What's in a dolphin's tool kit?

Dolphins have been seen using sponges, perhaps to protect their mouths from coral. And some bottlenose dolphins create rings of mud with their tails to trap fish.

"You don't need hands to create tools, you just need a clever mind," says Emory neuroscientist Lori Marino, an expert in dolphin neuroanatomy. Marino is speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting on Sunday, Feb. Feb. 21, about how the high intelligence of dolphins calls for us to rethink how we treat them.

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Read more about Marino's work in the Washington Post.

Photo by Brenda McCowan shows bottlenose dolphins playing with a bubble ring they created.

Breathe in, breathe out, be happy

Drawing by Erica Endicott shows Tibetan script for parts of the atom. The words were created for the Tibetan language by the Emory-Tibet Science Initiative.

Nascent Buddhist April Bogle writes in Emory Magazine:

"I want to be happy. Coming to the end of a terrible decade that has included two debilitating divorces, a wrenching child custody battle, and my beloved father’s diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease, I’ve decided it’s time to figure out this happiness thing. ...

"The journey took me to Washington, D.C., where Buddhist monk and author Matthieu Ricard, actor Richard Gere, and Daniel Goleman, author of "Emotional Intelligence" and several other books on the science of the mind, were coming together to help raise money for the Emory-Tibet Science Initiative. A joint project of the University and the Tibetan monastic academic system, the initiative is perhaps the boldest and most challenging program in the Emory-Tibet Partnership."

Read more in Emory Magazine about Bogle's first-hand experience with how Emory is applying modern Western science to ancient Eastern tradition -- and why Richard Gere thinks it will change the world.

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Galileo's view of the sky

NASA photo of Halley Comet from 1986.

Emory celebrated Galileo’s birthday Feb. 15 with a talk by Vatican astronomer Brother Guy Consolmagno.

“Because of light pollution, I suspect many of the undergraduates in this room have never seen the Milky Way, which is a real tragedy,” he said.

Consolmagno told of his own “soul-shaking experience” of seeing his first comet. He described the 1618 comet controversy, when Galileo asserted that comets were an optical illusion, and how he ridiculed a more accurate theory by Jesuit mathematician Orazio Grassi. The controversy was among the circumstances contributing to Galileo being put on trial by the Catholic Church, for championing the idea of a sun-centered solar system. He ended his life under house arrest.

“Both Galileo and Grassi reacted with deep passion to this comet, and both were guilty of seeing more of what they wanted to see than what was actually there,” Consolmagno said.

“Galileo was brilliant. He got so many things right that the things he got wrong stick out like sore thumbs,” he added. “Scientific truth is at best always incomplete. No one who wants to study comets today bothers to read Grassi or Galileo, because our understanding has come so much further. And a textbook on comets in 2410 will make our work today look pretty obsolete. At least, I hope so.”

Check out this hilarious video of Consolmagno's appearance on "The Colbert Report."

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Gold, Frankincense and Mars - Guy Consolmagno
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How to make your Valentine last forever

Are you seeking sustainable love?

Then don't toss all your Valentine's Day boxes after you eat the chocolates. In the video above, Emory paleontologist Tony Martin shows how to scientifically recycle them as fossil containers. You, too, can change a perishable sentiment into something to last for millennia.

If you don't receive any Valentines, you may want to read up on the research of Larry Young, Emory's "love doctor." He's studying brain chemicals linked to the ability to form lasting bonds of affection.

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'Avatar' theme can make you blue

Avatar: An incarnation of a Hindu god; an embodiment of a view of life; a personification of a computer user; and, now, a science fiction movie.

Emory biologist Alexander Escobar interprets "Avatar" the movie this way: “The perspective that the natives have and the perspective that the miners have is very different. The technological perspective is that you can take something apart, and you can put new parts into it, just like any machine. It’s pretty much the dominant reality we have in the western world. In the movie, the natives see (mining) as taking apart their mother. And if you think about something that is a system, a whole, that works together, you can’t go in and start taking pieces out. It begins to fall apart. I think part of the reason that this movie has become so popular is that this sort of clash between these two world views is playing itself out in our world. “

Escobar is the author of a new book, “Mythology for the New World: A Synthesis of Science and Religion.”

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