Four Android productivity apps you should use in 2013

Happy New Year! Like most folks, I am working on some resolutions for 2013. One resolution I have is to be more productive. One way I am going to do this is by using my Android phone better. Now there are apps that I have, but really have not used to their fullest. As I work on this resolution, I might discover even better apps. For now I will focus on these impressive apps that can make anyone more productive.

I use Hootsuite on the computer, but rarely find myself engaging with it on my smartphone. With Hootsuite, you can manage Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Foursquare accounts. The free version allows for up to five accounts and one member of your team to access the account. There is a pro version with a monthly fee, in which you can have more accounts and team members and helpful analytics tools.

The design of the app is very good. If you sync the web version to mobile, you will have everything automatically downloaded to the phone. When viewing content, you swipe left or right to change columns or streams. If you are in the middle of a stream, simply tap the top menu bar to automatically return to the top. The app allows for multiple profiles and scheduled tweets. My goal is to keep up with my feeds and tweets in real-time rather than waiting until I get to a computer.

Another web service that I started to use, but find myself not using it to the fullest. Producteev is a web-based task management service. With Producteev you can work as an individual or in a team by setting up workspaces and then organize tasks by labels. For each task you can assign a priority, due date, and share with team members, if you have any. Overall, this is a great service, since I like making lists, even though I rarely remember having made them.

The Producteev app is available for all platforms. The app has a very clean interface and is easy to find tasks. Probably the best way to keep up with tasks is to use the different widget for the home screen. Seeing the widgets will help keep those key tasks in the forefront of your mind. The app will work offline and syncs in the background.

I read blogs every single day, especially those related to new apps, Android, or mobile news. The only way I can do that is via my Google Reader. I find myself trying to catch up each day on the computer (just like with Twitter activity) when I would be better off reading a little bit over time during the day. NewsRob is a Google Reader that I have had for years. The interface is very clean and easy to use. The developer created a bunch of customizations options, which really make this reader stand out.

With NewsRob you can set up a notification of new articles, how you synchronize with Google and when, how many articles to keep in your cache, and more. If you set up folders within Google Reader, NewsRob will download the folders, too. This enables you to read the posts by blog or folder. The app provides a very clean blogpost display optimized for smaller screens. With each post you can zoom in or out, mark a post read or unread, view in the browser, and share the link to email or services such as Evernote. There is a free version of the app.

The last task I need to work on to be more productive is to keep up with the calendar. I find myself checking on the computer, after the fact, finding out that I am either late or forgot about a meeting or appointment. Using Google calendar is a good place to start, but I have not found the standard calendar app on my Droid was all that helpful.

Business Calendar is a very capable calendar app that has a ton of features. The app lets you view your calendar in a number of different views, and has search and favorite-calendar features, to name a few. The option of viewing different calendars, color coding and being able to easily add, delete, and edit events is helpful. The ability to use widgets for reminders is important. The pro version has over 10 different sizes and allows for the import or export of calendar files in the iCalendar format. Business Calendar also has a free version.

So my top goal or resolution for 2013 is to be more productive. I think using these apps more will help me accomplish that goal. Are there any apps you have but not using to their fullest? What resolutions do you have for 2013?

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Playboy Hugh Hefner marries his ‘runaway bride’

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Hugh Hefner is celebrating the new year as a married man once again.

The 86-year-old Playboy magazine founder exchanged vows with his “runaway bride,” Crystal Harris, at a private Playboy Mansion ceremony on New Year’s Eve. Harris, a 26-year-old “Playmate of the Month” in 2009, broke off a previous engagement to Hefner just before they were to be married in 2011.

Playboy said on Tuesday that the couple celebrated at a New Year’s Eve party at the mansion with guests that included comic Jon Lovitz, Gene Simmons of KISS and baseball star Evan Longoria.

The bride wore a strapless gown in soft pink, Hefner a black tux. Hefner’s been married twice before but lived the single life between 1959 and 1989.

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Study Suggests Lower Death Risk for the Overweight

A century ago, Elsie Scheel was the perfect woman. So said a 1912 article in The New York Times about how Miss Scheel, 24, was chosen by the “medical examiner of the 400 'co-eds'” at Cornell University as a woman “whose very presence bespeaks perfect health.”

Miss Scheel, however, was hardly model-thin. At 5-foot-7 and 171 pounds, she would, by today's medical standards, be clearly overweight. (Her body mass index was 27; 25 to 29.9 is overweight.)

But a new report suggests that Miss Scheel may have been onto something. The report on nearly three million people found that those whose B.M.I. ranked them as overweight had less risk of dying than people of normal weight. And while obese people had a greater mortality risk over all, those at the lowest obesity level (B.M.I. of 30 to 34.9) were not more likely to die than normal-weight people.

The report, although not the first to suggest this relationship between B.M.I. and mortality, is by far the largest and most carefully done, analyzing nearly 100 studies, experts said.

But don’t scrap those New Year’s weight-loss resolutions and start gorging on fried Belgian waffles or triple cheeseburgers.

Experts not involved in the research said it suggested that overweight people need not panic unless they have other indicators of poor health and that depending on where fat is in the body, it might be protective or even nutritional for older or sicker people. But over all, piling on pounds and becoming more than slightly obese remains dangerous.

“We wouldn’t want people to think, ‘Well, I can take a pass and gain more weight,'” said Dr. George Blackburn, associate director of Harvard Medical School’s nutrition division.

Rather, he and others said, the report, in The Journal of the American Medical Association, suggests that B.M.I., a ratio of height to weight, should not be the only indicator of healthy weight.

“Body mass index is an imperfect measure of the risk of mortality,” and factors like blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar must be considered, said Dr. Samuel Klein, director of the Center for Human Nutrition at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

Dr. Steven Heymsfield, executive director of the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Louisiana, who wrote an editorial accompanying the study, said that for overweight people, if indicators like cholesterol “are in the abnormal range, then that weight is affecting you,” but that if indicators are normal, there’s no reason to “go on a crash diet.”

Experts also said the data suggested that the definition of "normal" B.M.I., 18.5 to 24.9, should be revised, excluding its lowest weights, which might be too thin.

The study did show that the two highest obesity categories (B.M.I. of 35 and up) are at high risk. “Once you have higher obesity, the fat’s in the fire,” Dr. Blackburn said.

But experts also suggested that concepts of fat be refined.

"Fat per se is not as bad as we thought," said Dr. Kamyar Kalantar-Zadeh, professor of Medicine and Public Health at the University of California, Irvine. "What is bad is a type of fat that is inside your belly. Non-belly fat, underneath your skin in your thigh and your butt area — these are not necessarily bad." He added that, to a point, extra fat is accompanied by extra muscle, which can be healthy.

Still, it is possible that overweight or somewhat obese people are less likely to die because they, or their doctors, have identified other conditions associated with weight gain, like high cholesterol or diabetes.

“You’re more likely to be in your doctor’s office and more likely to be treated,” said Dr. Robert Eckel, a past president of the American Heart Association and a professor at University of Colorado.

Some experts said fat could be protective in some cases, although that is unproven and debated. The study did find that people 65 and over had no greater mortality risk even at high obesity.

“There’s something about extra body fat when you’re older that is providing some reserve,” Dr. Eckel said.

And studies on specific illnesses, like heart and kidney disease, have found an “obesity paradox,” that heavier patients are less likely to die.

Still, death is not everything. Even if "being overweight doesn't increase your risk of dying," Dr. Klein said, it "does increase your risk of having diabetes" or other conditions.

Ultimately, said the study’s lead author, Katherine Flegal, a senior scientist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “the best weight might depend on the situation you’re in.”

Take the perfect woman, Elsie Scheel, in whose "physical makeup there is not a single defect," the Times article said. This woman who "has never been ill and doesn't know what fear is" loved sports and didn't consume candy, coffee or tea. But she also ate only three meals every two days, and loved beefsteak.

Maybe such seeming contradictions made sense against the societal inconsistencies of that time. After all, her post-college plans involved tilling her father’s farm, but “if she were a man, she would study mechanical engineering.”

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Tough decisions await new Tribune Co. board

When the new seven-member Tribune Co. board officially convenes for the first time in the next few weeks, the group of media and entertainment executives will name the company's executive officers. Then comes the bigger job of assessing a diverse portfolio of broadcasting and publishing assets, with an eye toward maximizing the value of the Chicago-based media company.

Whether that means buying, selling or keeping the company intact is a story that will begin to unfold in 2013. But insiders say the new owners — senior creditors Oaktree Capital Management; Angelo, Gordon & Co.; and JPMorgan Chase & Co. — won't be in a rush to make those decisions after a contentious four-year journey through Chapter 11 bankruptcy left the reorganized company in strong financial shape.

"We're really looking forward to the opportunities and the possibilities with this asset base, with over $11 billion in debt removed from the balance sheet," said Ken Liang, a managing director at Oaktree and a member of the new board.

Tribune Co. plunged into bankruptcy in December 2008, saddled with $13 billion in debt from real estate investor Sam Zell's heavily leveraged buyout one year earlier. It emerged from bankruptcy Monday, relatively debt-free and generating cash.

The company owns 23 television stations, including WGN-Ch. 9; national cable channel WGN America; eight daily newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune; and other media assets, all of which the reorganization plan valued at $4.5 billion after cash distributions and new financing.

Tribune Co.'s biggest challenge has been declining revenue and cash flow as the advertisers that sustained it through the years defected to digital media alternatives. But 2012 was a slight improvement, likely boosted in part by election year ad spending in the company's broadcasting unit.

Data released Monday by the company showed that after several years of revenue declines, including a 3 percent drop to $3.1 billion in 2011, sales for the first three quarters of 2012 were flat at $2.3 billion compared with the same period a year earlier. Cash flow was even better: After dropping 12 percent in 2011 to about $370 million, cash flow increased 17 percent during the first three quarters of 2012, to $240 million.

Los Angeles-based investment firm Oaktree is the largest equity owner, with 23 percent of the company. All of Oaktree's distressed-debt holdings have a 10-year investment window, though the average is three or four years, executives said. That time frame usually includes an operating phase, which is where Tribune Co. now stands.

Some experts expect that phase to be relatively brief.

"I think they are temporary owners," said Marshall Sonenshine, chairman of New York banking firm Sonenshine Partners and a professor at Columbia University Business School. "They're not really there to be long-term shareholders of media assets."

While eventually selling the assets is part of Oaktree's distressed-debt investment strategy, it doesn't preclude a longer run, including strengthening the company through strategic acquisitions, Liang said. And with Tribune Co.'s balance sheet cleaned up, the timing of any asset sales will be at their discretion.

The new board also includes Tribune Co. CEO Eddy Hartenstein; Ross Levinsohn, who recently left as interim chief executive of Yahoo Inc.; Craig Jacobson, an entertainment lawyer; Peter Murphy, a former strategy executive at Walt Disney Co. and Caesars Entertainment; Bruce Karsh, Oaktree's president; and Peter Liguori, a former top television executive at Fox and Discovery, who is expected to be named CEO of Tribune Co.

The makeup of the board and the expected choice of Liguori as CEO suggests that broadcasting will be the operational focus for Tribune Co., according to insiders and media analysts. Priorities are expected to include developing WGN America, which lags cable networks such as FX and TBS in revenue, ratings and cash flow, analysts said.

"It's clear that, in a sense, we have a new Tribune media company, and it's going in a direction that many people thought it would be going," said media analyst Ken Doctor. "It makes the company entertainment leaning versus news leaning."

Meanwhile, in the face of digital competition and sagging industry revenue, Tribune Co.'s newspaper holdings have declined to $623 million in total value, according to financial adviser Lazard. While some analysts expect the newspapers to be bundled and delivered to an assortment of potential new owners — everyone from Rupert Murdoch to Warren Buffett has expressed interest in acquiring one or more of the nameplates — they are still profitable and may remain in the Tribune Co. fold for some time, according to insiders.

Tribune reporters Michael Oneal and Becky Yerak contributed.

rchannick@tribune.com

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After 9 years, Bears and Smith part ways

Chicago Tribune sports columnist Steve Rosenbloom on the Bears firing Lovie Smith. (Posted: Dec 31, 2012)

The epitaph for Lovie Smith's tenure as head coach of the Bears could read, "He couldn't fix the offense."

For all the good things Smith did in his nine years in Chicago, his undoing was his inability to take care of the side of the ball in which he had no background.

The Bears fired Smith on Monday after a 10-6 season, Tribune sources have confirmed. They started 7-1 but fell apart down the stretch, mostly because they couldn't score.

Since Smith took over in 2004, the Bears have ranked higher than 23rd in offense only once. They have ranked 28th or lower four times.

Smith tried four offensive coordinators during his Bears career. His first thought was to run a similar offense to the one he was familiar with when he was defensive coordinator of the Rams, so he hired Terry Shea.

The Bears finished last in the league in offense behind quarterbacks Chad Hutchinson, Craig Krenzel, Jonathan Quinn and Rex Grossman, and Shea was dismissed after one season.

Smith then turned to Ron Turner for his second stint as Bears offensive coordinator. Turner lasted five years in what was the heyday for Smith's offense.

It was during this period that Smith's stubborn allegiance to Grossman became an issue. "Rex is our quarterback," he said over and over again.

Those days Smith often talked frequently about how the Bears "get off the bus running," and the team achieved its offensive identity by pounding the ball with Thomas Jones, then Cedric Benson and finally Matt Forte.

But after the Bears traded for Jay Cutler in 2009 and they still finished 23rd in offense and missed the playoffs, Turner was made the scapegoat and fired.

An extensive job search that included interest in Jeremy Bates, Rob Chudzinski and Tom Clements led the Bears back to Smith's old friend Mike Martz, for whom he had worked in St. Louis. Going from the conservative Turner to the aggressive Martz was quite a philosophical shift for Smith.

Martz's offense sputtered in 2010 but started to come on the next season. Then Cutler broke his thumb in the 10th game, and the team unraveled. The Bears lost five straight, and Martz was fired along with general manager Jerry Angelo, the man who brought Smith to Chicago.

Smith's next move was to go conservative again, this time by promoting offensive line coach Mike Tice. A first-time play caller, Tice made great use of new acquisition Brandon Marshall but struggled to find other reliable targets or to overcome protection issues.

The Bears finished 28th in offense.

The only time Smith enjoyed a fairly efficient offense was in 2006, when the offense ranked 15th in a season that ended in the Super Bowl.

Defensively, the Bears were on the other end of the spectrum under Smith. With perennial Pro Bowlers Brian Urlacher and Lance Briggs as the constants, Smith's defenses usually were among the best in the NFL.

Since 2004, the Bears defense ranks first in the league in takeaways, three-and-out drives forced and third-down percentage and is fourth in scoring defense.

Smith's defenders scored 34 touchdowns, which became a signature of the Bears' style of play.

It was Smith's defense that drove the Bears to their first Super Bowl appearance in 21 years after the 2006 season. Smith and Tony Dungy became the first two African-Americans to coach a Super Bowl team as the Bears took on the Colts.

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Armstrong better, Green Day to resume tour in 2013

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Green Day is going back out on the road.

The Grammy-winning punk band announced new tour dates Monday.

The band canceled the rest of its 2012 club schedule and postponed the start of a 2013 arena tour after singer-guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong‘s substance abuse problems emerged publicly in September when he had a profane meltdown on the stage of the iHeartRadio Music Festival in Las Vegas.

Armstrong told fans in a statement Monday that he’s “getting better every day” and “the show must go on.”

The tour is scheduled to begin March 28 at the Allstate Arena in the Chicago area.

The band released its most recent album, “Tre,” on Dec. 11, more than a month ahead of schedule.

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Essay: In Pursuit of Answers One May Not Want to Know

I jogged into the Stanford Cancer Clinic with my boyfriend, the youngest people there by two decades. We stood there sweating and holding hands, a jarring sight in the sickly light.

“You are 18, right?” the receptionist asked. Behind me, a woman so gaunt that her cheekbones protruded rolled by in a wheelchair. The oncologist called me alone to the exam room, and I told her the story I had revealed to more doctors than friends: I carry the BRCA1 mutation, which gives you a 98 percent chance of developing cancer.

When my family found out that I might have inherited the mutation from my mother, we took it as a given that I would get tested. Scientists, atheists and lawyers, we are compulsively rational. Yet when I learned I carried the mutation, I felt the cruel weight of a paradox: you can never know whether you want to know until you already do.

At Stanford, I study artificial intelligence, in which math is used to resolve these sorts of dilemmas. My teachers claim that gaining information never hurts. It can be proved mathematically that a robot with more information never makes worse decisions But we are not robots. Our eyes don’t filigree the world with coordinates and probabilities, and they can be blinded by tears.

Still, we, too, display a preference for information. We dislike uncertainty so strongly that we sometimes even prefer bad news. One study of people at risk for a terminal disease found that those who learned they were going to die from it were happier a year later than those who remained uncertain about their fates. Most people have a deep intuition that a life lived cleareyed has inherent value, independent of whether the truth makes you happy. But surely this has limits.

I know there are some things I do not want to know: which other girls my boyfriend finds attractive or the day and manner of my death. The truth can hurt in two ways. It can worsen your options: you can’t live as happily with a significant other after learning of his infidelity. Or it can make you irrational: hearing about terrorists targeting airplanes may lead you to drive instead of fly, though planes remain much safer than cars.

So was I wrong to unwind my double helix?

My risks of getting cancer at 21 are too low for me to do anything differently to better my odds. The knowledge is both irrelevant and painful; it’s obsessed me and made me behave irrationally. I wake from nightmares in which I am dying from cancer. I reread the memoirs of patients with metastatic disease until I can’t see the text through my tears. In my supposedly rational pursuit of knowledge, I’ve gone a little mad.

Despite an excess of information, I pursued more, enrolling in Stanford’s cancer biology class. The professor filled his slides with dark oncological puns, lecturing with the almost robotic detachment I sometimes see in those who work closely with cancer. Maybe I, too, am becoming robotic. I can laugh at the puns, calmly press lecturers on survival rates for breast cancer, marvel at the elegant molecular mechanisms by which it eats us alive. Just as tumors eventually swell too large for their hosts to endure, will all this knowledge grow past what I can handle?

The prospect was too much for my mother, a far tougher woman than I am. When she received a diagnosis of breast cancer, she ordered the doctors to give her chemotherapy as rapidly as possible and recovered completely. But she refused to learn her chances of long-term survival or look at her medical records. I became the first in my family to read them, and when I learned her cancer had been unusually lethal, my father asked me not to tell her.

I cannot shake the thought that this mutation was given to me for a reason. I don’t believe in God. I know my chromosomes divided along a random schism, not a divine skein. But while I reject the theist’s idea of God-granted purpose, I accept the existentialist’s idea of crafting your own. The world may be only sound and fury, but we can choose to see patterns in that chaos, stories in the stars.

So I choose to believe that I have been given this mutation so that I can discover how to overcome it. Like the protagonist in “Flowers for Algernon,” I will be both scientist and patient. Even if this sense of purpose is illusory, it lets me do what I couldn’t before. Fear has sharpened me: I wake at 3 in the morning to refine biological algorithms or to read papers on ovarian cancer.

While I believe this knowledge has made me live better, I am not sure it’s made me happier. True, there was the day I dropped by Stanford’s Relay for Life, a fund-raiser for cancer research, ran farther than I ever had and walked home full of joyful purpose. There was also the night I lost it completely and sobbed for hours in my boyfriend’s arms.

In this oscillation between light and dark, one thing remains constant: I’m no longer so eager to illuminate my fate. Recently, I went to the Web site of 23andMe, a company that will read from your genome your risk of dying from a hundred diseases. I clicked through the testimonials and was unnerved by how similar our reasons were for wanting information. I looked down at my fingertips, tempted: what else in my genome waits to be found?

But then I clicked away. The Bible doesn’t tell us if Eve ate any more apples, but I have had my fill of revelations. I am 21 years old, and I want to be free to live a normal life: fate unbound by double helix, future exploding with possibility. I don’t want to know.

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4th quarter: Bears 26, Lions 24

The Chicago Bears did their part Sunday, beating the Detroit Lions 26-24. Now they need help from the Green Bay Packers, who must beat the Minnesota Vikings to send the Bears into the playoffs.

The victory didn't come easily. The Lions cut the Bears' lead to 26-24 on a 9-yard Matthew Stafford pass to Brian Robiskie with 6:55 to play in the game. The nine-play, 80-yard drive was kept alive by an unnecessary roughness penalty on linebacker Lance Briggs for a hit on a sliding Stafford.

Olindo Mare's fourth field goal -- this one from 20 yards out -- boosted the Bears' lead to 26-17 with 10:47 left. It capped an 11-play, 59-yard drive that took 4:25 off the clock.

Mare's 28-yard field goal increased the Bears' lead to 23-17 with 1:50 left in the third quarter. The score was set up when safety Major Wright came up with the Lions' fourth turnover of the day, recovering a Mikel Leshoure fumble at the Detroit 13.

Detroit fought back and trimmed the Bears' once-commanding lead to 20-17 with a 10-yard TD pass from Matthew Stafford to Will Heller at the 6:35 mark of the third quarter.

The Lions cut the Bears' lead to 20-10 just before halftime, as Stafford hit Kris Durham on a 25-yard TD pass with 12 seconds to play before intermission.

Mare's 40-yard field goal extended the Bears' lead to 20-3 with 1:49 to play.

Tim Jennings made his league-high ninth interception with 2:38 left in the half to put the Bears' offense back in business inside Lions territory.

Matt Forte's 1-yard touchdown run -- after a pass-interference call against Detroit drawn by Brandon Marshall -- gave the Bears a 17-3 lead with 3:26 to go in the first half.

The Bears' defense delivered again to set up the score. Israel Idonije knocked the ball from quarterback Matthew Stafford's hand and Julius Peppers recovered on the Lions' 10-yard line.

Mare's 33-yard field goal gave the Bears a 10-3 lead with 2:59 left in the first quarter. Joe Anderson forced a fumble on the kickoff after the Bears' first score and Eric Weems recovered, setting up Mare's kick.

Mare blew a chance to extend the lead, missing a 43-yard attempt wide right with just under five minutes remaining in the half.

The Bears grabbed a 7-3 lead when Earl Bennett caught a screen pass from Jay Cutler and took it 60 yards for a touchdown with 4:33 left in the first quarter.

The Lions struck first, with Jason Hanson connecting on a 44-yard field goal for a 3-0 Detroit lead with 5:54 to go in the quarter. The kick came after replay overturned a fumble that had been ruled on Stafford and recovered by the Bears.

The Bears' offense started well, with Cutler hitting receiver Alshon Jeffery for a 55-yard gain on their first play. But the drive sputtered and the Bears were forced to punt.

The Bears have been to the playoffs three times under coach Lovie Smith, with the last playoff appearance coming in 2010.

General manager Phil Emery had praise for Smith while speaking before the game on WBBM-AM (780).

"Great team-first person," Emery said of Smith. "He's done an outstanding job coaching the Bears."

As to whether Smith must reach the playoffs to retain his job, Emery said, "When you're evaluating players, you're always looking for body of work. No different when you're evaluating coaches.

"It's is the full season, and the whole body of work. ... It's about steady progress toward our goals, which is to win championships.''

As for needing help from Green Bay to reach the playoffs, Emery said, "We're rooting against Minnesota. ... We're not rooting for Green Bay."
 
fmitchell@tribune.com

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‘The Hobbit’ stays atop box office for third week

LOS ANGELES (AP) — “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” continues to rule them all at the box office, staying on top for a third-straight week with nearly $ 33 million.

The Warner Bros. fantasy epic from director Peter Jackson, based on the J.R.R. Tolkien novel, has made $ 222.7 million domestically alone.

Two big holiday movies — and potential awards contenders — also had strong openings. Quentin Tarantino‘s spaghetti Western-blaxploitation mash-up “Django Unchained” came in second place for the weekend with $ 30.7 million. The Weinstein Co. revenge epic, starring Jamie Foxx and Christoph Waltz, has earned $ 64 million since its Christmas Day opening.

And in third place with $ 28 million was the sweeping, all-singing “Les Miserables.” The Universal Pictures musical starring Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway has made $ 67.5 million since debuting on Christmas.

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Well: Exercise and the Ever-Smarter Human Brain

Anyone whose resolve to exercise in 2013 is a bit shaky might want to consider an emerging scientific view of human evolution. It suggests that we are clever today in part because a million years ago, we could outrun and outwalk most other mammals over long distances. Our brains were shaped and sharpened by movement, the idea goes, and we continue to require regular physical activity in order for our brains to function optimally.

Phys Ed

Gretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness.

The role of physical endurance in shaping humankind has intrigued anthropologists and gripped the popular imagination for some time. In 2004, the evolutionary biologists Daniel E. Lieberman of Harvard and Dennis M. Bramble of the University of Utah published a seminal article in the journal Nature titled “Endurance Running and the Evolution of Homo,” in which they posited that our bipedal ancestors survived by becoming endurance athletes, able to bring down swifter prey through sheer doggedness, jogging and plodding along behind them until the animals dropped.

Endurance produced meals, which provided energy for mating, which meant that adept early joggers passed along their genes. In this way, natural selection drove early humans to become even more athletic, Dr. Lieberman and other scientists have written, their bodies developing longer legs, shorter toes, less hair and complicated inner-ear mechanisms to maintain balance and stability during upright ambulation. Movement shaped the human body.

But simultaneously, in a development that until recently many scientists viewed as unrelated, humans were becoming smarter. Their brains were increasing rapidly in size.

Today, humans have a brain that is about three times larger than would be expected, anthropologists say, given our species’ body size in comparison with that of other mammals.

To explain those outsized brains, evolutionary scientists have pointed to such occurrences as meat eating and, perhaps most determinatively, our early ancestors’ need for social interaction. Early humans had to plan and execute hunts as a group, which required complicated thinking patterns and, it’s been thought, rewarded the social and brainy with evolutionary success. According to that hypothesis, the evolution of the brain was driven by the need to think.

But now some scientists are suggesting that physical activity also played a critical role in making our brains larger.

To reach that conclusion, anthropologists began by looking at existing data about brain size and endurance capacity in a variety of mammals, including dogs, guinea pigs, foxes, mice, wolves, rats, civet cats, antelope, mongooses, goats, sheep and elands. They found a notable pattern. Species like dogs and rats that had a high innate endurance capacity, which presumably had evolved over millenniums, also had large brain volumes relative to their body size.

The researchers also looked at recent experiments in which mice and rats were systematically bred to be marathon runners. Lab animals that willingly put in the most miles on running wheels were interbred, resulting in the creation of a line of lab animals that excelled at running.

Interestingly, after multiple generations, these animals began to develop innately high levels of substances that promote tissue growth and health, including a protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF. These substances are important for endurance performance. They also are known to drive brain growth.

What all of this means, says David A. Raichlen, an anthropologist at the University of Arizona and an author of a new article about the evolution of human brains appearing in the January issue of Proceedings of the Royal Society Biology, is that physical activity may have helped to make early humans smarter.

“We think that what happened” in our early hunter-gatherer ancestors, he says, is that the more athletic and active survived and, as with the lab mice, passed along physiological characteristics that improved their endurance, including elevated levels of BDNF. Eventually, these early athletes had enough BDNF coursing through their bodies that some could migrate from the muscles to the brain, where it nudged the growth of brain tissue.

Those particular early humans then applied their growing ability to think and reason toward better tracking prey, becoming the best-fed and most successful from an evolutionary standpoint. Being in motion made them smarter, and being smarter now allowed them to move more efficiently.

And out of all of this came, eventually, an ability to understand higher math and invent iPads. But that was some time later.

The broad point of this new notion is that if physical activity helped to mold the structure of our brains, then it most likely remains essential to brain health today, says John D. Polk, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and co-author, with Dr. Raichlen, of the new article.

And there is scientific support for that idea. Recent studies have shown, he says, that “regular exercise, even walking,” leads to more robust mental abilities, “beginning in childhood and continuing into old age.”

Of course, the hypothesis that jogging after prey helped to drive human brain evolution is just a hypothesis, Dr. Raichlen says, and almost unprovable.

But it is compelling, says Harvard’s Dr. Lieberman, who has worked with the authors of the new article. “I fundamentally agree that there is a deep evolutionary basis for the relationship between a healthy body and a healthy mind,” he says, a relationship that makes the term “jogging your memory” more literal than most of us might have expected and provides a powerful incentive to be active in 2013.

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