Young adults who exercise get higher IQ

Young adults who are fit have a higher IQ and are more likely to go on to university, reveals a major new study carried out at the Sahlgrenska Academy and Sahlgrenska University Hospital.

The results were published today in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The study involved 1.2 million Swedish men doing military service who were born between 1950 and 1976. The research group analysed the results of both physical and IQ tests when the men enrolled.

The study shows a clear link between good physical fitness and better results for the IQ test. The strongest links are for logical thinking and verbal comprehension. But it is only fitness that plays a role in the results for the IQ test, and not strength.
“Being fit means that you also have good heart and lung capacity and that your brain gets plenty of oxygen,” says Michael Nilsson, professor at the Sahlgrenska Academy and chief physician at the Sahlgrenska University Hospital. “This may be one of the reasons why we can see a clear link with fitness, but not with muscular strength. We are also seeing that there are growth factors that are important.”

By analysing data for twins the researchers have been able to determine that it is primarily environmental factors and not genes that explain the link between fitness and a higher IQ.

“We have also shown that those youngsters who improve their physical fitness between the ages of 15 and 18 increase their cognitive performance,” says Maria Åberg, researcher at the Sahlgrenska Academy and physician at Åby health centre. “This being the case, physical education is a subject that has an important place in schools, and is an absolute must if we want to do well in maths and other theoretical subjects.”

The researchers have also compared the results from fitness tests during national service with the socio-economic status of the men later in life. Those who were fit at 18 were more likely to go into higher education, and many secured more qualified jobs.

The link between physical fitness and mental performance has previously been demonstrated in studies carried out on animals, children and old people. However, studies on young adults have been contradictory to date. Around the age of twenty our brain may still change rapidly as a result of both cognitive and emotional development.

The study was carried out at the Center for Brain Repair and Rehabilitation in Gothenburg in conjunction with the Swedish Twins Registry at the Karolinska Institutet.

Journal: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)
Title of the article: Cardiovascular fitness is associated with cognition in young adulthood
Authors: Maria A. I. Åberg, Nancy L. Pedersen, Kjell Torén, Magnus Svartengren, Björn Bäckstrand, Tommy Johnsson, Christiana M. Cooper-Kuhn, N. David Åberg, Michael Nilsson and H. Georg Kuhn
Article PNAS # 09-05307

By Elin Lindström Claessen

Who had the highest IQ?

The dominate, rigorously researched, and documented answer (who had the highest IQ) is German polymath Johann von Goethe (IQ = 210), second to Shakespeare in literature, with a vocabulary of over 90,000 words, inspiration to Darwin, with his theories on maxilla bone evolution, mental compatriot to Newton, with his theory of colors, and founder of the science of human chemistry, with his 1809 treatise Elective Affinities, wherein a human chemical reaction view of life is presented, some two-hundred years ahead of its time.

Other individuals, to note, can be found to have had stated IQs above 210 (either verbalized, e.g. Leonardo da Vinci (IQ = 225) or William Sidis (IQ = 250-300), or based on childhood ratios, e.g. Michael Kearney (IQ = 325) or Marilyn vos Savant (IQ = 225)), but these values are generally found to be over-estimates, based on oversimplification, when compared to that person’s actual adult IQ or when each person is fitted into a robust comparative historical study (collective of 300 geniuses or more).

To give an example, at age four, American Michael Kearney scored 168-plus on an IQ test for six-year-olds and via mathematical juggling, using his age and test score, he was said to have what is called a “ratio-IQ” of 325. Twenty years later, however, although he turned out to be a relatively smart individual, completing a BS in anthropology (age 10), MS in biochemistry (age 14), and MS in computer science (age 17), he had difficulty getting past the half-way point on the pop-intelligence game show Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, leaving with only $25,000, implying that ratio or estimated IQs are not as accurate as historically-determined IQs.

Intelligent racism?

A new television series takes apart all those so-called “scientists” who peddle the myth that our intelligence is determined by our genes, writes John Parrington

There are few more contentious topics in science than the question of whether genes determine human intelligence – particularly whether different “races” have different levels of intelligence.

This subject has often been characterised by prejudiced views and flawed methods of investigation – and by media coverage that fails to distinguish science from pseudo-science.

So when I heard that Channel 4 was beginning its new “Race: Science’s Last Taboo” season with a documentary about this topic, I was preparing myself for more of the same.

In fact the programme, narrated by Somalian-British journalist Rageh Omaar, is an excellent piece of science journalism, and a must for anyone interested in this controversial subject.

Omaar begins with an accepted fact – that black students generally have a poorer performance in standard IQ tests. He asks what the reason might be for this difference.

For US academics Richard Hernstein and Charles Murray, authors of the Bell Curve, or the British psychologist Richard Lynn, who is interviewed in this programme, the explanation is simple – black people are less intelligent because they are genetically different to whites.

It was after reading Lynn’s book on the subject that Nobel Prize winner James Watson, co-discoverer of the double helix structure of DNA, made his infamous statement in 2008 about the intellectual inferiority of black people.

This led to his dismissal as head of the prestigious Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York.

Racist views

Another Nobel Prize winner mentioned is William Shockley, co-inventor of the transistor, who held even more racist views on this subject. He also believed than anyone with an IQ below 100 should be encouraged to undergo sterilisation.

Omaar believes that, while we may abhor the views of such individuals, we still need to engage critically with their arguments, coming as they do from such “brilliant scientists”.

I would agree with the need for critical engagement. But just because someone has a Nobel Prize in one area of science does not at all exclude the possibility that they may be ignorant and misguided in another.

The scientific methods used in both The Bell Curve and Lynn’s book have been shown by numerous critical studies to be deeply flawed.

Even so, at one point in the programme I was beginning to wonder when we were going to hear some of the counter-arguments against the racist ones.

When they do finally appear, the arguments against the idea that black people are less intelligent than whites and that IQ tests measure a fixed entity called intelligence are very powerful ones indeed.

IQ tests were originally designed by Alfred Binet as a progressive method to identify children with learning difficulties.

They were intended not to stigmatise but to help such children overcome their difficulties. However, in the hands of US eugenicists like Henry Goddard, they rapidly became used as a way to group people into fixed categories of intelligence, with such terms as “normal”, “idiots”, and “imbeciles”.

Such rigid labelling formed the basis of the 11-plus system that excluded many ordinary children from a proper education.

In many states in the US it was used as the justification for laws permitting the enforced sterilisation of people identified as “subnormal” by the tests. Many of these laws were only repealed in the 1970s.

But do IQ tests even measure intelligence? As a means of understanding more about these tests, Omaar sits one himself.

It becomes clear that many of the questions test culturally specific general knowledge, such as questions about British history or politics.

Even the supposedly more neutral problem-solving type of questions assume a familiarity with puzzles and number games that would be most familiar to children from white, middle class backgrounds.

It is perhaps not so surprising then that black students, who are more likely to come from working class backgrounds, and be less in touch with the culture of “white society”, do not do as well in IQ tests.

What about the argument that intelligence is genetically determined and that the “IQ gap” between blacks and whites is a result of genetic

differences between the races?

This is a view strongly advocated by Professor J Philippe Rushton, of the University of Western Ontario in Canada. Yet when asked in this programme to name such genes, he is unable to.

Complex

This is not surprising. All serious genetic studies indicate that something as complex as human intelligence is almost certainly due to a highly complex mixture of genetic and environmental factors.

This means it is almost certainly nonsense to talk about genes “determining” intelligence.

Another problem is the very idea that “black” or “white” is anything more than skin deep.

Racists seize upon superficial features like the colour of someone’s skin, the shape of their nose or the curliness of their hair.

Yet as Professor Steve Jones says in this programme, the most striking thing about human beings compared to many other species is how similar we all are genetically.

The findings of the Human Genome Project have shown that humans have 99.9 percent genetic similarity, and that there is greater genetic variation within each “race” than there is between “races”.

Meanwhile in the US, many black people have gene variants thought to be typically “European” for the simple reason that they have one or more white ancestors.

This leads to an interesting point, made in this programme by Professor Richard Nisbett.

If it were really true that whites are genetically more intelligent than blacks, then the most high-achieving blacks ought to be those with the most percentage of “white” genes. In fact nothing of the sort is found.

Refuting the argument that differences in IQ test performance reflect genetic differences between races still leaves us with the question of how to solve the problem of the “IQ gap”.

One argument that has surfaced recently is the idea that black parents should be doing more to encourage their children to value learning and academic achievement.

Accusation

Such an accusation is easy to make. Yet as Rema Reynolds, a black psychology professor at Azusa Pacific University, says, black working class parents often have far less time due to working all hours to make ends meet.

They also often have a poorer educational background themselves. And so they find it hard to offer the sort of support to their children that is provided by many white middle class parents to theirs.

So what can be done to readdress this imbalance, and how likely is it to have an effect? Two very positive examples are highlighted in the programme. The first is South Africa.

Omaar interviews Dr Thebe Melupe, who is one of the leading black astronomers in the country. Melupe believes himself fortunate to have graduated from school the year that Nelson Mandela was released from prison.

Under the apartheid regime he would have been denied such a chance to excel since educated black men were viewed as a threat to the system.

Another example provided is that of the Hostos-Lincoln Academy in New York. Situated in the South Bronx, the mainly poor black and Latino students would not normally be expected to be high academic achievers.

Yet the graduation rate at this school is 90 percent, compared to an average of around 50 percent across state schools in New York. Many of its students go on to top US universities.

The school does not label the students as failures before they start. Instead its ethos seems to be that everyone is a potential high achiever.

Learning is made exciting by innovative teaching methods and an emphasis on the importance of theatre and other cultural events in which the students all take part.

In Britain, the current biggest challenge for working class children and those from ethnic minorities is the fact that the government is threatening to slash the education budget.

What emerges from this documentary is that if we truly want to allow children of all classes and so-called races the chance to achieve their potential, and thus demonstrate their “intelligence”, we have to make education exciting and stimulating.

This requires vastly more resources in teaching, not less.

The Race: Science’s Last Taboo season can be seen at » www.channel4.com/4od. Subsequent progammes in the series are shown on Channel 4 on Mondays for the following four weeks

John Parrington is a lecturer in cellular and molecular pharmacology at the University of Oxford

SocialistWorker

Weekly Webinar Series Provides Unique Resources Designed Specifically for

IRVINE, Calif.–(Business Wire)–
The University of California, Irvine Extension announces a four-week series designed to help parents better understand and more effectively support gifted students. “Gifted and Talented Education Online Mini-Series” will be held online Wednesday evenings between 8-9 p.m. starting Oct. 28. As districts struggle with
smaller budgets and layoffs, schools are finding it harder to sustain and
further develop programs for GATE students. UC Irvine Extension`s sessions will arm parents with tools to meet the educational and emotional needs of these children despite classroom cutbacks.

“We are committed to doing our part to facilitate discussions and professional development for the gifted and talented education community,” says Angela
Jeantet, director of UC Irvine Extension`s Education Programs Department.
“Ultimately, the students should not be hurt the effects of today`s economy. To UC Irvine Extension, that means we must provide parents with resources and expert strategies to help their children excel.”

“Gifted and Talented Education Online Mini-Series” will take participants
through the full spectrum-from identifying gifted students and learning how to support them to fostering their scholarly habits. The meetings, led by some of today`s top GATE educators and professionals, include:

* “Is My Child Gifted? Understanding IQ Testing and Common haracteristics of High Ability Learners” (Oct. 28) – Designed to teach participants how to
identify common traits of the gifted and effectively decipher IQ test results.
The session will also review the benefits and limitation of IQ testing, compare various score profiles and review prevalent qualities of high ability learners.
* “Providing Social & Emotional Support to Your Gifted Learner” (Nov. 4) – The meeting provides insight into how the common characteristics of gifted students impact their social and emotional development. Gain insight into practical ways to support, nurture and manage the psychological needs both at home and within
school settings.
* “Gainfully Gifted: Recognizing and Living with Your Child`s Strengths and
Talents” (Nov. 11) – Learn how change and creativity can influence your child`s success and transform academic talents into gainful productivity. Participants will be exposed to contemporary strategies for visionary thinking and the
rationale for differentiated curriculum.
* “Ending the Homework Hassle: Cultivating Scholarly Traits in Gifted Students”
(Nov. 18) – Providing an overview of key strategies used by industry experts, participants will gain tips and techniques for increasing academic motivation in the home. The final meeting will propose ways to nurture scholarly habits through inquiry and study systems.

UC Irvine Extension is known for its exceptional G.A.T.E. programming. Its
programs provide options for K-12 teachers with focused professional development sessions, individual courses and entire certificate programs aligned with the California Association for the Gifted (CAG), the National Association for Gifted
Children (NAGC), and state standards for excellence.

Parents can register for individual sessions, offered at $50 each or take the complete series at a discounted rate of $150. In addition, recordings will be available to parents who register but are unable to attend the live session. To register, contact Amanda Yngelmo at ayngelmo@uci.edu or 949-824-9304.

About UC Irvine Extension:As the continuing education arm of UCI, UC Irvine Extension is dedicated to providing a university-level learning experience for students, offering thousands of exciting courses and programs to local, regional, and global constituencies via online curriculum as well as through on campus classes. UC Irvine Extension offers a rich array of academic and
community programs to support a diverse audience, from a wide selection of academic programs to numerous campus activities. For more information, please visit www.extension.uci.edu.

About the University of California, Irvine: The University of California, Irvine is a top-ranked university dedicated to research, scholarship and community service. Founded in 1965, UCI is among the fastest-growing University of California campuses, with more than 2,000 undergraduate and graduate students
and about 1,400 faculty members. The second-largest employer in dynamic Orange County, UCI contributes an annual economic impact of $3.3 billion. For more UCI
news, visit www.today.uci.edu.

for UC Irvine Extension
Vivian Chan, 714-573-0899 x 235
vivian@echomediapr.com

Is Your Dog Smarter then Your Child?

By MIKE BRODY(MYFOX NATIONAL) –

Canine IQ tests have revealed that the average dog is as smart as a 2-year-old child.

The finding is based on a language development test developed by Stanley Coren, canine expert and professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia.

LiveScience reports that Coren’s test revealed average dogs can learn 165 words — about the same as a 2-year-old child. The dogs also can learn signals and gestures, and dogs in the top 20 percent in intelligence are able to learn 250 words.

When studying dogs’ math and social skills, the results are even more impressive. Cohen says dogs would be on par with a 3- or 4-year-old child in basic arithmetic and their social behavior is similar to that of a teenager.

“The social life of dogs is much more complex, much more like human teenagers at that stage, interested in who is moving up in the pack and who is sleeping with who and that sort of thing,” Coren told LiveScience.

Coren found the Top 7 most intelligent dogs were:

1.Border collies
2.Poodles
3.German shepherds
4.Golden retrievers
5.Dobermans
6.Shetland sheepdogs
7.Labrador retrievers
On the other end of the spectrum, many of the hounds, such as the Bassett Hound and the Afghan Hound, along with the Bulldog, Beagle and Basenji were found to be the least intelligent.

The traditional list of the Top 10 most intelligent breeds of dogs is consistent with Coren’s findings.

School For Smart Kids Only

In Reno NV The Davidson Academy has gone in the oppisite direction of “No Child Left Behind”. They’ve said “Few Kids Need Aply”. Students must test out in the top 99.9 percential to be admitted.

The Davidson Academy and its not-for-profit umbrella organization, the Davidson Institute, were founded by education software developers Bob and Jan Davidson.

Their former company, Davidson & Associates, was known for the popular Math Blaster and Reading Blaster software series of the early 1980s. They co-authored the book, “Genius Denied: How to Stop Wasting Our Brightest Young Minds.”

The Davidsons donated more than $10 million toward the academy. It opened in 2006 with 39 students. When classes begin this fall about 100 are expected at the school, which focuses on the individual needs of students who are grouped by ability level rather than age.

Read the full story by Sandra Chereb (AP)

See if you would be admitted take the Smartest of the U.S. IQ Test

A New Warning: Air Pollution, the Fetus, and IQ

Excerpts from article by Dan Agin of The Huffington Post:

In a few weeks a research report will appear in the prestigious journal Pediatrics on the effects of air pollution during fetal development on the IQ of New York City children at five years of age. This study involved polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). These chemicals are released into the air during incomplete or complete burning of fossil fuel, tobacco, and other organic material. In this study, children of women living in New York City were monitored from in utero to five years of age, with determination of prenatal PAH exposure through personal air monitoring for the mothers during pregnancy. At five years of age, intelligence was assessed for 249 children using standard IQ tests.

The authors of the study conclude: “These results provide evidence that environmental PAHs at levels encountered in New York City air can affect children’s IQ adversely.”

This is not the first study to associate prenatal exposure to environmental toxins with childhood IQ. There’s much evidence already in the literature about lead, mercury, ethanol, arsenic, PCBs, and various pesticides and other chemicals. It’s not clear that all “associations” involve cause-effect relations, but there’s enough science now to make a great many people worried. And it’s not only childhood IQ that may be involved, but also autism, ADHD, schizophrenia, and various physical illnesses — all of it apparently related to chemical impacts on the fetus during development.

To read full article by Dan Agin of The Huffington Post Click Here

The Science of Intelligence

This article was first published in The Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, December 13, 1994. It is followed alphabetical listing of the scholars that endorsed the article and their home institutions.

Prologue
Since the publication of “The BELL CURVE,” many commentators have offered opinions about human intelligence that misstate current scientific evidence. Some conclusions dismissed in the media as discredited are actually firmly supported.

This statement outlines conclusions regarded as mainstream among researchers on intelligence, in particular, on the nature, origins, and practical consequences of individual and group differences in intelligence. Its aim is to promote more reasoned discussion of the vexing phenomenon that the research has revealed in recent decades. The following conclusions are fully described in the major textbooks, professional journals and encyclopedias in intelligence.

The Meaning and Measurement of Intelligence
1. Intelligence is a very general mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience. It is not merely book learning, a narrow academic skill, or test-taking smarts. Rather, it reflects a broader and deeper capability for comprehending our surroundings — “catching on,” “making sense” of things, or “figuring out” what to do.

2. Intelligence, so defined, can be measured, and intelligence tests measure it well. They are among the most accurate (in technical terms, reliable and valid) of all psychological tests and assessments. They do not measure creativity, character, personality, or other important differences among individuals, nor are they intended to.

3. While there are different types of intelligence tests, they all measure the same intelligence. Some use words or numbers and require specific cultural knowledge (like vocabulary). Others do not, and instead use shapes or designs and require knowledge of only simple, universal concepts (many/few, open/closed, up/down).

4. The spread of people along the IQ continuum, from low to high, can be represented well by the BELL CURVE (in statistical jargon, the “normal CURVE”). Most people cluster around the average (IQ 100). Few are either very bright or very dull: About 3% of Americans score above IQ 130 (often considered the threshold for “giftedness”), with about the same percentage below IQ 70 (IQ 70-75 often being considered the threshold for mental retardation).

5. Intelligence tests are not culturally biased against American blacks or other native-born, English-speaking peoples in the U.S. Rather, IQ scores predict equally accurately for all such Americans, regardless of race and social class. Individuals who do not understand English well can be given either a nonverbal test or one in their native language.

6. The brain processes underlying intelligence are still little understood. Current research looks, for example, at speed of neural transmission, glucose (energy) uptake, and electrical activity of the brain.

Group Differences
1. Members of all racial-ethnic groups can be found at every IQ level. The BELL CURVES of different groups overlap considerably, but groups often differ in where their members tend to cluster along the IQ line. The BELL CURVES for some groups (Jews and East Asians) are centered somewhat higher than for whites in general. Other groups (blacks and Hispanics) are centered somewhat lower than non-Hispanic whites.

2. The BELL CURVE for whites is centered roughly around IQ 100; the BELL CURVE for American blacks roughly around 85; and those for different subgroups of Hispanics roughly midway between those for whites and blacks. The evidence is less definitive for exactly where above IQ 100 the BELL CURVES for Jews and Asians are centered.

Practical Importance
1. IQ is strongly related, probably more so than any other single measurable human trait, to many important educational, occupational, economic, and social outcomes. Its relation to the welfare and performance of individuals is very strong in some arenas in life (education, military training), moderate but robust in others (social competence), and modest but consistent in others (law-abidingness). Whatever IQ tests measure, it is of great practical and social importance.

2. A high IQ is an advantage in life because virtually all activities require some reasoning and decision-making. Conversely, a low IQ is often a disadvantage, especially in disorganized environments. Of course, a high IQ no more guarantees success than a low IQ guarantees failure in life. There are many exceptions, but the odds for success in our society greatly favor individuals with higher IQs.

3. The practical advantages of having a higher IQ increase as life settings become more complex (novel, ambiguous, changing, unpredictable, or multi-faceted). For example, a high IQ is generally necessary to perform well in highly complex or fluid jobs (the professions, management); it is a considerable advantage in moderately complex jobs (crafts, clerical and police work); but it provides less advantage in settings that require only routine decision making or simple problem solving (unskilled work).

4. Differences in intelligence certainly are not the only factor affecting performance in education, training, and highly complex jobs (no one claims they are), but intelligence is often the most important. When individuals have already been selected for high (or low) intelligence and so do not differ as much in IQ, as in graduate school (or special education), other influences on performance loom larger in comparison.

5. Certain personality traits, special talents, aptitudes, physical capabilities, experience, and the like are important (sometimes essential) for successful performance in many jobs, but they have narrower (or unknown) applicability or “transferability” across tasks and settings compared with general intelligence. Some scholars choose to refer to these other human traits as other “intelligences.”

Source and Stability of Within-Group Differences
1. Individuals differ in intelligence due to differences in both their environments and genetic heritage. Heritability estimates range from 0.4 to 0.8 (on a scale from 0 to 1), most thereby indicating that genetics plays a bigger role than does environment in creating IQ differences among individuals. (Heritability is the squared correlation of phenotype with genotype.) If all environments were to become equal for everyone, heritability would rise to 100% because all remaining differences in IQ would necessarily be genetic in origin.

2. Members of the same family also tend to differ substantially in intelligence (by an average of about 12 IQ points) for both genetic and environmental reasons. They differ genetically because biological brothers and sisters share exactly half their genes with each parent and, on the average, only half with each other. They also differ in IQ because they experience different environments within the same family.

3. That IQ may be highly heritable does not mean that it is not affected by the environment. Individuals are not born with fixed, unchangeable levels of intelligence (no one claims they are). IQs do gradually stabilize during childhood, however, and generally change little thereafter.

4. Although the environment is important in creating IQ differences, we do not know yet how to manipulate it to raise low IQs permanently. Whether recent attempts show promise is still a matter of considerable scientific debate.

5. Genetically caused differences are not necessarily irremediable (consider diabetes, poor vision, and phenal ketonuria), nor are environmentally caused ones necessarily remediable (consider injuries, poisons, severe neglect, and some diseases). Both may be preventable to some extent.

Source and Stability of Between-Group Differences
1. There is no persuasive evidence that the IQ BELL CURVES for different racial-ethnic groups are converging. Surveys in some years show that gaps in academic achievement have narrowed a bit for some races, ages, school subjects and skill levels, but this picture seems too mixed to reflect a general shift in IQ levels themselves.

2. Racial-ethnic differences in IQ BELL CURVES are essentially the same when youngsters leave high school as when they enter first grade. However, because bright youngsters learn faster than slow learners, these same IQ differences lead to growing disparities in amount learned as youngsters progress from grades one to 12. As large national surveys continue to show, black 17-year-olds perform, on the average, more like white 13-year-olds in reading, math, and science, with Hispanics in-between.

3. The reasons that blacks differ among themselves in intelligence appear to be basically the same as those for why whites (or Asians or Hispanics) differ among themselves. Both environment and genetic heredity are involved.

4. There is no definitive answer to why IQ bell curves differ across racial-ethnic groups. The reasons for these IQ differences between groups may be markedly different from the reasons for why individuals differ among themselves within any particular group (whites or blacks or Asians). In fact, it is wrong to assume, as many do, that the reason why some individuals in a population have high IQs but others have low IQs must be the same reason why some populations contain more such high (or low) IQ individuals than others. Most experts believe that environment is important in pushing the bell curves apart, but that genetics could be involved too.

5. Racial-ethnic differences are somewhat smaller but still substantial for individuals from the same socioeconomic backgrounds. To illustrate, black students from prosperous families tend to score higher in IQ than blacks from poor families, but they score no higher, on average, than whites from poor families.

6. Almost all Americans who identify themselves as black have white ancestors — the white admixture is about 20%, on average — and many self-designated whites, Hispanics, and others likewise have mixed ancestry. Because research on intelligence relies on self-classification into distinct racial categories, as does most other social-science research, its findings likewise relate to some unclear mixture of social and biological distinctions among groups (no one claims otherwise).

Implications for Social Policy
1. The research findings neither dictate nor preclude any particular social policy, because they can never determine our goals. They can, however, help us estimate the likely success and side-effects of pursuing those goals via different means.

The following professors — all experts in intelligence and allied fields — have signed this statement:
• Richard D. Arvey, University of Minnesota
• Thomas J. Bouchard, Jr., University of Minnesota
• John B. Carroll, Un. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• Raymond B. Cattell, University of Hawaii
• David B. Cohen, University of Texas at Austin
• Rene V. Dawis, University of Minnesota
• Douglas K. Detterman, Case Western Reserve Un.
• Marvin Dunnette, University of Minnesota
• Hans Eysenck, University of London
• Jack Feldman, Georgia Institute of Technology
• Edwin A. Fleishman, George Mason University
• Grover C. Gilmore, Case Western Reserve University
• Robert A. Gordon, Johns Hopkins University
• Linda S. Gottfredson, University of Delaware
• Robert L. Greene, Case Western Reserve University
• Richard J.Haier, University of Callifornia at Irvine
• Garrett Hardin, University of California at Berkeley
• Robert Hogan, University of Tulsa
• Joseph M. Horn, University of Texas at Austin
• Lloyd G. Humphreys, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• John E. Hunter, Michigan State University
• Seymour W. Itzkoff, Smith College
• Douglas N. Jackson, Un. of Western Ontario
• James J. Jenkins, University of South Florida
• Arthur R. Jensen, University of California at Berkeley
• Alan S. Kaufman, University of Alabama
• Nadeen L. Kaufman, California School of Professional Psychology at San Diego
• Timothy Z. Keith, Alfred University
• Nadine Lambert, University of California at Berkeley
• John C. Loehlin, University of Texas at Austin
• David Lubinski, Iowa State University
• David T. Lykken, University of Minnesota
• Richard Lynn, University of Ulster at Coleraine
• Paul E. Meehl, University of Minnesota
• R. Travis Osborne, University of Georgia
• Robert Perloff, University of Pittsburgh
• Robert Plomin, Institute of Psychiatry, London
• Cecil R. Reynolds, Texas A & M University
• David C. Rowe, University of Arizona
• J. Philippe Rushton, Un. of Western Ontario
• Vincent Sarich, University of California at Berkeley
• Sandra Scarr, University of Virginia
• Frank L. Schmidt, University of Iowa
• Lyle F. Schoenfeldt, Texas A & M University
• James C. Sharf, George Washington University
• Herman Spitz, former director E.R. Johnstone Training and Research Center, Bordentown, N.J.
• Julian C. Stanley, Johns Hopkins University
• Del Thiessen, University of Texas at Austin
• Lee A. Thompson, Case Western Reserve University
• Robert M. Thorndike, Western Washington Un.
• Philip Anthony Vernon, Un. of Western Ontario
• Lee Willerman, University of Texas at Austin

Mensa Admission Test

The temperature has hit higher than 90 degrees, so come inside and test for American Mensa, the high IQ society. The organization will be offering the Mensa Admission Test at a reduced rate of $35 from July 1-31, 2009. For test session information in your area, please visit www.us.mensa.org/testing.

During the summer months, people are looking for new activities and social interaction with a broad group of people, and Mensa is the perfect organization for that

By offering the Mensa Admission Test at a reduced price, we are encouraging people to come test and see what our organization is all about. Mensa has a membership age range of 2-106, and there is something for everyone.

“During the summer months, people are looking for new activities and social interaction with a broad group of people, and Mensa is the perfect organization for that,” said Pam Donahoo, executive director at American Mensa. “By offering the Mensa Admission Test at a reduced price, we are encouraging people to come test and see what our organization is all about. Mensa has a membership age range of 2-106, and there is something for everyone.”

The Mensa Admission Test is open to those 14 years and older. Those between the age of 14-17 must have a parent or guardian present at registration. A picture ID must be presented at the time of registration.

If a person interested in membership is 13 and under, they can submit a prior test score from anytime in their life. Mensa accepts more than 200 tests for membership. A condensed version of that list can be found by visiting http://www.us.mensa.org/scores and clicking on “qualifying scores.” Examples of tests accepted for review include the Wechsler Intelligence Scale, Otis Lennon School Abilities Test (OLSAT), Naglieri Nonverbal Ability Test, Cognitive Abilities Test (CogAT) and Stanford Binet.

Stop Memory Loss

Memory is related to individual intelligence. Intelligence is our ability to process information placed before us, come to a conclusion and make a decision based on our conclusions. In order to process information you must recall both long term and short term memory.

The average person will test out with an IQ score of 100. The most intellectual will achieve a score of 180 to 190; few have ever exceeded these numbers. As your memory deteriorates your scores will go down as well.

Over the past 100 years, IQ scores have increased at an average rate of three IQ points per decade in most parts of the world. This has been explained by better nutrition, smaller families, better education, and heredity.
It is believed that 50% to 80% of a childs intelligence is attributable to the childs parents and the genes that they passed on to the child. Studies of twins raised apart substantiate these beliefs. It had been widely believed that through education, we can improve upon our intelligence, but this is often not the case. Vocabulary size, for example, is more effected by heredity than by environment even though every word that one knows has to be learned. In our society words are readily available to everyone and the number of words that we learn has more to do with our genetic predisposition to learn than the vocabulary of the people around us.

A recent study, April 2008, at the University of Michigan and Bern suggests that intelligence and thus memory can be marginally altered and changed over time through the use of challenging activities thus producing changes in gene expression patterns of the brain.
This then leads to the conclusion that the brain is similar in many respects to the muscles of our body; exercise and good diet will maintain and improve both intelligence and memory.
As we age one of the first parts of our brain function that we experience difficulty with is our memory. Studies have shown that the deterioration of memory can be curbed through mind exercise. Ten minutes per day of brain exercise that develops the part of your brain that sits ideal in most people will keep the mind in tune. Such exercises activate the built-in but seldom taped into Photographic Memory, increases your reading speed and your long tern memory plus reduces stress and improves overall efficiency.

The first step in any exercise program, whether body or mind is to benchmark your current condition. For mind benchmarking I recommend, SmartestofUS.com, our online website that administers a genuine IQ test with no hooks attached. It’s also a good way to measure your progress.

I’m 64 and I’ve experienced, “It’s on the tip of my tongue, give me a second and I’ll remember.” I’ve found that by taking online IQ tests my memory has improved and my score on SmartestofUS has improved by 20 points. Check out our test site and see if you don’t agree that you can stop memory loss with mind exercise.