Larger zoos employ behaviouralists to think up ways of keeping animals mentally alert.

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We naturally trust people who listen, people who are mentally alert to the moment as it unfolds rather than thinking forward to their weekend or reflecting back on the missteps of a morning meeting.

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He was heavily sedated and on a ventilator at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital, but was "alert, mentally competent and lucid" during the brief initial court appearance at his bedside on Monday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Marianne Bowler found.

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