Korean education, Hyoungbeom is an example of a lone Mensan trying to make a difference in the lives of a fortunate few.

m ensa wor ld j our na l Apollo Syndrome: dysfunctional high-IQ Society leadership by Bryan Lundgren “Holy smokes, does this ever explain a lot,” I muttered aloud at the presentation on the Apollo Syndrome at the July 2015 Mensa Canada Annual Gathering. Vicki Herd, the newly-elected President, was giving an animated talk about how high-IQ leadership can be so muddled and frustrating. A knowing glance and a nod was given to me from one seat away. By using copious amounts of humour, Vicki entertained the audience and did not insult the Mensa Board. The Apollo Syndrome The Apollo Syndrome study by Dr. Meredith Belbin admirably captures how teams composed of all high-IQ individuals tend to fail miserably.1. The syndrome is named after the powerful Greek god of knowledge, who is a bit too smart for his own good. Today, we could say that Apollo experiences negative social consequences driven by the destructive influences of his cruel super-ego2 In these experiments, all-genius teams routinely came in last of eight different group designs. Groups with a balanced diversity of skills and abilities fared the best. Vicki Herd’s talk featured the bumbling Brains team on the popular TV show, Survivor. In this season (Feb – May, 2014) a genius Brains group was pitted against Beauty and Brawn teams. The Brains argued flagrantly and failed so miserably that they became the comic relief, until they were the first team to be voted off the island. mensa world journal november 2015

Apollo Team Flaws Flaw #1 Excessive, abortive, and destructive debate wastes time and drains emotional energy and thus destroys group cohesion. Flaw #2 Difficulty making decisions and lack of coherence when done makes performance marginal. Late decisions and planning omissions are routine. Flaw #3 Self-absorbed team members refuse to coordinate and cooperate. They lack focus and synergy and therefore accomplish less. Flaw #4 Sometimes a team avoids all confrontation in an attempt to get along. These groups make fewer, smaller and safer choices. Flaw #5 A team member who feels disrespected may actively attempt to sabotage others3. Keep Calm and Muddle On In genius teams, a willingness to look for points of agreement rather than seek disagreement helps improve quality and productivity. A strong leader who sets task parameters but backs away from managing individuals is also shown to help a group perform better.4 It can be entertaining to see how the Apollo Syndrome explains various high IQ society dramas, snafus and misfortunes. Maybe that is simply schadenfreude; taking pleasure in the misfortune of others. However, an awareness of pitfalls of Apollo

Teams may help them avoid some of the five flaws. There is no avoiding some overintellectualized leadership. Still, our high IQ societies muddle along and provide satisfactory experiences and friendship opportunities for many members. The final advice, Keep Calm and Muddle On, is not so strange or exotic at all. 1 Belbin, Management Teams - Why They Succeed or Fail, 1981 2 Wikipedia, Apollo 3 Andersson, Tit for Tat? The Spiraling Effect of Incivility in the Workplace, www.jstor.org/stable/259136?seq=1#page_scan_ tab_contents 4 Goffee and Jones, Clever: Leading Your Smartest, Most Creative People, Harvard Business Review, Aug 2009

Bryan holds a Doctor of Education degree in leadership, a Masters of Communications and a MBA in management. His claim to fame is attending 61 Mensa Gatherings in the last five years. Bryan applauds leaders who, in good spirit, manage the high IQ society business.

m ensa wor ld j our na l Why the long face? Horses and humans share facial expressions... Horses share some surprisingly similar facial expressions to humans and chimps, according to new University of Sussex research. Mammal communication researchers have shown that, like humans, horses use muscles underlying various facial features - including their nostrils, lips and eyes - to alter their facial expressions in a variety of social situations. The findings, published in PLOS ONE today (05 August 2015), suggest evolutionary parallels in different species in how the face is used for communication. The study builds on previous research showing that cues from the face are important for horses to communicate, by developing an objective coding system to identify different individual facial expressions on the basis of underlying muscle movement. The Equine Facial Action Coding System (EquiFACS), as devised by the Sussex team in collaboration with researchers at the University of Portsmouth and Duquesne University, identified 17 “action units” (discrete facial movements) in horses. This compares with 27 in humans, 13 in chimps and 16 in dogs. The study’s co-lead author, doctoral researcher Jennifer Wathan, said: “Horses are predominantly visual animals, with eyesight that’s better than domestic cats and dogs, yet their mensa world journal november 2015

use of facial expressions has been largely overlooked. What surprised us was the rich repertoire of complex facial movements in horses, and how many of them are similar to humans. “Despite the differences in face structure between horses and humans, we were able to identify some similar expressions in relation to movements of the lips and eyes. “What we’ll now be looking at is how these expressions relate to emotional states.” The researchers analysed video footage of a wide range of naturally occurring horse behaviours to identify all the different movements it is possible for horses to make with their face. They also carried out an anatomical investigation of the facial muscles that underpin these movements. Each individual facial movement that was identified was given a code. Co-lead author Professor Karen McComb said: “It was previously thought that, in terms of other species, the further away an animal was from humans, the more rudimentary their use of facial expressions would be. “Through the development of EquiFACS, however, it’s apparent

that horses, with their complex and fluid social systems, also have an extensive range of facial movements and share many of these with humans and other animals. This contributes to a growing body of evidence suggesting that social factors have had a significant influence on the evolution of facial expression.” She added that a systematic way of recording facial expressions would have a wide range of uses. “With EquiFACS we can now document the facial movements associated with different social and emotional contexts and thus gain insights into how horses are actually experiencing their social world. As well as enhancing our understanding of social cognition and comparative psychology, the findings should ultimately provide important information for veterinary and animal welfare practices.” http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/08/150805144820.htm#.VcNpJxAKOBI. mailto

m ensa wor ld j our na l the human body: four stages of evolution Research into 430,000-year-old fossils collected in northern Spain found that the evolution of the human body’s size and shape has gone through four main stages, according to a paper published this week. A large international research team including Binghamton University anthropologist Rolf Quam studied the body size and shape in the human fossil collection from the site of the Sima de los Huesos in the Sierra de Atapuerca in northern Spain. Dated to around 430,000 years ago, this site preserves the largest collection of human fossils found to date anywhere in the world. The researchers found that the Atapuerca individuals were relatively tall, with wide, muscular bodies and less brain mass relative to body mass compared to Neanderthals. The Atapuerca humans shared many anatomical features with the later Neanderthals not present in modern humans, and analysis of their postcranial skeletons (the bones of the body other than the skull) indicated that they are closely related evolutionarily to Neanderthals. “This is really interesting since it suggests that the evolutionary process in our genus is largely characterized by stasis (i.e. little to no evolutionary change) in body form for most of our evolutionary history,” wrote Quam. mensa world journal november 2015

Comparison of the Atapuerca fossils with the rest of the human fossil record suggests that the evolution of the human body has gone through four main stages, depending on the degree of arboreality (living in the trees) and bipedalism (walking on two legs). The Atapuerca fossils represent the third stage, with tall, wide and robust bodies and an exclusively terrestrial bipedalism, with no evidence of arboreal behaviors. This same body form was likely shared with earlier members of our genus, such as Homo erectus, as well as some later members, including the Neanderthals. Thus, this body form seems to have been present in the genus Homo for over a million years. It was not until the appearance of our own species, Homo sapiens, when a new, taller, lighter and narrower body form emerged. Thus, the authors suggest that the Atapuerca humans offer the best look at the general human body shape and size during the last million years before the advent of modern humans. The study, titled “Postcranial morphology of the middle Pleistocene humans from Sima de los Huesos, Spain,” was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-08/ bu-srh083115.phpsupple

Tapping to a beat and remembering rhythms may not be related skills... This may have implications for language ability, according to a study published September 16, 2015 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Adam Tierney and Nina Kraus from Northwestern University.

Rhythms, or patterns of sound and silence in time,may play a vital role in both speech and music. However, not knowing how rhythm skills relate to each other has limited researchers’ understanding of how language relies on rhythm processing. In particular, it is unknown whether all rhythm skills are linked together, forming a single broad rhythmic competence, or whether there are multiple separate rhythm skills. Using a battery of twobeat tapping and two-rhythm memory tests, the authors of this study recruited over 60 teenage participants to investigate whether beat tapping and rhythm memory/sequencing form two separate clusters of rhythm skills. The researchers found that tapping to a metronome and the ability to adjust to a changing tempo while tapping to a metronome seem to be related skills. The ability to remember rhythms and to drum along to repeating rhythmic sequences may also be related. However, the authors found no relationship between beat tapping skills and rhythm memory skills, and they suggest that these may actually be separate skills. The authors also hope that this discovery will inform future research disambiguating how distinct rhythm competencies track with specific language functions.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/

m ensa wor ld j our na l Laughter, then love: study explores why humour is important in romantic attraction Men might want to ditch the pickup lines and polish their punchlines in their quest to attract women, new research at the University of Kansas suggests. Jeffrey Hall, associate professor of communication studies, found that when two strangers meet, the more times a man tries to be funny and the more a woman laughs at those attempts, the more likely it is for the woman to be interested in dating. However, an even better indicator of romantic connection is if the two are spotted laughing together. Those findings were among the discoveries Hall made in his search for a link between humour and intelligence. For the past decade, research has debated whether women appreciate men’s humour, which is often cited as one of the most valued traits in a partner, because it allows them to suss out the smarts of potential mates. But Hall said finding someone who appreciates your sense of humour is valuable in its own right. “The idea that humour is a signal of intelligence doesn’t give humour its due credit,” Hall said. “If you meet someone who you can laugh with, it might mean your future relationship is going to be fun and filled with mensa world journal november 2015

good cheer.” In the article “Sexual Selection and Humour in Courtship: A Case for Warmth and Extroversion,” which was published online last month in the journal Evolutionary Psychology, Hall discusses three studies he per-

GPA and ACT scores, the study found that there was no connection between how smart the person was and how funny he or she claimed to be. But it did find a relationship with humour and extroversion. The study also didn’t find a difference in how men and women comprehended or appreciated humour. To find out how humour use by men and humour appreciated by women played a role in romantic attraction, the final study brought together 51 pairs of single, formed that didn’t find a connection heterosexual college students who between humour and intelligence. didn’t know each other. The pairs sat In the first study, 35 participants alone in a room and talked for about studied the Facebook profile pages of 10 minutes. Afterward they filled out 100 strangers to gauge their person- a survey. alities. Their evaluations were comThe results didn’t indicate that one pared with a survey completed by the sex tried to be funnier than the other. Facebook users. Hall found humorHowever, it did suggest the more ous people were much more likely to times a man tried to be funny and be extroverted than intelligent and the more times a woman laughed at were seen by strangers that way, too. his jokes, the more likely she was roThe data also suggested that men and mantically interested. The reverse was women posted similar amounts of not true for women who attempted humorous content to their pages. humour. In the second study, nearly 300 It also showed that when the pair students filled out a survey on continued on p9 humour in courtship. Looking at

m ensa wor ld j our na l An Englishman’s journey through China Ian Mote, a Mensan for close on thirty years, is originally from London. He has been an avid traveller since the time he accompanied his parents on around-the-world trips as a baby. At age 18, he lived in America for six months, experiencing a life in rural Kansas he had only seen in movies and on television. He went to Hong Kong for the first time in 1990 and again in 1995, when he tentatively took his first steps on China’s mainland soil. In 2002 he moved to Hong Kong permanently and lived there for four years, during which time he made many trips into China. In 2006 he moved to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and returned to Asia in 2008 to live in Shanghai, where he now resides. Ian has written a new memoir of travel and expatriate life in China, From Chicken Feet to Crystal Baths, which describes his journey from London to Shanghai. Filled with stories from his world travels, this new travelogue published by AuthorHouse, gives travel-lovers an inside view of the sights, sounds, and flavours from every province in China.

mensa world journal november 2015

He details some of his most memorable moments in China, including stays at first-class establishments in Shanghai, drunken banquets with miners in Inner Mongolia, wanderings in the Gobi Desert and the hardships of reaching Everest Base Camp … in a bus. Although it acts as a memoir of Ian’s travels through Asia, From Chicken Feet to Crystal Baths also serves to exemplify how a Western expatriate like Ian adjusted to life in China, with the highs and lows along the way. He describes the many cultural nuances of life in the Eastern world, and how they differ from those of the West. Ian hopes to share the stories from his travels so that he can inspire others to travel and explore the world as he did. From Chicken Feet to Crystal Baths Hardcover | 6 x 9 in | 472 pages | ISBN 9781504903950 Softcover | 6 x 9 in | 472 pages | ISBN 9781504903943 E-Book | 472 pages | ISBN 9781504903967 Available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble

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laughed together, they were more interested in each other. Finding no link between humour and intelligence, Hall offers four explanations for why humour is so important in finding partners: - Humour points to having a sociable and agreeable personality. “Part of what it means to be social is the ability to joke along with people,” Hall said. - Men use humour to gauge if women are interested in them. “Men are trying to get women to show their cards,” Hall said. “For some men it is a conscious strategy.” - When men make jokes and women laugh, they may be performing a script in courtship. Men acting like jokers and women laughing along may be part of it, too. “The script is powerful and it is enduring, and it dictates everything from asking someone out to picking up the tab,” Hall said. - Humor is valuable for humor’s sake. “Shared laughter might be a pathway toward developing a more long-lasting relationship,” Hall said.

Science Daily

European Mensa Annual Gathering (EMAG) 2016 will be held in Kraków, Poland, from 10 - 14 August Time to start planning...

m ensa wor ld j our na l New species of human relative discovered An international research team, which includes NYU anthropologists Scott Williams and Myra Laird, has discovered a new species of a human relative. Homo naledi, uncovered in a cave outside of Johannesburg, South Africa, sheds light on the diversity of our genus and possibly its origin.

The discovery also indicates that H. naledi intentionally deposited bodies of its dead in a remote cave chamber--behaviors previously thought limited to humans. Lee Berger, a research professor in the Evolutionary Studies Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand and a National Geographic Explorer-inResidence, led the expeditions that recovered the fossils more than 1,500 bones belonging to at least 15 individuals. The endeavor, the Rising Star expedition, involved an international “This discovery is unprecedented in the team of scientists, including the six sheer number of hominins collected “underground astronauts” who excafrom such a small area in the virtual vated and retrieved the fossils shortly absence of other animal remains,” says after their discovery in late 2013. Williams, an assistant professor in Williams worked at the excavaNYU’s Department of Anthropology. tion identifying and processing the “That makes this site unique. Moreover, material as it came out of the cave. the announcement describes only the In addition, both Williams and tip of the iceberg of analyses that will Laird attended a 2014 workshop, come, and we hope that is also true of in which scholars from around the the cave itself and the material that it world traveled to Johannesburg to still holds.” carry out studies on the fossils. At The team’s findings, which are the gathering, Williams led the published in two papers in the journal study of the axial skeleton, which ineLife, were announced by South Afcluded the vertebrae and ribs, while rica’s University of the Witwatersrand, Laird, a doctoral candidate, worked the National Geographic Society, and on the skulls. the South African National Research http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-09/nyu-nso091015.php Foundation. mensa world journal november 2015

supplementally Great Pyramid

AERAgram, Spring 2015, pp. 8 11. “What was the Original Size of the Great Pyramid’s Footprint?” How big is the base of the great pyramid of Giza? That’s a silly question, right? You can get the answer by reeling out a long tape measure along each side. To do that, you have to find the original edge on each side. This is not an easy task because most of the original facing stones have been stolen or are eroded. You would need to measure where the edge of the facing stones met the plaza surrounding the pyramid. Mark Lehner of the Ancient Egypt Research Associates (AERA) was able to find places where 168 feet of casing stone touch the platform on the north side. He found none at all on the south side. Out of an estimated original periphery of 920 meters, only 17% was in good enough shape to measure. Lehner’s survey is still in progress at this time. More Zombie Ants Science News Kindle Edition, September 5, 2015. “Caterpillar Treats and Tricks Insects.” (Current Biology) The Narathura japonica caterpillar exudes a sweet substance that ants love. In fact, they seem to become caterpillar goo junkies. If anything threatens the caterpillar, the ants go nuts defending it. The habituated ants rarely go home again. Chemical evidence suggests that the sweet goo suppresses dopamine production in ant brains. So they need a continuous supply of goo to be happy.

m ensa wor ld j our na l Looking ahead... RAM 2015 in Sevilla, Spain

Annual Gathering of Mensa Spain | 05 December 2015 - 09 December 2015

Young Mensa Weekend in Reeuwijk, Netherlands

Netherlands, The | 11 December 2015 - 13 December 2015

Silvensa 2015 in Vienna

Austria | 29 December 2015 - 01 January 2016 Celebrate New Year’s Eve 2015 with Mensa in Vienna,

MinD-Jahrestreffen 2016 in Bonn, Germany Germany | 20 April 2016 - 24 April 2016

Swedish Annual Gathering 2016 in Göteborg Sweden | 04 May 2016 - 08 May 2016

Danish Annual Gathering 2016 (MIK) Denmark | 14 May 2016 - 16 May 2016

officer directory Chair: Ms Bibiana Balanyi chairman-mil@mensa.org Director Admin: Ms Therese Moodie-Bloom, 17/23 Waiwera St, Lavender Bay 2060 Australia. admin-mil@mensa.org Director Development: Mr Björn Liljeqvist, Knektvägen 1, 196 30 Kungsängen Sweden. development-mil@mensa.org Treasurer: Mr Rudy Challupner treasurer-mil@mensa.org Dir. Smaller National Mensas: Mr Tomas Blumenstein, dsnm-mil@mensa.org Hon. President: Dr Abbie Salny, 407 Breckenridge, Wayne NJ 07470 USA Tel: +1 973 305 0055 SIGHTCoordinator: Mr Pierpaolo Vittorio SIGHT@mensa.org Int. SIG Coordinator: Ms Barbara Kryvko sigs@mensa.org Ombudsman: Mr Martyn Davies ombudsman@mensa.org Executive Director: Mr Michael Feenan, Slate Barn, Church Lane, Caythorpe, Lincolnshire NG32 3EL, UK Tel/Fax+44(0)1400272 675 mensainternational@mensa.org Editorial Staff Editor: Ms Kate Nacard, 407/23 Corunna Rd, Stanmore NSW 2048 Australia mwjeditor@mensa.org T: +61 2 9516 1024 Science: Mr John Blinke Johnb44221@cs.com Books: Position Vacant The Mensa World Journal (MWJ) is produced under the auspices of the Mensa International Board of Directors. Mandatory content as identified by the MWJ editor must be published in every national Mensa magazine. Publication of other content is recommended but optional. Opinions expressed in the MWJ are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of any other individual or any official Mensa body. Submission Guidelines: Language: English only. Text: MS Word (Windows), .rtf (Word/Mac), plain text, PageMaker (Windows), InDesign (Windows) Length: 500 word limit. Send by e-mail, fax, snail mail to the Editor. The Editor reserves the right to include or edit submissions for space and content considerations. All unoriginal submissions must be accompanied by written permission for publication from the original author.Permission is granted for MWJ articles to be reprinted in any Mensa publication provided that the author, MWJ and MWJ’s editor are acknowledged. Permission must be sought from the MWJ editor for reprinting of any part of the MWJ in non-Mensa publications. mensa world journal november 2015

H20

GAS

SIS

Now read down the centre boxes to find what you do when you agree to do something. -------------------------------------------------------------------------5. Which word meaning ROUGH, or STRONGFEATURED can have its letters rearranged to form a CHIP that one carries on the shoulder?

GOER

BACK

HOUSE

-BEAUT

-------------------------------------------------------------------------4. Find a word for each pair of words below, which can be added to the end of the first word, and also to the beginning of the second word, to make two new words.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------3. Which single word can mean all of the following? • curved • candid • serving • routine • visit • vigorous

BLOOD

-------------------------------------------------------------------------2. Which well-known saying is represented in the box?

ISCAT

1. What is the ten-letter word denoting a branch of mathematics which uses just these five letters:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------9. Which word meaning QUARRY can be spelled differently (yet sound the same) to mean BESEECH?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------8. The number on each stone represents the difference between the numbers in the two stones on which it sits. Can you work out the five two-digit numbers on the bottom stones? Each of the digits 0-9 is used once only in the bottom row.

e) OPENING MEASURE

d) FLAT BOARD

c) TRACK TEST

b) FIBBER’S DENS

a) CLOAK STEP

-------------------------------------------------------------------------7. If HALT MAIL = STOP POST and EVENING OBJECT = NIGHT THING, which pairs of anagrams are synonyms for:

912 825 792 141 242 732 69 372 249

6. Which of these does not belong in the group?

Consonants

] ] ] ] ] ] ]  Therese Moodie-Bloom 2008

The letters you find will spell out an occupation.

Last off!

[ Leading initiative [ Last door [ Second best [ Headmaster [ First Avenue [ First name [

-------------------------------------------------------------------------13. If BOTTLE-OPENER represents the letter B, and THIRD-CLASS represents the letter A, which letters do the following represent?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------12. What comes next?

Consecutive letters

Consecutive letters of the alphabet

Roman Numerals

Vowels

-------------------------------------------------------------------------11. Each colour represents a different letter. Use the clues below to fill in the blanks to form a wordsquare. The square will have four proper words reading across and the same four words down.

10. If three days before the day after yesterday is shorter than the day a week before four days after the day after tomorrow, are the days getting shorter or longer?

to make five new words?

F A

J S

-------------------------------------------------------------------------15. All of the letters of the alphabet are in the grid below, except for Q. Can you find an 8-letter word by moving from square to touching square, either up, down, sideways or diagonally? Each square may be entered once only.

WEED

TAIL

FISH

EON

BOAT

If you would like to discuss answers directly with MENSA, you can email Therese at therese@mensa.org.au 14. Which animal can precede each of the following

12 – 14 Genius material 9 – 11 Excellent lateral thinker 6–8 Very good 4–6 Good 0–4 Bad hair day

YOUR SCORE

SCORECARD: SCORE 1 POINT FOR EACH CORRECT ANSWER

1. Statistics. 2. Blood is thicker than water 3. Round 4. You come to the party 5. Rugged (grudge). 6. 242. Others are all divisible by 3. 7. a) Cape Pace b) Liars’ Lairs c) Trail Trial d) Plane Panel e) Door Rood 8. 14 90 23 57 86 9. Prey (Pray) 10. Longer 11. Sten, Time, Emit, Nets 12. 18 (The pattern is x2, -2) 13. Fireman 14. Pig 15. Symbolic (8 letters)

MENSA MINI IQ CHALLENGE

Therese’s Brain Teasers

mensa w o r l d j o u r nal december 2015 issue #035

At the Gala Dinner, IBD Meeting, Novi Sad, Serbia photo courtesy of Ervin Salgo, Mensa Serbia

m ensa wor ld j our na l The Mensa Foundation is now accepting scholarship applications from students who are pursuing their academic goals around the world. The Mensa International Scholarship program provides funds for international students enrolled at accredited colleges or universities in a country other than the United States. Eligibility is limited to Mensa members (except American Mensa). The Ed Vincent International Scholarship program provides funds for international students enrolled at accredited colleges or universities in the United States. Eligibility is limited to Mensa members (except American Mensa) or their children/dependents. These scholarships are awarded on the basis of an essay that describes the applicant’s career, vocational, and/or academic goals along with information that shows how the applicant intends to achieve the stated goal. The scholarships are unrestricted regarding age, race, gender, level of education, grade point average, or financial need. Eligible students can apply online at www.mensafoundation.org/scholarships. The site also includes more information, rules/guidelines, and an application. The submission period for the international scholarship programs begins on September 15, 2015. All applications must be submitted online by 05:59 GMT on January 15, 2016. The Mensa Education & Research Foundation is a philanthropic, non-profit organization funded by gifts from Mensa members, Mensa International, and other donors.

Wondering what’s on in the Mensa world? Log into the International website at

www.mensa.org for the calendar of national events. You can also read or download copies of many national journals and the Mensa World Journal. mensa world journal december 2015

from the editor, The recent Inter-

national Board of Directors’ (IBD) meeting was very successful! Some 120 international visitors attended and Mensa Serbia could not have provided a more stimulating and enjoyable program, both during the threeday meeting and the week-long ‘after’ trip of the sights of Serbia. Thank you Mensa Serbia! The Director of Development talks of some of the items discussed at the meeting on p3.

You may recall that the Asian Mensa Gathering in Sth Korea was cancelled owing to an outbreak of the respiratory disease MERS. On p4, Jim Werdell writes a glowing account of the Unofficial Gathering - well done, Mensa Sth Korea! Lots of interesting articles this month: Why is the Sky Blue - on Pluto? (p4); Being Sigmund Freud... and giving oneself excellent advice (p6); Brain Boosters could Lower IQ (p7); Kissing, ‘Ugh’ and Bee stings (p10), and Brain Consolidates Memory with 3-step Brainwave (p10). Therese’s Puzzles are on the back page as usual.

Season’s Greetings to you all - and best wishes for a wonderful start to 2016!

Kate mwjeditor@mensa.org 02

m ensa wor ld j our na l from the director of development... Opinions in Novi Sad I just came back from a great Mensa meeting in Serbia. Let me share with you some thoughts from a discussion we had.

The Constitution of Mensa says in section II under The Policy of Mensa: Mensa as an organization shall not express an opinion as being that of Mensa. Very well. But just before that, we can read the first policy: â&#x20AC;?Intelligence should be used for the benefit of humanity.â&#x20AC;? This is, of course, an opinion, albeit an abstract one. How do we square this circle? And who is to say what benefits humanity? Intelligence is good. Identifying and fostering it so that people can put it to good use is a message Mensa expresses by its very existence. What we must avoid, now and always, is to lend our name to this or that cause, that has nothing to do with our core policy. Should Mensa be against the use of marijuana? What is our opinion on biodiversity? Saving the whales? How about being for or against GMOs or file sharing? Inequality? These are just some issues where members have a wide range of opinions. Our very constitution embraces the diversity that our membership represents. But if Mensa lost track of its purpose, there would simply be no end to mensa world journal december 2015

the list of causes we would be pressured into supporting. And it gets harder to argue against another after agreeing to one. There would be conflicts over what to support, and this would distract from that which Mensa actually does stand for, beyond the political issues of our days, whatever they may be in each country. How does intelligence express itself ? How can we recognize it, whether in a school child or a gifted adult in the workplace? What difference does intelligence make? Mensa, in many countries, is working and leaving a mark in society by spreading awareness of these issues. It is possible to do this without crossing the line and becoming political or ideological. It does take good judgment on behalf of our spokespeople, but then again, is that not what intelligence is for? This topic, on opinions, is an important one that is good to revisit now and then. During the meeting of the International Board of Directors (IBD) in early October, we discussed this issue along with many others. The IBD meets once a year, not only to vote on budgets and policy, but also to share experiences and knowledge and to ponder the course of the society, with the future in mind. The meeting of the IBD was this

BjĂśrn Liljeqvist

year organized by Mensa Serbia, and it was held in the charming city of Novi Sad, by the Danube river. Our Serbian hosts did an excellent job making sure both the conference and the social gathering that surrounded it went smoothly. The full meeting minutes can be downloaded from Mensa.org. Let me share some items with you. - The position of International Communications Officer was created. This person will play an important role in promoting the brand of Mensa in the international arena, not least using online platforms and social media (see p7 for further details). At the time of my writing this, the position has not yet been filled.

continued on p4

m ensa wor ld j our na l continued from p3

- Did you know that you can check if a person is a member on Mensa.org? Lots of members take part in Mensa services outside of their own country. They travel abroad to gatherings or use the SIGHT program to find accommodation in people’s homes etc. The host group will then have to verify that they are indeed members, and this should be done using the centralized service we offer at Mensa.org, rather than sending queries to foreign offices that have to be handled manually by volunteers.

IBD meeting itself.

Why is the sky blue - on Pluto?

- A big part of Mensa International’s responsibility is development, establishing new Mensa groups and helping them grow. Our development plans for the next year include visiting a handful of potential Mensa countries, and helping to start up regular testing and member activities. New countries that are high on our list of priorities include Portugal, Russia, Taiwan, the UAE and Kenya.

Color images of Pluto released by NASA this year show the dwarf planet has a reddish brown surface. But an even newer photo shows that despite those colours, Pluto’s atmosphere has a blue haze. Why would a planet that’s been known to be reddish - even pink - have a blue sky? Scientists attribute the color disparity to tholins, particles formed after sunlight sparks chemical reactions between nitrogen and methane in the atmosphere. The process was first seen on Titan, Saturn’s moon; in the case of Pluto, the particles are likely gray or red, but they scatter blue light, making it the most visible to the human eye. Those tholins fall to the surface, forming what NASA has called “a reddish ‘gunk.’” “A blue sky often results from scattering of sunlight by very small particles. On Earth, those particles are very tiny nitrogen molecules. On Pluto they appear to be larger - but still relatively small soot-like particles we call tholins.” The images and data were recently sent back from the New Horizons spacecraft, which buzzed Pluto as it sped through the outer edge of our solar system in July. The craft is now 3.1 billion miles away from Earth. “Who would have expected a blue sky in the Kuiper Belt? It’s gorgeous,” says New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo.

“Next year, we meet in Kyoto, Japan, celebrating Mensa’s 70th anniversary. Come and join us!”

- In parallel to the IBD meeting, another meeting took place: A gathering for PR officers from more than a dozen national Mensas. As - Have you heard of ”Mensa-in-awe already had a big hotel full of box”? It is a custom-built website, board rooms, they used the opporcomplete with everything that a Mensa group needs, including a sec- tunity to have a conference on how to promote Mensa. The PR meeting tion for the public and one for the members. Mensa Denmark produced was an intiative by our new Director of Smaller National Mensas, Tomáš this to be used by as many countries Blumenstein, and the idea is to folas possible, and the IBD voted to low up with similar officer events in endorse this project and set aside a minor sum to support its deployment conjunction with IBD meetings in the future. internationally. - The component was set to 7%. This Next year, we meet in Kyoto, Japan, is the percentage of your membership celebrating Mensa’s 70th anniversary. fee that goes to Mensa International, and pays for all things like our inCome and join us! ternational office, new development, global name and logo protection, the Björn Liljeqvist Leadership Exchange Ambassador Director of Development Program (LEAP) and, not least, the development-mil@mensa.org mensa world journal december 2015

extracted from http://www.npr.org/sections/ thetwo-way/2015/10/09/447129015/why-isthe-sky-blue-on-pluto-that-is

m ensa wor ld j our na l The Unofficial Asian Gathering in South Korea An amazing thing happened in South Korea a few weeks ago, writes Jim Werdell First a bit of background. Seoul, South Korea was chosen as the site of the 2015 Asian Mensa Gathering (AMG). It was to be held from 28 to 30 August. The planning was well under way, and many participants had already signed up for the activities, when the viral, respiratory disease MERS rose its ugly head, and forced Mensa Korea to cancel the gathering - a decision that was well-supported. All AMG registration payments were immediately refunded in full. Despite MERS, a number of those who had signed up for the gathering indicated that they would probably still travel to Seoul. Many had purchased un-refundable plane tickets, and some just wanted to take the opportunity to visit Seoul. That’s where the “amazing thing” started. The Korean Mensans who had been planning the AMG activities decided that if Mensans were still willing to visit Seoul, those visitors would not be disappointed. The newly created Mensa Korea replacement function was quickly renamed AMUG, for Asian Mensa Unofficial Gathering. mensa world journal december 2015

The original venue for AMG, the Marriott hotel, decided that since the formal AMG function had been canceled, their offer of lower-cost rooms was also canceled. The AMUG team quickly found an alternative hotel at a very reasonable price. Tours were set up for the AMUG attendees - so many tours that one could pick and choose from multiple daily tours - even at the last minute. Dinners, and in many cases, lunches were set up at wonderful restaurants, with after-hours functions available every night. The tour to Jeju Island that was to have been offered as an option for an after-AMG function was resurrected. The organizing team found a guesthouse, literally 30 feet from the Pacific Ocean, with an incredible view. The airplane, bus travel, and

guestroom arrangements for Jeju all ran without a hitch. Compared with the three-day AMG schedule, the entire AMUG function lasted more than ten days. During that time, the tours, the meals, the travel arrangements - everything that constituted AMUG - worked exceedingly well. Having attended many annual gatherings in my Mensa lifetime, I will echo what many of the other AMUG attendees have already said, AMUG is one of the best annual gatherings I have ever attended - official or unofficial. Many, many thanks to Mensa Korea, and especially to Jongbok Kim ( JB) and Daeyong Kim, and to their helpers, Sujin Kim, Kijune Yoon, Jinwoo Jung, and others. They did an absolutely wonderful job. Simply “Amazing”.

Jim Werdell 05

m ensa wor ld j our na l Being Sigmund Freud ... and giving oneself excellent advice because of it

The illusion of being in another body affects not only our perception (as is already known) but also our way of thinking. Thanks to virtual reality, some subjects embodied Sigmund Freud and proved better at giving themselves psychological advice compared to when they were simply themselves.

could also affect thought processes: does being someone else make us think differently? Apparently it does. In the experiment, the volunteers wore very sophisticated VR (virtual reality) devices (headset and sensors) and were immersed in a virtual room where there was a duplicate representation of themselves and Sigmund Freud. The subject could alternately be in the avatar body representing The volunteers participating in Sofia themselves or in Freud’s body. The Adelaide Osimo’s experiments may have movements of the avatars, in the felt as if they were inside a screenplay by experimental condition, were perCharlie Kaufman, the author (and win- fectly synchronized with the subject’s ner of the Grand Jury Prize at the recent real movements, and this produced a Venice Film Festival) of “Being John powerful illusion of embodiment. Malkovich”. Just as the film characters In the first phase of each session catapulted themselves (literally, see to the subject was himself and described believe) into the famous actor’s body, a psychological problem to Freud. the subjects in Osimo’s experiment, after Then he immediately “jumped” into asking for advice on a personal psychoFreud’s body and replied to himself logical problem, replied to themselves by giving advice. The subject then embodying Sigmund Freud. “And when returned to his own body to listen to they embodied the Viennese psychoana- Freud’s voice (which was the same as lyst, their advice was much more effecthe subject’s but with a lower pitch tive than when they were plainly talking so as not to cause confusion). The exto themselves,” explains Osimo, a SISSA change could go on for as many turns (the International School for Advanced as the subject wished. Studies) researcher, who carried out this In another experimental condiwork in collaboration with colleagues of tion, Freud was not present and the the EVENT Lab of the University of subject asked and replied always Barcelona. Their research paper has just embodying himself, similarly to when been published in Scientific Reports. we talk to ourselves as we mull over a To create the illusion of being in problem. someone else’s body (perceiving it as our “The results are clear: giving own) Osimo relied on “immersive virtual oneself advice is always effective, but reality.” Previous studies have shown doing it as Sigmund Freud works this type of illusion to cause changes in better” explains Osimo. “The experiperception, but Osimo and colleagues ments contained a further control wanted to verify whether embodiment condition where the avatars’ movemensa world journal december 2015

ments were not synchronized with the subjects’ real movements. This considerably reduced, if not completely eliminated, the illusion of embodiment. In this condition the effect of the dialogue with oneself -or with Freud -- was nullified, which further confirms that it is the illusion that modifies the thought process.” Embodying someone whom we consider authoritative for some reason can therefore modify the processes we use to solve problems. And Freud, also in the light of Osimo and colleagues’ findings, is universally considered authoritative in psychological counselling. “Before proceeding with the experimental phase, we evaluated the psychoanalyst’s authoritativeness by means of questionnaires administered to a sample from the population from which the subjects selected for the experiments were drawn. Freud was not only found to be very authoritative and well-known, but his image proved also to be highly recognizable and prototypical.” “We have demonstrated for the first time that embodiment is also effective on high-level cognitive processes, such as problem solving and decision making,” concludes Osimo. “These findings also open up interesting scenarios on the front of psychological counselling: could virtual reality be used to this end some time in the future?.” http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/09/150917091300.htm

m ensa wor ld j our na l ‘brain boosters’ could lower IQ, new study finds The growing popularity of brain stimulators could be putting users at risk, according to a new survey. The study shows that the ‘brainboosting’ machines actually have a statistically significant detrimental effect on IQ scores.

munication throughout regions of the brain. Instead, they use tDCS to target brain structures, such as particular regions of the cortex. “All of our brain structures look more or less the same, but the reason why we’re all so different is that the electrical brain activities in our brains are very different,” Frohlich says. “We Published in the journal Behavioural Brain Research, the study says transcra- have to better understand this and nial direct current stimulation - tDCS target specific brain activity patterns.” Using a weak electrical current - has mixed results when it comes to boost the brain’s natural abilities to cognitive enhancement. “It would has been around for decades, but be wonderful if we could use tDCS the current boom within the science to enhance cognition because then community started in 2000, when we could potentially use it to treat German scientists published a paper cognitive impairment in psychiatric showing that tDCS could change the illnesses,” says Flavio Frohlich, study excitability of neurons in the motor senior author and an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina cortex – the brain region that controls voluntary body movement. School of Medicine. “So, this study Since then, there’s been an explois bad news. Yet, the finding makes sion of tDCS studies to try to make sense. It means that some of the most neurons more active or less active sophisticated things the brain can do, in terms of cognition, can’t necessarily and therefore change outcomes for be altered with just a constant electric a variety of brain functions, such as working memory and cognitive acucurrent.” ity, and for illnesses, such as depresFrohlich, however, says that ussion and schizophrenia. But Frohlich ing less common alternating current says that scientists still don’t know stimulation – so-called tACS – could exactly what the direct current does be a better approach and one that he to neural activity. has been investigating. Earlier this “I think our study demonstrates year, Frohlich’s lab found that tACS that we need to think of smarter ways significantly boosted creativity, likely because he used it to target the brain’s to engage the brain to really target the specific brain dynamics involved natural electrical alpha oscillations, in what we want to improve, such as which have been implicated in creacognition for people with depression tive thought. With tDCS, scientists or schizophrenia.” don’t target these brain waves, which Reprinted from Mensa Magazine, July 2015, Edirepresent neuronal patterns of comtor Brian Page

mensa world journal december 2015

A New Mensa Post! International Communications Officer The purpose is to bring together the several strands of communications within Mensa but also in respect of presenting a positive image of Mensa to the outside world. The person would be responsible for coordinating and advising on Mensa’s message across all media and including the creation of more dynamic content on the Mensa International web site. Do you have these skills? The International Communications Officer is expected to have professional experience in the field of Public Relations or media and to be proficient in written and spoken English, the official language of Mensa International. He or she will be required to play an active role in promoting the message and ‘brand’ of Mensa in the international arena across all relevant media, so expertise with the use of social media and strong IT skills are also required. Can you also volunteer a large chunk of your time? If interested, please write to the Director of Administration, admin-mil@mensa.org, copied to the Executive Director, MensaInternational@mensa. org for more details or go to the members’ section of www.mensa.

org.

m ensa wor ld j our na l AI system solves SAT geometry questions as well as average human test-taker The Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2) and University of Washington researchers have created an artificial intelligence (AI) system that can solve SAT geometry questions as well as the average American 11th-grade student, a breakthrough in AI research. This system, called GeoS, uses a combination of computer vision to interpret diagrams, natural language processing to read and understand text and a geometric solver to achieve 49 percent accuracy on official SAT test questions. If these results were extrapolated to the entire Math SAT test, the computer roughly achieved an SAT score of 500 (out of 800), the average test score for 2015. A paper outlining the research, “Solving Geometry Problems: Combining Text and Diagram Interpretation,” was a joint effort between the UW Computer Science & Engineering department and AI2. These results, presented at the 2015 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP) in Lisbon, Portugal, were achieved by GeoS solving unaltered SAT questions that it had never seen before and that required an understanding of: * Implicit relationships * Ambiguous references * The relationships between diagrams and natural-language text “Unlike the Turing Test, standardized tests such as the SAT provide us today with a way to measure a mamensa world journal december 2015

chine’s ability to reason and to compare its abilities with that of a human,” said Oren Etzioni, CEO of AI2. “Much of what we understand from text and graphics is not explicitly stated, and requires far more knowledge than we appreciate. Creating a system to be able to successfully take these tests is challenging, and we are proud to achieve these unprecedented results.” Ali Farhadi, senior research manager for Vision at AI2 and UW assistant professor of computer science and engineering said, “We are excited about GeoS’s performance on real-world tasks. Our biggest challenge was converting the question to a computer-understandable language. One needs to go beyond standard pattern-matching approaches for problems like solving geometry questions that require in-depth understanding of text, diagram and reasoning.” How GeoS Works GeoS is the first end-to-end system

that solves SAT plane geometry problems. It does this by first interpreting a geometry question by using the diagram and text in concert to generate the best possible logical expressions of the problem, which it sends to a geometric solver to solve. Then it compares that answer to the multiple-choice answers for that question. This process is complicated by the fact that SAT questions contain many unstated assumptions. GeoS had a 96 percent accuracy rate on questions it was confident enough to answer, which is an important dimension of learning. Today, GeoS can solve plane geometry questions; AI2 is moving to solve the full set of SAT math questions in the next three years. continued on p9

m ensa wor ld j our na l As part of AI2’s commitment to sharing its research for the common good, all data sets and software are available for other researchers to use. AI2 is also building systems that can tackle science tests, which require a knowledge base that includes elements of the unstated, commonsense knowledge that humans generate over their lives. Co-authors include lead author Minjoon Seo, a UW computer science and engineering doctoral student, UW electrical engineering assistant research professor Hannaneh Hajishirzi, and former UW undergraduate student Clint Malcolm. About AI2 AI2 was founded in 2014 with the singular focus of conducting high-impact research and engineering in the field of artificial intelligence, all for the common good. AI2 is the creation of Paul Allen, Microsoft cofounder, and is led by Dr. Oren Etzioni, a renowned researcher in the field of AI. AI2 employs more than 35 top-notch researchers and engineers, attracting individuals of varied interests and backgrounds from across the globe. AI2 prides itself on the diversity and collaboration of this team, and takes a results-oriented approach to complex challenges in AI. http://www.washington.edu/news/2015/09/21/ ai-system-solves-sat-geometry-questions-as-wellas-average-human-test-taker/ Graphic: AI2/University of Washington

European Mensa Annual Gathering (EMAG) 2016 will be held in Kraków, Poland, from 10 - 14 August mensa world journal december 2015

Brain consolidates memory with three-step brainwave Our long-term memory is consolidated when we sleep. Short-term

memory traces in the hippocampus, an area deep in the brain, are then relocated to more outer parts of the brain. An international team of neuroscientists, among who Mathilde Bonnefond and Til Ole Bergmann from the Donders Institute at Radboud Universiy, now shows how a three-step brain oscillation plays an important part in that process. Nature Neurosciences published the results on September 21st. Bonnefond and Bergmann specialize in research on oscillations: waves of brain activity. ‘Non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep is responsible for the memory consolidation during our sleep’, Bonnefond explains. ‘NREM is known for its very slow oscillations (SOs). Other types of oscillations are hidden inside these SOs. We discovered that three types of oscillations are nested inside each other in the hippocampus and have a joint function.’

per second (80 -100 Hz), and which reflect the local reactivation of the memory trace to be shuttled to the cortex. To summarize: SOs contain spindles, which in their turn contain ripples. ‘Earlier studies only coupled these oscillation types in pairs’, Bonnefond explains. ‘But now, we see that SOs, spindles and ripples are functionally coupled in the hippocampus. And we hypothesize that they provide fine-tuned temporal frames for the transfer of memory traces to the neocortex.’

Epilepsy The group of researchers investigated the process in human epilepsy patients during natural sleep. Doctors were looking for the brain areas responsible for their epilepsy, and the current research was done at the same time: with special electrodes, the researchers recorded oscillations from inside the brain. Bonnefond: ‘This was a great opportunity to investigate Slow waves, spindles and ripples the hippocampus, since it’s difficult to Slow oscillations only happen about measure deep brain regions with clasonce per second (~0.75 Hz). In a sical electrophysiological techniques.’ specific time frame within these SOs, The patients did not have to Bergmann, Bonnefond and their remember any specific information. colleagues found clusters of oscilla‘You’re consolidating memories every tions of an intermediate speed: the so night, so we investigated the process called spindles which happen about in general. The next step would be 15 times per second (12 -- 16 Hz). to link these clustered oscillations to And within these spindles, they found specific memories.’ clusters of superfast oscillations called http://www.ru.nl/english/news-agenda/vm/ ripples, which happen about 90 times brain-cognition/2015/three-step-brainwave/

m ensa wor ld j our na l Kissing, ‘Ugh’, and bee stings... Researchers who studied the consequences of intense kissing, the global use of the word “huh?” and how badly bee stings hurt on different parts of the body were among the winners of this year’s Ig Nobel prizes for comical scientific achievements. Researchers who studied the consequences of intense kissing, the global use of the word “huh?” and how badly bee stings hurt on different parts of the body were among the winners of this year’s Ig Nobel prizes for comical scientific achievements. The annual prizes, meant to entertain and encourage global research and innovation, are awarded by the Annals of Improbable Research as a whimsical counterpart to the Nobel Prizes, which will be announced next month. Among the 10 awards, three went to teams of researchers that revealed that nearly all mammals regardless of size take about 21 seconds to pee, showed it is possible to partially unboil an egg with chemicals, and used math to determine how a North African emperor from the 17th century fathered 888 children in just 30 years. Other teams earned prizes for attaching a weighted stick to a chicken’s rear end to demonstrate how dinosaurs might have walked, and for showing that acute appendicitis can be diagnosed by how much pain a patient feels when driven over speed bumps. Researcher Michael L. Smith shared the physiology and entomology prize for arranging honey bees to sting him repeatedly on 25 different

mensa world journal december 2015

locations on his body, revealing that one of the most painful locations was on his penis. Former winners of real Nobels handed out the spoof awards at the ceremony at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, organized by Marc Abrahams, editor of the Annals. The ceremony included a three-act mini-opera about a competition between the world’s millions of species to determine which one is the best. The Ig Nobel medicine prize went to two teams of researchers who conducted experiments to study the biological effects of intense kissing, which include decreasing skin allergies, and the literature prize was given to researchers who showed that the word “huh?” appears to exist in every language. Ig Nobel prizes this year also went to researchers who showed many business leaders developed a fondness for risk-taking after surviving natural disasters in childhood, and to the Bangkok Metropolitan Police for offering to pay policemen more money in exchange for not taking bribes. Richard Valdmanis http://newsdaily.com/2015/09/studies-onkissing-the-word-huh-among-ig-nobel-awardwinners/

evolution of the human brain? The human cerebral cortex contains 16 billion neurons, wired together into arcane, layered circuits responsible for everything from our ability to walk and talk to our sense of nostalgia and drive to dream of the future. In the course of human evolution, the cortex has expanded as much as 1,000-fold, but how this occurred is still a mystery to scientists. Now, researchers at UC San Francisco have succeeded in mapping the genetic signature of a unique group of stem cells in the human brain that seem to generate most of the neurons in our massive cerebral cortex. The new findings, published Sept. 24, 2015 in the journal Cell, support the notion that these unusual stem cells may have played an important role in the remarkable evolutionary expansion of the primate brain. “We want to know what it is about our genetic heritage that makes us unique,” said Arnold Kriegstein, MD, PhD, professor of developmental and stem cell biology and director of the Eli and Edyth Broad Center of Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCSF. “Looking at these early stages in development is the best opportunity to understand our brain’s evolution.” (extracted from http://www.sciencedaily.com/ releases/2015/09/150924124453.htm

m ensa wor ld j our na l Looking ahead... Silvensa 2015 in Vienna

Austria | 29 December 2015 - 01 January 2016 Celebrate New Year’s Eve 2015 with Mensa in Vienna

MinD-Jahrestreffen 2016 in Bonn, Germany Germany | 20 April 2016 - 24 April 2016

Swedish Annual Gathering 2016 in Göteborg Sweden | 04 May 2016 - 08 May 2016

Danish Annual Gathering 2016 (MIK) Denmark | 14 May 2016 - 16 May 2016

Polish Annual Gathering 2016 Poland | 26 May 2016 - 29 May 2016 Canada | 10 June 2016 - 12 June 2016, Toronto

Now read down the centre boxes to find an expression meaning VERY OLD.

YARD

TEE

LING

BARE

TIME

BEG

-------------------------------------------------------------------------5. Find a word for each pair of words below, which can be added to the end of the first word, and also to the beginning of the second word, to make two new words.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------4. Between them, the two brothers have $43. The older boy has $15 more than the younger. How much does the younger boy have?

SO PLAN PAST ANY LOUSE!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------3. Change one letter in each word to find a common saying

H EY B

-------------------------------------------------------------------------2. Which creature is represented below?

1. Which ANIMAL can be added to a PART OF A FEATHER to make a kind of DUPE? 4

__________ C E R __________ I V E R S A R Y

__________ P L E R

__________ P E R

__________ B E D

__________ I T O R

-------------------------------------------------------------------------10. Place three boys’ names and three girls’ names, each of three letters, in the spaces below to produce six proper words.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------9.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------8. Uncle John sent $200 to be shared by his five nephews, with the proviso that the eldest got $10 more than the second oldest, who got $10 more than the third oldest etc. How much went to a) the eldest, and b) the youngest nephew?

ARC

FEAT

SLIT

RAT

-------------------------------------------------------------------------7. Which three-letter word can be put after of each of the following words to make four new words?

6. Which letter comes next?

S K

K S

HER BED RED AGE PET

POT SOD CAR BAR WAS

Whoever heard of a ________ on a _________?”

She laughed, “Utter tripe!

He asked, “Where’s your ___________?”

Who met in the woods a young ____________

There once was a __________ from Lambright

-------------------------------------------------------------------------14. The same six letters can be rearranged to make different words. Replace the missing words with three of those arrangements.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------13. Which number is 45 less than six times itself?

DEN

GAR

-------------------------------------------------------------------------12. Take a word from each column and join them to make a new 6-letter word. Each word may be used once only. What are the six new words you’ve made?

11. Each colour represents a different letter. Using ONLY the musical notes of an octave, fill in the empty squares so that you have four English words that read across, and will read the same down.

23 53

19 7

5 49

-------------------------------------------------------------------------17. Which number does not belong?

16. At a recent conference, 20% of the registrants didn’t turn up. Of those who did, 10% left before the main speaker. An eighth of those remaining left after the main speaker; and two thirds of rest left before the closing speeches. Two thirds of those who stayed till the end got cabs home, and seven registrants were stranded in the hotel lobby without transport. How many people had registered altogether?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

HARD

__________________

MILD

15. Can you change MILD to HARD in five steps by changing one letter at a time? Each step must produce a proper word.

1. Goat (Scape-goat). 2. H-on-ey bee. 3. To play fast and loose. 4. $14. 5. One foot in the grave. 6. P. 7. Her. 8. a) $60 b) $20. 9. 2. 10. Jan, Pam, Bob, Dan, Sam, Ann. 11. Bead, Ease, Asks, Desk. 12. Garbed sodden potage carpet barred washer. 13. 9. 14. Priest, sprite, stripe, stripe, sprite. 15. Mild – Wild – Wind – Wand – Hand – Hard. 16. 100. 17. 49

Therese’s Brain Teasers

mensa w o r l d j o u r nal

january 2016 issue #036

International Photographer of the Year p4

1st place: Nelleke Boonstra (Mensa The Netherlands) A race against the melting point

m ensa wor ld j our na l watching a memory form

Sea slug study reveals novel memory mechanism Neuroscientists at Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science have discovered that some neurons are joiners seemingly eager to link-up with networks in which learning is taking place.

The study, which examined neural networks in the sea slug Tritonia, went on to track the same neurons as the memory faded, and found that the network didn’t simply return to its pre-training state. Instead, many of the new neurons stayed with the network and some of the original neurons departed. So The findings, which will appear this even though all behavioral evidence week in the journal Current Biolof learning was gone, the network ogy, have implications for how brain was left in an altered state, possibly networks can rapidly adjust to build revealing the presence of a latent memories. memory. “In a prior study, we discovered In a key experiment, the team neurons, whose participation in isolated a potential mechanism drivnetworks varies on a moment-toing memory formation. Driving two moment basis, displaying a surprisspecific neurons in the same way ing ambivalence about their comthey fire during learning, researchers mitment to the network’s function,” implanted a false memory. said William Frost, PhD, professor “The animal displayed a learned and chair of the Chicago Medical response, even though it had no School Department of Cell Biolactual experience,” said Evan Hill, ogy and Anatomy. “At the time, we PhD, the study’s lead author. didn’t know why the nervous system Insights into the mechanisms would contain neurons that behave controlling neuron reassignment this way. Here we find that such could contribute to the development variably-affiliated neurons appear to of new strategies for nudging neube pre-positioned for rapid recruitrons into functional circuits followment into memories.” ing brain injury, Frost said. The discovery represents a shift Eurekalert.org from the field’s long-term focus on synaptic plasticity - changes in the strength of the connections between European Mensa Annual neurons in response to learning Gathering (EMAG) 2016 toward a view that certain neurons Kraków, Poland have characteristics that predispose 10 - 14 August them to join memories. mensa world journal january 2016

from the editor, I hope 2016 has started well for you all and that you had an enjoyable and relaxing time over the holiday break! The results of the Mensa International Photographer of the Year 2015 are in - as you will have noted on the cover. The entries of the 2nd and 3rd place-winners are on pp 4 & 8. Congratulations to our brilliant photographers! There’s a new role, that of International Communications Officer, advertised on p9. Please consider volunteering for this position if you have the necessary skills and the time available. All enquiries to adminmil@mensa.org, copied to mensainternational@mensa.org. Did you know that Frédéric Chopin and Johann Sebastian Bach used everyday speech “cues” to convey emotion in some of their most famous compositions? Read about this new research on p7. Also in this issue, the winning essay for the Mensa International Scholarship Program 2015 (p5), Supplementally (p9-10) and Therese’s puzzles on p12. Happy reading!

Kate mwjeditor@mensa.org

m ensa wor ld j our na l

Leadership Exchange Ambassador Program 2016 Share and gain knowledge with volunteers all over the world

Applications open mid January Any member worldwide can apply Choose between:

LEAP Talks

LEAP Projects

The original set up: A group of LEAPers will travel to international gatherings to present on leadership experience and best practices that have helped their own Mensas grow. Previous contributions can be found here: www.animusm.com/leap. Best practice reports are thus available to Mensa groups all over the world. Participants will receive travel allowances from Mensa International.

The second LEAP track is open for innovation: Volunteers can apply with their own ideas to exchange knowledge between Mensa groups. With limited budget inventiveness is needed. Tell us what you want to do, how much money your project will require and what the benefits would be. We look forward to your ideas!

All LEAP information can be found on the LEAP page on mensa.org Make sure your application is supported by your National Board; DIMs need to get support from the Director of Development Questions can be asked to the LEAP Committee using leapcomm@mensa.org Innovative ideas, success stories and a great international network: LEAP helps national Mensas grow by exchanging leadership experiences and best practices with other national groups mensa world journal january 2016

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m ensa wor ld j our na l Mensa International Photographer of the Year This year, fifteen countries submitted entries. The judging panel constituted three members: Professor Zarko Drincic, Malvin Mayer, and Bibiana Balanyi. The chairman of the panel, Professor Drincic, from the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad, presented one of his own valuable paintings to the winner. The winning entry is featured on the front cover of this issue.

1st Place Nelleke Boonstra (The Netherlands) A race against the melting point 2nd Place Balazs Zoltan Sz체gyi (Hungary) Unexpected Call 3rd Place Krzysztof Sk처rka (Poland) Respect your time

2nd Place: Balazs Zoltan Sz체gyi (Hungary) Unexpected Call continued on p8 mensa world journal january 2016

m ensa wor ld j our na l Mensa International Scholarship Program The Mensa International Scholarship program provides funds for international students enrolled at accredited colleges or universities in a country other than the United States. Eligibility is limited to Mensa members. These scholarships are awarded on the basis of an essay that describes the applicant’s career, vocational, and/or academic goals along with information that shows how the applicant intends to achieve the stated goal. Below is the winning essay of Andrea Luppi (pictured at right) from Italy. What fascinates me most about intelligence is that it can study itself. Thanks to our intelligence, we have probed oceanic depths and outer space. Yet, our brain is still the greatest mystery of all. Although our knowledge of the brain has advanced enormously in the last century, most of its functioning still remains uncharted territory. In particular, the very existence of consciousness and thought is so puzzling that philosophy and neuroscience need to work together, in order to find an answer. I believe philosophy has to address the question of what the mind is, before the neural sciences can successfully explain how it arises from the brain. At the same time, philosophy itself is entirely based on thought. Therefore, I expect that by increasing our understanding of the processes that underlie thought, we will also be able to shed new light on the core questions of philosophy. In fact, research is already being undertaken in this direction, for instance regarding the neural bases of moral judgments. Hence, I believe that philosophy and the neural sciences can each benefit from the other. I aspire to be part of this exciting collaborative effort: in particular, I mensa world journal january 2016

am interested in the higher cognitive functions, which include conscious awareness and intelligence. While at high school, I established that the best way to achieve my goal of investigating the human mind was by studying Experimental Psychology and Philosophy at Oxford University, which is at the forefront of research in both disciplines. This required top grades at school, but also proficiency in English (which is not my native language). Eventually my hard work towards fulfilling these requirements was rewarded, and Oxford offered me a place. I now have the privilege to study alongside world-leading academics, and I am committed to making the most of it – which resulted in a prize and a merit-based scholarship at the end of my first year. As for the future, after graduating from Oxford I intend to pursue a Master’s degree in philosophy with a component of research. This is because I would like to gain in-depth knowledge in ethics and philosophy of mind, in order to relate them to the subsequent neuroscientific research that I will be carrying out. In particular, after the Master’s degree I intend to go on with doctoral research at the Consciousness and

Cognition Lab in Cambridge, where the state of transition between wake and sleep (and vice-versa) is currently being investigated. The rationale for this is a belief that by understanding the processes that lead us to naturally lose and re-gain consciousness every day, we can develop valuable insight into how consciousness arises in the first place. Consequently, I also intend to apply for a research internship at the Consciousness and Cognition Lab to work there for the summer. This would allow me to acquire hands-on experience on how scientific research is conducted in this area, as well as boosting my chances of being admitted to graduate study (and possibly securing a scholarship). Finally, after the PhD I expect to remain in academia and pursue further research on the higher cognitive functions, exploring thought and consciousness from a philosophical as well as a neuroscientific point of view. Ideally, I would also like to broaden public knowledge of both neuroscience and philosophy.

m ensa wor ld j our na l What’s in a Name? More Than You Think... What’s in a name? In the case of the usernames of video gamers, a remarkable amount of information about their real world personalities, according to research by psychologists at the University of York. Analysis of anonymised data from one of the world’s most popular computer games by scientists in the Department of Psychology at York also revealed information about their ages. Professor Alex Wade and PhD student Athanasios Kokkinakis, a PhD student on the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council-funded Intelligent Games and Game Intelligence (IGGI) project, analysed data from League of Legends, a game played by around 70 million people worldwide.. The researchers say that mining of video game data could become an important area of research into the personalities of players, as well as potentially providing evidence of clinical disorders such as autism, sociopathy or addictive personality. The research is published in Computers in Human Behavior. The developer of League of Legends, Riot Games provided 500,000 data points for the analysis. These mensa world journal january 2016

anonymised data contained user names, information on the in-game behaviour of players and the reaction of other gamers - the latter from the post-match ‘Honour’ and ‘Report’ feedback each player can file. The study is the first to use this methodology to examine player interaction in a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game. The researchers found that where

a player incorporated a profanity or other anti-social expression in their user name, they tended to adopt similar anti-social behaviour in the game environment. Conversely, they found that positive in-game behaviour such as rapid learning, team building or leadership might correlate both with positive usernames and with positive personality traits in the real world. The psychologists also discovered that where numbers featured in user names, it often provided an indica-

tion of the age of players. Professor Wade said: “Video games can provide a wealth of useful population-level information on developmental, cognitive and psychological processes. We found that people who have anti-social names tend to behave in an anti-social way within the game. Younger people behave poorly and older people less so. “This data is like a window on individual players’ personalities so we believe that we might be able to use video games a way of testing people’s personalities.” Athanasios Kokkinakis added: “We think this is just the tip of the iceberg - these massive datasets offer an unprecedented tool for studying human psychology across the globe.” http://www.sciencenewsline.com/ news/2015111717060049.html

Want to contribute to the MWJ? Send your article or memeber profile to mwjeditor@mensa.org Please restrict your word count to 500-600. Hi-res photos are welcome too.

m ensa wor ld j our na l Chopin, Bach used human speech ‘cues’ to express emotion in music Music has long been described, anecdotally, as a universal language. This may not be entirely true, but we’re one step closer to understanding why humans are so deeply affected by certain melodies and modes.

all” because the music features a very familiar cadence or rhythmic flow. It’s speaking to us in a language we understand. “If you ask people why they listen to music, more often than not, they’ll talk about a A team of McMaster researchers has strong emotional connection,” says Michael discovered that renowned European Schutz, director of composers Frédéric Chopin and Johann Sebastian Bach used everyday McMaster’s MAPLE (Music, Acoustics, speech “cues” to convey emotion in some of their most famous composi- Perception & LEarning) Lab, and an tions. Their findings were recently associate professor of published in music cognition and Frontiers of Psypercussion. chology: Cogni“What we found tion. was, I believe, new Their reevidence that indisearch stemmed vidual composers from an intertend to use cues in est in human their music parallelspeech perceping the use of these cues in emotional tion - the notion that “happy speech” speech.” For example, major key or for humans tends to be higher in pitch and faster in timing, while “sad “happy” pieces are higher and faster than minor key or “sad” pieces. speech” is lower and slower. The team also discovered that These same patterns are reflected Bach and Chopin appear to “tradein the delicate nuances of Chopin off ” their use of cues within the and Bach’s music, the McMaster examined music. team found. Sets with larger pitch differences To borrow from Canadian between major and minor key pieces singer-songwriter Feist, we “feel it

“For example, major

key or “happy” pieces are higher and faster than minor key or “sad” pieces.”

mensa world journal january 2016

had smaller timing differences, and vice versa. This may reflect efforts to balance the cues to avoid sounding trite, Schutz explains. Schutz and Matthew Poon, a Music alumnus from the Class of 2012, began analyzing a complete body or “corpus” of three 24-piece sets by Chopin and Bach several years ago, as part of an Undergraduate Student Research Award (USRA) project. Poon is now a graduate student at the University of Toronto. The pair analyzed all 48 preludes and fugues from J.S. Bach’s WellTempered Clavier (Book 1); as well as all 24 of Chopin’s Preludes (Op. 28). The pieces were chosen based on

continued on p8

m ensa wor ld j our na l their historical significance and enduring popularity amongst performers, educators and audiences. In order to ensure the tonal areas of each composition stayed in their stated keys, analysis was confined to the first eight complete measures excluding pick-ups - from each of the 72 pieces. Previous research on musical emotion has often involved manipulating existing melodies and compositions, Schutz explains. For example, transposing a melody higher or playing a song slower than written, in order to explore changes in emotional responses. The McMaster-led study built upon that work by exploring how Bach and Chopin used emotional cues in their actual work - music still performed and enjoyed on a regular basis, hundreds of years after it was composed. Can the same research be applied to modern pop music? Schutz says yes, although it’s much easier to analyze classical music based on the availability of sheet music and detailed notation, he offers. Andrew Baulcomb

http://dailynews.mcmaster.ca

Mensa International

Photographer of the Year continued from p4

3rd Place: Krzysztof Skórka (Poland) Respect your time

The valuable painting presented by the artist, Professor Zarko Drincic, to the International Photographer of the Year, Nelleke Boonstra

Wondering what’s on in the Mensa world? Log into the International website at www.mensa.org for the calendar of national events. You can also read or download copies of many national journals and the Mensa World Journal. mensa world journal january 2016

m ensa wor ld j our na l A New Mensa Post! International Communications Officer The purpose is to bring together the several strands of communications within Mensa but also in respect of presenting a positive image of Mensa to the outside world. The person would be responsible for coordinating and advising on Mensa’s message across all media and including the creation of more dynamic content on the Mensa International web site. Do you have these skills? The International Communications Officer is expected to have professional experience in the field of Public Relations or media and to be proficient in written and spoken English, the official language of Mensa International. He or she will be required to play an active role in promoting the message and ‘brand’ of Mensa in the international arena across all relevant media, so expertise with the use of social media and strong IT skills are also required. Can you volunteer a large chunk of your time? If interested, please write to the Director of Administration, admin-mil@mensa.org, copied to the Executive Director, MensaInternational@mensa.org for more details or go to members’ section of www.mensa.org. Closing date for applications: February 1, 2016

supplementally... Cold New World Wow! 2015 was a great year for space science. ESA’s Rosetta mission orbited comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko and set a lander on it. NASA’s Curiosity rover found good evidence for ancient flowing water on Mars. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has recorded probable outflows of salty ground water. New Horizons streaked by Pluto and its moons, taking lots of great pictures. The NASA/ESA SOHO satellite found its 3,000th comet. The Cassini orbiter zoomed through the water plumes spraying from Saturnian moon, Enceladus. The Dawn mission to the asteroid belt took photos of mysterious white mountains on the dwarf planet, Ceres. mensa world journal january 2016

Of all this, the Pluto flyby is most interesting to me. I suspect that chemistry operates differently at very low temperatures and nearzero atmospheric pressure: extreme cold would slow chemical reactions, but the presence of near-vacuum would enhance them. That would mean the minerals at the fringe of the solar system are much different from the ones we know. Well, terrestrial minerals are rocky, and there doesn’t seem to be any rock on Pluto’s surface. So,

john blinke

a Pluto rover would have to drive on surfaces we know nothing about. We hardly ever see methane, carbon monoxide or nitrogen as solids on Earth. Yet, the landscapes on most trans-Neptunian bodies must be made of such stuff. It’s a cold, new world out there. According to Science, October 16, 2015, pp. 260 - 261, the surface is water ice bedrock with a frosting of other ices: carbon monoxide; carbon dioxide; methane. There seem to be ice bergs made of water floating on a frozen nitrogen lake.

m ensa wor ld j our na l supplementally continued from previous page who were fed and housed with Time to Eat care. The pyramids did not rise Science News, October 31, 2015, p. in a wasteland. A mudbrick town 20. “Mobile App Busts Mealtime existed on the Nile at the foot of Myth.” (Cell Metabolism) the pyramids, containing bakeries, We eat three meals per day, right? breweries and cattle pens as well as Well, no, we don’t. In a study done barracks for workers. The at Salk Institute “From time stamps town could have been a for Biological major port of trade, bringStudies, reembedded in the ing in the huge amounts searchers asked images, they could of materials needed for participants to tell that most peo- pyramids and the lesser take pictures of everything they ple in the study ate tombs of nobles and their families. But the organiate. From time continuously.” zational skill needed for stamps embedded pyramid building was the in the images, greatest thing to come from the they could tell that most people in site. Sociological effects permeated the study ate continuously. When the Egyptian culture and supported researchers asked subjects to confine the longest running empire on the their eating to ten hours per day, their planet. calorie intake dropped 20% and they lost 7.2 pounds on average. They also Turn East at China slept more soundly and felt healthier. Science, October 16, 2015, p. 264. This is good news, because people “First Modern Humans in China.” find it is easier to decide when to eat When the very first humans venthan to decide what to eat. tured out of Africa, they seem to have turned right, into Asia instead Pyramid People of left, into Europe. At least, this Scientific American, November 2015, is the story told by a number of pp. 32 - 39. “The Pyramid Effect.” very human looking teeth found Contributed by Susan Stine. in a cave in China. The teeth could Treasure hunters and scientists have be as old as 120,000 years. Evibeen picking over the Giza plateau dence of humans in Europe only near the great pyramid for thousands goes back half that long. So homo of years. So, you might think there is sapiens must have migrated out of nothing more to find there. However, Africa in several waves, rather than ongoing excavations have caused a in a single grand invasion. Perhaps major shift in thinking about pyrathe presence of Neanderthals in mid building. Pyramid workers were Europe made the African iminot treated like slaves. They were grants go elsewhere. skilled and experienced tradesmen mensa world journal january 2016

Old Cheese Archaeology, May/June 2014, p. 20. “Secrets of Bronze Age Cheese Makers.” Some Chinese mummies found in the Taklamakan Desert had chunks of some kind of yellow stuff hung around their necks. It turned out to be cheese. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology were even able to identify the microbes that were used to make the cheese. This is not the earliest evidence for cheese manufacture in ancient times, but it is the best clue about the methods used 4000 years ago. Birds Do It Science News, October 31, 2015, pp. 22 - 25. “Chasing Breath.” Birds breathe very efficiently. Although they alternately pull air inand-out of their bodies, the gas flow is unidirectional in the places where oxygen enters the blood. Scientists had assumed this efficiency allowed birds to evolve their high-energy life style. But researchers at University of Utah have recently found that alligators also employ one-way air flow. Alligators obviously don’t fly. But they do remain as still as rocks while they wait for a chance to ambush prey. The beating of their hearts can drive enough oxygen through their fancy respiratory systems to keep them alive and alert when they aren’t moving around.

john blinke, Johnb44221@cs.com 10

m ensa wor ld j our na l Looking ahead... MinD-Jahrestreffen 2016 in Bonn, Germany Germany | 20 April 2016 - 24 April 2016

Swedish Annual Gathering 2016 in Göteborg Sweden | 04 May 2016 - 08 May 2016

Danish Annual Gathering 2016 (MIK) Denmark | 14 May 2016 - 16 May 2016

Canadian Annual Gathering 2016 in Toronto Canada | 10 June 2016 - 12 June 2016

American Gathering 2016 in San Diego, California United States | 29 June 2016 - 03 July 2016

EMAG 2016 in Kraków, Poland

Poland | 10 August 2016 - 14 August 2016

IBD Meeting 2016 in Kyoto, Japan

Japan | 13 October 2016 - 16 October 2016

officer directory Chair: Ms Bibiana Balanyi chairman-mil@mensa.org Director Admin: Ms Therese Moodie-Bloom, 17/23 Waiwera St, Lavender Bay 2060 Australia. admin-mil@mensa.org Director Development: Mr Björn Liljeqvist, Knektvägen 1, 196 30 Kungsängen Sweden. development-mil@mensa.org Treasurer: Mr Rudi Challupner treasurer-mil@mensa.org Dir. Smaller National Mensas: Mr Tomas Blumenstein, dsnm-mil@mensa.org Hon. President: Dr Abbie Salny, 407 Breckenridge, Wayne NJ 07470 USA Tel: +1 973 305 0055 SIGHTCoordinator: Mr Pierpaolo Vittorio SIGHT@mensa.org Int. SIG Coordinator: Ms Barbara Kryvko sigs@mensa.org Ombudsman: Mr Martyn Davies ombudsman@mensa.org Executive Director: Mr Michael Feenan, Slate Barn, Church Lane, Caythorpe, Lincolnshire NG32 3EL, UK Tel/Fax+44(0)1400272 675 mensainternational@mensa.org Editorial Staff Editor: Ms Kate Nacard, 407/23 Corunna Rd, Stanmore NSW 2048 Australia mwjeditor@mensa.org T: +61 2 9516 1024 Science: Mr John Blinke Johnb44221@cs.com Books: Position Vacant The Mensa World Journal (MWJ) is produced under the auspices of the Mensa International Board of Directors. Mandatory content as identified by the MWJ editor must be published in every national Mensa magazine. Publication of other content is recommended but optional. Opinions expressed in the MWJ are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of any other individual or any official Mensa body. Submission Guidelines: Language: English only. Text: MS Word (Windows), .rtf (Word/Mac), plain text, PageMaker (Windows), InDesign (Windows) Length: 500 word limit. Send by e-mail, fax, snail mail to the Editor. The Editor reserves the right to include or edit submissions for space and content considerations. All unoriginal submissions must be accompanied by written permission for publication from the original author.Permission is granted for MWJ articles to be reprinted in any Mensa publication provided that the author, MWJ and MWJ’s editor are acknowledged. Permission must be sought from the MWJ editor for reprinting of any part of the MWJ in non-Mensa publications. mensa world journal january 2016

BUN

Now read down the centre boxes to find what Mary ordered for dessert

ICE

STAND

BALD

HUMBLE

HERE

TREE

GEL

PINE

UNCLE

d) EARNEST – RE – SINCE -------------------------------------------------------------------------4. Find a word for each pair of words below, which can be added to the end of the first word, and also to the beginning of the second word, to make two new words.

c) TO – PIN – WINE

b) SEED – SAFE – CUR

a) PEACH – MISER – STEAK

-------------------------------------------------------------------------3. Two words in each group of three can be joined together and have their letters rearranged to form a synonym for the remaining word. Eg CALM – DIN – OUR makes CLAMOUR and DIN. The words are in no particular order.

R I D B N E A

-------------------------------------------------------------------------2. Decipher the puzzle in the box to describe an absent-minded person

1. Which FOOLISH PEOPLE can have their letters rearranged to spell a type of SEAT?

March 30, 2008

MINI IQ CHALLENGE

55 94

35 2

LAGOONS

DECORATION

NOISELESS

-------------------------------------------------------------------------7. The same six letters can be re-arranged to form five different words. Each of the words can mean one of the following. What are the five words? HEED

Z H A T V W R M N E

-------------------------------------------------------------------------6. Which of these does not belong in the group?

5. If a green block weighs 1 kilo plus half a green block, and a red block weighs 1.2 kilos plus a quarter of a red block, which is heavier? TOE-LAN

OLTHE

WWIAMG

NTTE --------------------------------------------------------------------------

7 10 14 13 16 20 19 22 26 25 ?

8 1

14 5

Consonants

There are no roman numerals

Consecutive letters

Consecutive letters of the alphabet

Vowels

13 Genius material 10 – 12 Excellent lateral thinker 7–9 Very good 4–6 Good 0–3 Bad hair day

YOUR SCORE

SCORECARD: SCORE 1 POINT FOR EACH CORRECT ANSWER

 Therese Moodie-Bloom 2008

They’d have __________ to speed up affairs.

To give neighbours a __________

They’d act on a dare

Who acted as if they’d no _________

There once was a young bunch of lairs

-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 13. The same five letters can be used in different arrangements to fill in the blanks. Can you find the 10. three anagrams to complete the limerick?

YMPHU

9. Unscramble the following to find the odd one out:

If you would like to discuss answers directly with MENSA, you can email Therese at therese@mensa.org.au 12. What comes next?

1. Oafs (sofa). 2. Scatter-brained. 3. a) Cheapskate (miser) b) Secured (safe) c) Pinot (wine) d) Sincere (earnest). 4. An apple pie with cream. 5. Green (2 k; red weighs 1.6 kilos). 6. R. All other letters are made of straight lines only. 7. Listen Silent Tinsel Enlist Inlets. 8. 17 83 94 65 20. 9. HOTEL. Others are humpy, lean-to, wigwam and tent. 10. 22 (The sum of the differences between the surrounding three numbers). 11. Rust Unto Stop Tops. 12. 28 (25 + 3). 13. Cares scare races

MENSA MINI IQ CHALLENGE

Therese’s Brain Teasers

mensa w o r l d j o u r nal

february 2016 issue #037

Christmas cheer in Sydney, Australia, with hostess Teresa Wong in the red top at centre.

in this issue

the search for happiness p2 send your book for review p2 Mensa Public Relations p3 what was discussed at the IBD meeting in Serbia p4 logical olympiad - a Mensa Czech Republic initiative p5 how can I tell if theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re lying? p6 complex humour isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t that funny p7 finding it hard to quit smoking? p8 supplementally... p9

m ensa wor ld j our na l Have you written a book and would like it reviewed in the Mensa World Journal? Mensan authors worldwide are invited to send a copy of their book to Hal Swindall for a review to be published in the MWJ. Hal Swindall is a California native who earned his PhD in comparative literature from UC Riverside in 1994, the same year he joined Mensa. Since then, he has wandered East Asia as a vagabond English professor. His interests include languages, classical music and travel Hal Swindall writing Hal’s e-address is paneurasia@gmail.com; contact him for details of how you can send your book to him for review.

The search for happiness: using MRI to find where happiness happens Researchers have mapped out using MRI where happiness emerges in the brain. The study paves the way for measuring happiness objectively - and also provides insights on a neurologically based way of being happy.

gion in the medial parietal lobe that becomes active when experiencing consciousness. People feel emotions in different ways; for instance, some people feel happiness more intensely than others when they receive compliments. Psychologists have found that emotional factors like these and satisfaction of life together Wataru Sato and his team at constitutes the subjective experiKyoto University have found ence of being “happy.” The neural an answer from a neurological perspective. Overall happiness, mechanism behind how happiness emerges, however, remained unclear. according to their study, is a combination of happy emotions Understanding that mechanism, and satisfaction of life coming according to Sato, will be a huge astogether in the precuneus, a recontinued on p9

mensa world journal february 2016

from the editor, As you can see at left, we have a highly-qualified US Mensan who’s just dying to review the books you’ve written! Contact him for how to get your book to him. Also, two of our Executive Committee members have news of the Novi Sad IBD meeting (pp3 and 4), and on p5, there’s news of the 2015 Czech Republic Mensa’s Logical Olympiad which not only spreads community awareness of Mensa, but also is of great benefit to thousands of schoolchildren throughout the Republic. On p6, we learn that sarcasm, white lies and teasing can be difficult to identify for those with certain disorders, and did you know that the shortest jokes are the best jokes - or so research would suggest (p7). Supplementally has some interesting scientific items on p9 and there’s news of the Mensa Foundation’s International Awards on p12. Happy reading!

Kate mwjeditor@mensa.org

m ensa wor ld j our na l

From the director of smaller national Mensas… Dear Mensa members worldwide, Every year, Mensa gets more and more international. Members are connected on-line on website www.mensa.org or maybe even more on Facebook. There are more and more international events with more and more participants. We all can meet at EMAG (2016 in Krakow), American Mensa AG (2016 in San Diego), Asian MG (2016 in Ghuangzou), Silvensa (in Vienna), MyCamp (2016 in Denmark) and many other events. This is a very good trend and every National Mensa can help its members to get information about these events and opportunities. Probably the most international event is the official meeting of IBD – International Board of Directors. Not only is the IBD the governance body of Mensa International, but as a meeting of all chairmen or representatives of Full National Mensas, the IBD represents a great market of ideas and experience from Mensa projects and activities worldwide. This was the case at the 2015 IBD meeting in Novi Sad where we also organized the inaugural meeting of National Mensas’ board members and other responsible people in PR (Public Relations). Fifteen people from different countries came, presented their PR activities and projects and also discussed preparations for Mensa’s 70th Anniversary. This was only the beginning of our plans to create a Network of National Mensas. We described 18 departments of Mensa life, a plan to create on-line contact list of responsible members in National Mensas and also an on-line document of their projects, activities, experience and plans in each department. Finally this could be an inspiration for us as well as a guide tool for developing activities in our countries. It is not necessary to invent the wheel again and again if our neighbours already have enough experience. We plan to hold all these contacts and materials open for all the members in order to support them in mensa world journal february 2016

their voluntary work for Mensa. We also plan to organize meetings of responsible members at IBDs and EMAGs. If you would like to join this team or add some ideas, please visit page www.blumenstein.cz/ DSNM I hope that all of you have had a successful start to year 2016 in your (not only Mensa) life.

Tomas Blumenstein Director of Smaller National Mensas dsnm-mil@mensa.org

Vale

Yiannakis Argyrou Droussiotis was 96 years old when he died in November, 2015. An historical figure of Limassol, Yiannakis an agriculturist by profession, interrupted his studies in Greece in 1942 to join in the fighting against the Germans and their local collaborators during World War II. In the civil conflict that followed he was captured, tortured, imprisoned for six and a half years and sentenced to death. A man of many virtues that were forged during his years of imprisonment, with a warm heart and a unique politeness of soul, he was mentally active until the last days of his life. He was Mensa Cyprus’s oldest member. He will be greatly missed.

m ensa wor ld j our na l ... and from Chris Leek In the December, 2015 issue of the Mensa World Journal, Director of Development Björn Liljeqvist shared with you several of the highlights of this year’s IBD conference in Serbia. I would like to continue this theme by focusing on some of the achievements detailed by the various National Mensa groups over the past year. A section of the IBD meeting was devoted to this topic, with a number of national Mensa presenting. Mensa the Netherlands has raised its profile by participating in several television programmes. Mensa Sweden, having increased its membership, has made the leap from social club to an organization which pursues Mensa’s three constitutional aims. They held their first conference on giftedness, targeted at a non-Mensa audience mainly comprising parents and teachers, which was televised by an educational channel. Mensa Czech Republic continues to enjoy stellar success, and attract positive publicity, with its Logical Olympiad, which this year had 58,000 entrants from 2,900 schools (read more about this on p4). Mensa Greece has been collaborating with the University of Athens on research into the genetics of giftedness, with Mensa members contributing DNA samples. Mensa Switzerland, with the input of its younger members, has been working with the University of Basel on norming of an IQ test for the age range 5-20, to ensure that it correctly identifies the high IQ spectrum. Mensa Malaysia has instituted a testing partnership among the non-academic accreditation community and expect this to increase both membership and recognition of the Mensa name. Mensa Slovakia’s membership has increased by 300% over the past four years. The meeting host, Mensa Serbia, has increased participation greatly and feel they have also benefited from the publicity attendant upon the IBD conference. You can read more about these accomplishments in the minutes of the IBD meeting on www.mensa.org. It is not only in the meeting, however, that we get to hear what Mensa groups other than our own have been doing. mensa world journal february 2016

One of the joys of the annual IBD process is that each national group submits a report describing their activities, triumphs and occasionally setbacks over the previous twelve months. These can make fascinating reading. For me, some of the highlights of these reports included the following: many countries can be proud of the increase in membership of their national Mensa; among the Provisional and Emerging national groups, Romania has grown by 20%, China and Macedonia by 25%, Mexico by 33% and the Philippines by 70%, and Hungary, a full national Mensa, has grown by 43% in the past year. Well done. In advance of the 70th anniversary of the founding of Mensa next year, other anniversaries are coming thick and fast. Mensa Singapore has celebrated its 25th anniversary and Malaysia its 30th, while Australia, Austria and New Zealand reached their 50th. Congratulations! Mensa South Africa has been working with the Round Table to distribute charity food parcels to the disadvantaged. Mensa Spain held a Tolkien reading day. Argentina has been working with the educational authority in Buenos Aires to address the needs of gifted children. Mensa Switzerland lowered its membership fee. American Mensa has launched “Mensa Match”, continued on p5

m ensa wor ld j our na l Logical Olympiad Finals 2015 Prague, Czech Republic The Logical Olympiad, a Mensa Czech Republic initiative, is a competition in logic tasks intended for children and young people from all over the Czech Republic. Unlike various mathematical or knowledge-based competitions, the Logical Olympiad is based solely on the participants’ ability to think logically. The tasks are based on general principles, and no special knowledge is required to solve them; the only prerequisite is common sense, along with logical and correct judgment. As the Logical Olympiad is not a knowledge-based competition, even pupils who do not have much success in traditional school subjects can stand

out. The identification of hidden talents is one of the benefits of this competition. The Logical Olympiad has been regularly organized since 2008, and has gradually developed into its present form: while the nomination round is held on-line, semi-finals (held in all 14 Czech regions) and the ceremonial final round (in Prague) require the personal attendance of participants. There are three categories: two Primary School (Categories A and B), and Secondary School (Category C) This year there were 58265 entrants from 2,900 schools. and the winners (pictured above) of the three categories were Category A - Martin Reichl, 11y, Category B - Václav Trpišovský (he also won last year), 13y, and Category C - Ondřej Motlíček (he also won 2013 C and 2012 B), 17y.

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a partnership with the match.com dating service, which has proved advantageous in terms of participation and publicity as well as financially. Japan, whose membership rose to over 1,500, hosted a very successful Asian Mensa Annual Gathering in late 2014. Sadly, 2015’s AMAG in Korea had to be cancelled due to the outbreak of MERS (though a number of Mensans who went anyway were delighted with the hospitality they received). Mensa France broke the 2,000 members barrier, and their week long summer university, Lud’été, has become so popular that they are looking for a new venue for next year’s anticipated 400+ participants. I find it fascinating to learn about the varied and interesting activities Mensa is involved in throughout the world. It’s a real ‘rainbow coalition’ of the serious and the light-hearted, socially and intellectually aware, providing aid and assistance while having fun. If you would like to peruse the country reports, they, as well as reports from the ExComm, committees and postholders, are available with the Agenda for the IBD meeting, published on www.mensa.org/milgovernance. Happy reading!

Chris Leek, proxy Chair, Mensa UK

European Mensa Annual Gathering (EMAG) 2016 Kraków, Poland 10 - 14 August Time to start planning...

Congratulations to all! mensa world journal february 2016

m ensa wor ld j our na l how can I tell if they’re lying? Sarcasm, white lies and teasing can be difficult to identify for those with certain disorders; a new video inventory developed at McGill may help. When she says she loves my new haircut is she telling the truth or being sarcastic? The answer isn’t always obvious. Especially for men - or for those who suffer from diseases like Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s, or neurodevelopmental conditions such as Autism spectrum disorder. For people with these problems, any form of nonliteral speech such as sarcasm, teasing or ‘white lies’ can be very confusing. A new video inventory of examples of these forms of indirect speech developed at McGill should help in the diagnosis and clinical testing of those with disorders of this kind. A ‘truth bias’ underlies much social interaction “We tend to believe that people tell the truth most of the time,” says Kathrin Rothermich, from McGill’s School of Communication Disorders, who has recently published a paper about the research in PLoS ONE. “So sarcasm and white lies seem to go against a basic understanding of what ‘should’ be happening in conmensa world journal february 2016

versation. This may be part of what makes them so difficult to recognize for some.”

sarcasm was used in relationships between friends that participants were better able to recognize it.

Rothermich has spent the past two years creating and testing the Relational Inference and Social Communication (RISC) video inventory that she and her colleague Marc Pell developed. These 926 videos feature short, scripted scenes with four actors interacting in different relationships (as romantic partners, as friends, as colleagues, or as boss/employee).

“We discovered that the actors found it hardest to perform the scripts where they were being asked to tease one another,” says Rothermich. “This may be because teasing doesn’t always fit easily or logically into a conversation. One of the things that some actors did was to speak with exaggerated or fake accents when they were teasing, which is something that other researchers have also reported.”

In each exchange, the actors were asked to convey one specific intention through their speech and actions: to be sincere, to tell ‘white lies’, to tease, or to be sarcastic. Rothermich then tested the videos on a group of healthy participants to see whether they were able to identify the speakers’ intentions, and to get feedback about which vocal and facial cues had helped them identify what was going on. Sarcasm is especially hard to recognise Participants were generally well able to identify the speakers’ intention either when one of the actors was teasing someone else or when they were telling the truth. What proved to be more difficult, and particularly so for men, was identifying when someone was being sarcastic. It was only when

The researchers believe that this video inventory will provide a useful tool for future research on social cognition, inter-personal communication and the interpretation of a speaker’s intentions in both healthy adult and clinical populations. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/11/151127102616.htm

Want to contribute to the MWJ?

Send your article or memeber profile to mwjeditor@mensa.org Please restrict your word count to 500-600. Hi-res photos are welcome too.

m ensa wor ld j our na l Complex humor is no laughing matter:

jokes with too many mind-twists not found to be funny Since the earliest times, laughter and humour have performed important functions in human interaction. They help to expedite courtship, improve conversational flow, synchronize emotional states and enhance social bonding. Jokes, a structured form of humor, give us control over laughter and are therefore a way to elicit these positive effects intentionally. In order to comprehend why some jokes are perceived as funny and others are not, Robert Dunbar and colleagues at Oxford University investigated the cognitive mechanism underlying laughter and humor. The research is published in Springer’s journal Human Nature. The ability to fully understand other people’s often unspoken intentions is called mentalizing, and involves different levels of so-called intentionality. For example, an adult can comprehend up to five such levels of intentionality before losing the plot of a too-complex story. Conversations that share facts normally involve only three such levels. Greater brain power is needed when people chat about the social behavior of others, because it

requires them to think and rethink themselves into the shoes of others. The best jokes are thought to build on a set of expectations and have a punchline to update the knowledge of the listener in an unexpected way. Expectations that involve the thoughts or intentions of people other than the joke-teller or the audience, for example the characters in the joke, are harder to pin down. Our natural ability to handle only a limited number of mindstates comes into play. In order to shed light on how our mental ability limits what we find funny, the researchers analyzed the reaction of 55 undergraduates from the London School of Economics to 65 jokes from an online compilation

“The task of professional comics is to elicit laughs as directly and as fast as possible.”

mensa world journal february 2016

of the 101 funniest jokes of all time. The collection mostly consisted of jokes from successful stand-up comedians. Some jokes in the compilation were mere one-liners, while others were longer and more complex. A third of the jokes were factual and contained reasonably undemanding observations of idiosyncrasies in the world. The rest involved the mindstates of third parties. The jokes were rated on a scale from one to four (not at all funny to very funny). The research team found that the funniest jokes are those that involve two characters and up to five back-and-forth levels of intentionality between the comedian and the audience. People easily lose the plot when jokes are more complex than that. The findings do not suggest that humor is defined by how cleverly a

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joke is constructed, but rather that there is a limit to how complex its contents can be to still be considered funny. According to Dunbar, increasing the mentalizing complexity of the joke improves the perceived quality, but only up to a certain point: stand-up comedians cannot afford to tell intricate jokes that leave their audience feeling as if they’ve missed the punchline. “The task of professional comics is to elicit laughs as directly and as fast as possible. They generally do this most effectively when ensuring that they keep within the mental competence of the typical audience member,” says Dunbar. “If they exceed these limits, the joke will not be perceived as funny.” It is likely that everyday conversational jokes do not involve as many intentional levels as those that have been carefully constructed by professional comedians. Further research needs to be conducted in this area. However, Dunbar’s findings shed some light on the mechanics of language-based humor and therefore on the workings of our mind. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/11/151124112146.htm

mensa world journal february 2016

Finding it hard to quit smoking? Blame it on your DNA...

A new study finds that people with a particular version of a gene involved in the brain’s reward system are more likely to succeed in quitting smoking. Compared with people who have other versions of this gene, those with the lucky DNA were more likely to abstain from cigarettes. The benefits of this genetic variant could be confirmed only for people of Caucasian descent, researchers reported Tuesday in the journal Translational Psychiatry. Smokers with East Asian ancestry were just as likely to quit, or not, with any of the three versions of the gene. The study authors didn’t have enough data on black or Latino smokers to say whether the gene variant had any effect on their ability to quit smoking. The gene in question is known as ANKK1. It happens to be right next to the DRD2 gene, which helps the brain recognize dopamine, the chemical that’s produced in the brain to reinforce useful behaviors like eating and having sex. Addictive drugs, including nicotine, also cause dopamine levels to spike. One small piece of the ANKK1 gene called Taq1A seems to influence the function of DRD2. People inherit either an A1 or A2 version of this gene fragment from each of their parents. That means there are

three possible genotypes: two A1s, two A2s or one of each. The researchers, from Zhejiang University School of Medicine in China, analyzed the merits of these three genotypes by combing through data in 23 studies published between 1994 and 2014. These studies looked at 11,151 current and former smokers, who were surveyed once or tracked over time. All of them allowed researchers to test their DNA to see which version of Taq1A they had. When it comes to quitting smoking, the helpful type is A2/A2. Compared with Caucasians with one or two A1s, those with two A2s had better odds of kicking the habit. Exactly how much better their odds were is not clear. As it happens, A2/A2 was the most common genotype among Caucasians who were included in the analysis - 62.5 percent of them had it. Among Asians, that figure was only 39.1 percent. The researchers didn’t say how many blacks or Latinos had the A2/A2 version of the gene. The findings could help researchers develop smoking cessation drugs that could be tailored to people, based on their genetic profile, the researchers wrote. Extracted from http://medicalxpress.com/ news/2015-12-youre-blame-dna.html

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set for quantifying levels of happiness objectively. Sato and his team scanned the brains of research participants with MRI. The participants then took a survey that asked how happy they are generally, how intensely they feel emotions, and how satisfied they are with their lives. Their analysis revealed that those who scored higher on the happiness surveys had more grey matter mass in the precuneus. In other words, people who feel happiness more intensely, feel sadness less intensely, and are more able to find meaning in life have a larger precuneus. “Over history, many eminent scholars like Aristotle have contemplated what happiness is,” lead author Wataru Sato said. “I’m very happy that we now know more about what it means to be happy.” So how does that help us? Sato is hopeful about the implications this has for happiness training. “Several studies have shown that meditation increases grey matter mass in the precuneus. This new insight on where happiness happens in the brain will be useful for developing happiness programs based on scientific research,” he said. Extracted from http://www.sciencenewsline.com/ news/2015112013130004.html

mensa world journal february 2016

supplementally... Wonder Dog Science News online edition, November 28, 2015. “Muscle-Gene Edit Creates Buff Beagles.” Look out, Snoopy! Researchers at the South China Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine have used the CRISPR gene editor to make very buff, and apparently healthy, beagle dogs. Out of 35 embryos treated, 27 survived and two carried enough of the modified myostatin gene to become Hulk Hogan hounds, so to speak. This is the same gene that gives bully whippets and Belgian blue cattle their muscular physiques. The technique is not very efficient in dogs at this time, but it will certainly be refined in the future. Electrophorous Electricus Science News Kindle edition, November 28, 2015. “Eels’ Electricity Peaks When They Wrap.” (Current Biology) Electric eels famously shock their prey into submission. But some fish are tougher than others. What can a hungry Electrophorous electricus eel do when a meal fights back? The front of the eel’s body is

a positive electrode. The tail is a negative electrode. The animal curls so its mouth is close to its tail, and this doubles the jolt delivered to a fish held in its jaws. Scientists at Vanderbilt University in Nashville proved this by teasing electric eels with a dead fish loaded with sensors — an eel chew toy. By the way, the 500 volt jolt delivered by an eel does not necessarily kill a fish by shocking it to death. Muscular convulsions exhaust the unlucky prey so that it can’t struggle. Skin Deep Science News, November 14, 2015, p. 10. “Skin Soaks Up Toxic Air Pollutants.” So, you work in a toxic environment. But you will be fine as long as you wear a chemical respirator. Right? Maybe not. Some chemicals can soak in through your skin. Not only that, but they can stay in your clothes so you continue to be poisoned when you leave the environment. What can you do? Wear fresh clothes every day, because clean continued on p10

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clothing can slow skin absorption. And get out of dirty work clothes quickly. Diamonds Are Science, November 6, 2015, pp. 613 - 614. “How Buried Water Makes Diamonds and Oil.” It had been thought that diamonds could only form in the deep Earth after a long series of unusual events. But a new idea says that only one essential step is necessary after the carbon and pressure are present: the hot brine diamonds grow from has to become acidic. Given this chemical change, diamonds can grow out of solution and then any kind of earth movement can bring them to the surface. This is plausible because highly pressurized water is a much better solvent than water at sea level pressure Tut’s Tomb smithsonian.com, November 11, 2015. “New Scans Show There Might Be a Hidden Room in King Tut’s Tomb.” Contributed by Stephen Darnell. Using a different part of the electromagnetic spectrum can reveal secrets. In the case of Egyptian archaeology, this means looking at ancient monuments and tombs with infrared scanners. In particular, King mensa world journal february 2016

Tutankhamun’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings seems to have two secret chambers hidden behind a painted wall. Some researchers think this could be where Queen Nefertiti is buried. She was a wife of the heretic pharaoh, Akhenaten and possibly the mother of Tut. The great pyramids are another obvious target for infrared scanning in the near future. Before Stonehenge New Scientist, September 12, 2015, pp. 6 - 7. “”New Stonehenge.” A site known as Durrington Walls is walking distance from the famous Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain. Remote sensing devices have found underground objects that appear to be Stonehengestyle standing stones that had been toppled and buried in antiquity. They once made a horseshoe shaped structure containing about 90 stones that lined an artificial mound and ditch. But, according to a long article at NYT.com dated November 9, 2015, chalk-filled holes can resemble buried stones when viewed with ground penetrating radar. Some digging will be required to find out what is really down there.

Down Under New Scientist, November 21, 2015, p. 7. “Aussie Flood Alert.” Uh, oh. In 2011, Australia suffered devastating flooding due to the effects of a La Nina weather event. 2017 is shaping up to be the same. The world is currently experiencing an El Nino event, in which warm water builds up in the equatorial Pacific. The pattern usually reverses into a La Nina the following year, delivering torrential rains to some parts of the globe. Applying Apps Harvard Health Letter, December, 2015, pp. 1, 7. “Helping Your Heart: There’s an App for That.” Your smart phone can do almost everything for you. And now it can make you healthier. You can download apps to remind you to take pills and to keep you focused on your exercise program. Apps can monitor your blood pressure and pulse. Some may require external hardware to do the job, but others only need you to hold a finger to the camera lens. Apps will not treat your health problems, but they can gather information that you and your doctor can use to keep you healthy.

Johnb44221@cs.com 10

m ensa wor ld j our na l Looking ahead... MinD-Jahrestreffen 2016 in Bonn, Germany Germany | 20 April 2016 - 24 April 2016

Swedish Annual Gathering 2016 in Göteborg Sweden | 04 May 2016 - 08 May 2016

Danish Annual Gathering 2016 (MIK) Denmark | 14 May 2016 - 16 May 2016

Canadian Annual Gathering 2016 in Toronto Canada | 10 June 2016 - 12 June 2016

American Gathering 2016 in San Diego, California United States | 29 June 2016 - 03 July 2016

EMAG 2016 in Kraków, Poland

Poland | 10 August 2016 - 14 August 2016

IBD Meeting 2016 in Kyoto, Japan

Japan | 13 October 2016 - 16 October 2016

officer directory Chair: Ms Bibiana Balanyi chairman-mil@mensa.org Director Admin: Ms Therese Moodie-Bloom, 17/23 Waiwera St, Lavender Bay 2060 Australia. admin-mil@mensa.org Director Development: Mr Björn Liljeqvist, Knektvägen 1, 196 30 Kungsängen Sweden. development-mil@mensa.org Treasurer: Mr Rudi Challupner treasurer-mil@mensa.org Dir. Smaller National Mensas: Mr Tomas Blumenstein, dsnm-mil@mensa.org Hon. President: Dr Abbie Salny, 407 Breckenridge, Wayne NJ 07470 USA Tel: +1 973 305 0055 SIGHTCoordinator: Mr Pierpaolo Vittorio SIGHT@mensa.org Int. SIG Coordinator: Ms Barbara Kryvko sigs@mensa.org Ombudsman: Mr Martyn Davies ombudsman@mensa.org Executive Director: Mr Michael Feenan, Slate Barn, Church Lane, Caythorpe, Lincolnshire NG32 3EL, UK Tel/Fax+44(0)1400272 675 mensainternational@mensa.org Editorial Staff Editor: Ms Kate Nacard, 407/23 Corunna Rd, Stanmore NSW 2048 Australia mwjeditor@mensa.org T: +61 2 9516 1024 Science: Mr John Blinke Johnb44221@cs.com Books: Position Vacant The Mensa World Journal (MWJ) is produced under the auspices of the Mensa International Board of Directors. Mandatory content as identified by the MWJ editor must be published in every national Mensa magazine. Publication of other content is recommended but optional. Opinions expressed in the MWJ are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of any other individual or any official Mensa body. Submission Guidelines: Language: English only. Text: MS Word (Windows), .rtf (Word/Mac), plain text, PageMaker (Windows), InDesign (Windows) Length: 500 word limit. Send by e-mail, fax, snail mail to the Editor. The Editor reserves the right to include or edit submissions for space and content considerations. All unoriginal submissions must be accompanied by written permission for publication from the original author.Permission is granted for MWJ articles to be reprinted in any Mensa publication provided that the author, MWJ and MWJ’s editor are acknowledged. Permission must be sought from the MWJ editor for reprinting of any part of the MWJ in non-Mensa publications. mensa world journal february 2016

opper Blac

International Award

The Mensa Education & Research Foundation is seeking nominations for its annual Copper Black International Award for Creative Achievement. Judges will consider inventions, innovations, or unique improvements shown to work. Artistic accomplishments are not eligible. Winners receive recognition and a $500 cash prize, donated by the award’s namesake. You may nominate yourself or another Mensan. Award applications are available online at mensafoundation.org.

ATTENTION OUTSTANDING

MENSANS! The Mensa Education & Research Foundation is seeking nominations for the International Intellectual Benefit to Society Award.

Completed forms must arrive by March 1, 2016.

t mensafoundation. a y l org app

This award recognizes the application of intellectual abilities that result in tangible benefit to society. You’re eligible for the award if you’ve created one or more of the following: • • • •

Education programs for employees Client or business associate education programs Programs designed to educate the public Intellectual research and development

These activities may be paid or unpaid. Consideration is given to the number of individuals affected.

F O U N D AT I O N

For more information on rules and exclusions, or to apply, visit mensafoundation.org. Completed forms must arrive by March 1, 2016.

F O U N D AT I O N