A couple of intriguing studies confirm that adolescent brains are still a work in progress, and suggest that teenagers are not very good at putting themselves in someone else's place, and make decisions about what to do simply on the basis of how they've acted previously, without considering how they, or anyone else, would feel as a consequence. It may be that that part of the brain is little used because it is still developing.

the Guardian has a long article on a truly astounding, and very exciting, discovery -- that many people in a persistent vegetative state may be revived by -- of all things -- a sleeping pill! The discovery was made, quite by accident, in South Africa, where a number of severely brain-damaged people have now been helped by the daily ingestion of a particular type of sedative. Whether the effects will continue noone yet knows, but the first patient to be revived is still reacting well after seven years on the drug. It's not a cure-all, but to have someone conscious and capable of talking and remembering, when they have been a "vegetable" (as the rather cruel term has it), is a miracle to family and friends.

Well, this is a bit off the point, but I couldn't resist. It's always been a bit of a mystery why humans started living in cities -- despite what many think, city living is not, and was not, an obviously better lifestyle. However, clearly we did it, so the argument why has been partly predicated on an assumption that humans just naturally like to gather together in crowds. But it is a problem, because though there are, of course, advantages of city living, there are also disadvantages -- and the disadvantages in the initial stages tend to be more obvious than some of the advantages.

A new theory now explains it more satisfactorily, and turns conventional explanations on their head. It was thought the first great civilizations rose because the regions were particularly fertile; the new theory claims that instead it was the reduction of fertile land, water and resources in previously fertile lands, that provoked the rise of civilization. This reduction was due to climate change.