Latest news with #UniversityOfStAndrews
Times
19-05-2025
- General
- Times
Uh oh, America's East Coast elite have taken over sleepy St Andrews
You hear it in the Californian drawls at dinner parties. You feel it when a New Yorker lands into freshers week and knows a quarter of their cohort. You see it in the apartments that resemble New England summer homes. Nearly one in five students at the University of St Andrews are American — more than any other university in the UK — and it shows. Tucked into the once sleepy East Neuk of Fife, the town has been turned into what some call 'mini-Nantucket', where around every street corner you hear an American accent. This is not your average British university experience. Over the past two decades St Andrews has been transformed from a quaint, windswept Scottish university into a globally recognised academic institution
The Independent
09-05-2025
- Science
- The Independent
Chimpanzee study reveals musical secrets of humans' ancient ancestor
Chimpanzees drum on tree trunks with regular rhythms, suggesting rhythmic drumming may predate humans, a new study reveals. This discovery offers intriguing insights into the potential rhythmic abilities of our last common ancestor, shared some six million years ago. Analysis of 371 drumming bouts by chimpanzees demonstrates a clear rhythmic pattern in their tree-trunk percussion, according to University of Amsterdam music cognition researcher Henkjan Honing. This reinforces the idea that rhythm plays a significant role in chimpanzee communication. "Our ability to produce rhythm – and to use it in our social worlds – that seems to be something that predates humans being human," explains study co-author Cat Hobaiter, a primatologist at the University of St Andrews. This builds upon previous research indicating individual chimps possess unique drumming styles, further solidifying the rhythmic nature of their communication. When bounding through the jungle, chimps will often grab hold of the tall buttress roots of rainforest trees. Sometimes they pound them several times to create low-frequency sounds that can be heard for a kilometre or more through the forest. Scientists believe that the drumming is a form of long-distance communication, perhaps to alert other chimps where one chimp is waiting or the direction it is travelling. 'It's a way of socially checking in,' said Hobaiter, adding that each chimp has its own 'individual signature – a pattern of beats that allows you to recognise who's producing that drumming'. The new work showed that chimps from different regions of Africa drum with distinctly different rhythms, with western chimps preferring a more even beat while eastern chimps used varied short and long intervals between beats. The research was published on Friday in the journal Current Biology. It's well-known that chimps use tools such as rocks to crack open nuts and sticks to 'fish' termites from their mounds. Tree roots can also be tools, the researchers say. Chimps are selective about which roots they pound, said co-author Catherine Crockford, a primatologist at the CNRS Institute for Cognitive Sciences in France. Certain shapes and wood varieties create sounds that travel well through dense jungle. The drummings are likely "a very important way to make contact", she said.
The Independent
09-05-2025
- Science
- The Independent
Chimpanzees drum with regular rhythm when they beat on tree trunks, a form of ancient communication
Chimpanzees drum with regular rhythm when they beat on tree trunks, a new study shows. Chimpanzees and humans last shared a common ancestor around 6 million years ago. Scientists suspect this ancient ancestor must have been a drummer — using beats to communicate. 'Our ability to produce rhythm — and to use it in our social worlds — that seems to be something that predates humans being human,' said study co-author Cat Hobaiter, a University of St Andrews primatologist. Previous research has shown that chimps have their own signature drumming style. A new analysis of 371 bouts of chimpanzee drumming demonstrates that the chimps 'clearly play their instruments -- the tree trunks -- with regular rhythms,' said University of Amsterdam music cognition researcher Henkjan Honing, who was not involved in the study. When bounding through the jungle, chimps will often grab hold of the tall buttress roots of rainforest trees. Sometimes they pound them several times to create low-frequency sounds that can be heard for a kilometer or more through the forest. Scientists believe that the drumming is a form of long-distance communication, perhaps to alert other chimps where one chimp is waiting or the direction it is traveling. 'It's a way of socially checking in,' said Hobaiter, adding that each chimp has its own 'individual signature — a pattern of beats that allows you to recognize who's producing that drumming.' The new work showed that chimps from different regions of Africa drum with distinctly different rhythms, with western chimps preferring a more even beat while eastern chimps used varied short and long intervals between beats. The research was published Friday in the journal Current Biology. It's well-known that chimps use tools such as rocks to crack open nuts and sticks to 'fish' termites from their mounds. Tree roots can also be tools, the researchers say. Chimps are selective about which roots they pound, said co-author Catherine Crockford, a primatologist at the CNRS Institute for Cognitive Sciences in France. Certain shapes and wood varieties create sounds that travel well through dense jungle. The drummings are likely "a very important way to make contact," she said. ___ The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Associated Press
09-05-2025
- Science
- Associated Press
Chimpanzees drum with regular rhythm when they beat on tree trunks, a form of ancient communication
Chimpanzees drum with regular rhythm when they beat on tree trunks, a new study shows. Chimpanzees and humans last shared a common ancestor around 6 million years ago. Scientists suspect this ancient ancestor must have been a drummer — using beats to communicate. 'Our ability to produce rhythm — and to use it in our social worlds — that seems to be something that predates humans being human,' said study co-author Cat Hobaiter, a University of St Andrews primatologist. Previous research has shown that chimps have their own signature drumming style. A new analysis of 371 bouts of chimpanzee drumming demonstrates that the chimps 'clearly play their instruments -- the tree trunks -- with regular rhythms,' said University of Amsterdam music cognition researcher Henkjan Honing, who was not involved in the study. When bounding through the jungle, chimps will often grab hold of the tall buttress roots of rainforest trees. Sometimes they pound them several times to create low-frequency sounds that can be heard for a kilometer or more through the forest. Scientists believe that the drumming is a form of long-distance communication, perhaps to alert other chimps where one chimp is waiting or the direction it is traveling. 'It's a way of socially checking in,' said Hobaiter, adding that each chimp has its own 'individual signature — a pattern of beats that allows you to recognize who's producing that drumming.' The new work showed that chimps from different regions of Africa drum with distinctly different rhythms, with western chimps preferring a more even beat while eastern chimps used varied short and long intervals between beats. The research was published Friday in the journal Current Biology. It's well-known that chimps use tools such as rocks to crack open nuts and sticks to 'fish' termites from their mounds. Tree roots can also be tools, the researchers say. Chimps are selective about which roots they pound, said co-author Catherine Crockford, a primatologist at the CNRS Institute for Cognitive Sciences in France. Certain shapes and wood varieties create sounds that travel well through dense jungle. The drummings are likely 'a very important way to make contact,' she said. ___ The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Daily Mail
06-05-2025
- Science
- Daily Mail
Scientists discover terrifying new brain glitch that millions suffer every day: 'Opposite of Deja vu'
Scientists have discovered a new brain glitch that is the exact opposite of deja vu. Wile deja vu is the unsettling sense that you've lived a moment before, jamais vu is when something familiar suddenly feels alien — like encountering it for the very first time. You've likely felt it: walking through your hometown and suddenly feeling lost, or repeating a common word until it sounds strange and meaningless. Repetition is often the trigger. The brain, overloaded by familiarity, short-circuits, making the ordinary feel bizarre. It can be brought on by doing the same thing over and over again, or staring at something for too long. But sometimes, researchers say, it strikes without warning. Psychology professor Dr Akira O'Connor of the University of St Andrews in Scotland, once experienced jamais vu while driving. All of a sudden, he had to pull over and remind himself how to use the pedals and steering wheel. He and his colleagues wanted to figure out where this unnerving feeling comes from. Through two experiments, they found that jamais vu is a signal that something has become too automatic, forcing you to 'snap out' of the repetition. 'The feeling of unreality is in fact a reality check,' O'Connor and his colleague Dr Chistopher Moulin, professor of cognitive neuropsychology at Université Grenoble Alpes in France, wrote in The Conversation. 'It makes sense that this has to happen. Our cognitive systems must stay flexible, allowing us to direct our attention to wherever is needed rather than getting lost in repetitive tasks for too long,' they added. In their first experiment, 94 undergraduate students were asked to repeatedly write the same word. They did this with 12 different words ranging from common terms (like 'door') to more uncommon terms (like 'sward'). The researchers asked participants to write as quickly as possible, but told them they were allowed to stop if they started feeling strange, got bored or their hand began to hurt. Roughly 70 percent of participants stopped at least once because they began experiencing jamais vu. The feeling usually emerged after about one minute of writing, or 33 repetitions, and happened more frequently when the participants were writing familiar words. The second experiment was essentially the same, except participants were only asked to repeatedly write the word 'the' as the researchers assumed it is the most common word. That time, 55 percent of participants stopped writing because of jamais vu, but it only too 27 repetitions to trigger the feeling. They described their experiences as the words losing their meaning the more they looked at them, feeling like they lost control of their hand, and feeling like the word isn't really a word, but someone tricked them into thinking it is. The researchers published their findings in the journal Memory in February, 2020. Previous studies had also identified this strange brain glitch, but O'Connor, Moulin and their colleagues were the first to link losses of meaning in repetition to a particular feeling — jamais vu. They believe that its purpose is to snap you back to reality if you become entrenched in a repetitive mental state or behavioral sequence. There is still a lot that experts do not understand about jamais vu, including the precise neurological mechanism that drives it and its potential association with brain disorders like epilepsy and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). But at least you can rest assured that this eerie feeling of unfamiliarity is actually just your brain giving you a reality check.
