Christmas letter mixes with cockroaches to prove Bob Beers is right

'Tis the rare Christmas letter that mentions cockroaches.

But my old friend David Salisbury did, winning the honor of sending me the Christmas Letter of the Year.

I first met David in the early 1970s when we were both copy kids at the Christian Science Monitor in Boston. He had a scientific bent and went on to become the Monitor's science and technology reporter and editor. Later he joined the academic world, first at the University of California, Santa Barbara, then Stanford University, and now at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., where he is assistant director of science and research communications.

I always admired his way of taking complex scientific issues and making them easy to understand, particularly because science and technology are not my strengths.

David and I stayed in touch over the years, mainly through Christmas letters and the occasional visit.

Know this, Grinches and Scrooges: I love Christmas letters and Christmas photos. I prefer a communication that includes both. I want to see and hear about the kids, the pets, the trips and how everybody is holding up. For those I don't see anymore, the Christmas letter is the only link to a long ago friendship. Surprisingly, I also learn things in Christmas letters about people in town I see all the time.

My own Christmas letter aims for humor, has no decoration and has no photo because I never get around to it early enough.

David is my opposite. He uses his own crisp photos, high-quality paper, everything that makes his Christmas missive first rate.

As usual, this year he mentioned work, saying Vanderbilt's online research magazine, Exploration, published a record 29 stories this year, including many of his. The link is www.explora tion.vanderbilt.edu.

The show stopper for me was that one story about "proof that cockroaches are incapable of learning in the morning," which David wrote.

Of course, I had to check out the link. And I immediately saw the David Salisbury byline on the cockroach story. David did what he always does, starting with a grabber lead: "In its ability to learn, the cockroach is a moron in the morning and a genius in the evening."

And that matters because?

Apparently it helps us understand people, which is why the study was supported by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health. The cockroach research project, headed by Terry Page, Vanderbilt professor of biological sciences, may help us improve our own learning capabilities. People have circadian clocks, as do plants and animals. And apparently so do cockroaches.

We know this because, as David explained, "the researchers taught cockroaches to associate peppermint -- a scent they normally find slightly distasteful -- with sugar water, causing them to favor it over vanilla, a scent they find universally appealing."

Now I've learned something already. Cockroaches don't like peppermint, but they love vanilla. How many of you have the same taste as a cockroach?

The test showed that they learned the difference and kept the association for several days if the instruction was in the evening or at night. "During the morning, however, when cockroaches are least active, they were totally incapable of forming a new memory, although they could recall memories learned at other times," David wrote.

The Vanderbilt research project may be scientific proof that Sen. Bob Beers, R-Las Vegas, is right. He wanted to push back the early starting times for high school students, saying it would improve their ability to learn. High schoolers' morning classes may be wasted time and wasted space, if the students are similar to cockroaches.

High school students in Clark County start school at 7 a.m., middle school students begin at 8 a.m., and elementary school students start about 9 a.m. The staggered times allow the Clark County School District to use the same school buses and saves on the cost of buying more buses and hiring more drivers.

Now I have a clue why I rarely see cockroaches in the morning: their biological clocks. Cockroaches are party animals, out clubbing at night, sleeping it off in the morning.

So in honor of writing the first Christmas letter that sent me to the Internet, David Salisbury receives my Christmas Letter of the Year award, which is just like Time Magazine's Person of the Year award.

Arbitrary.

Jane Ann Morrison's column appears Monday, Thursday and Saturday. E-mail her at Jane@reviewjournal.com or call (702) 383-0275.