Science Friday
A few of the particularly interesting stories of the past week (there are always so many, though):
--In Science, a new paper examines the Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL), created from scratch by deaf children in a special-ed program in Managua 30 years ago and evolving ever since. A multinational team of scientists looked at three different age cohorts of students in the program, and found that the language had evolved over those three generations from primitive gestures and physical mimicry of actions to more complex signs underpinned by apparent syntactic rules. Bottom line: Kids not only are "wired" to learn language; by the way the learn it, they can also shape and reshape the way the language itself works. The paper itself, plus an interesting review of it, can be found on Science Online (abstract free with registration; full text requires subscription); nice write-ups appear in New Scientist and news@nature.com.
--Over at Nature, meanwhile, evidence that the ancient Egyptians were as obsessed with their pets as some modern Americans. Based on a chemical analysis of the mummified remains of animals, such as cats, that were buried with their masters, it would appear that the embalming agents and techniques used on these animals were every bit as complex as those used for human remains. Read more at news@nature.com and ScienceNOW (subscription required).
--Several interesting items related to potential techniques to stem or cure blindness. Both the New York Times and New Scientist included interesting features on the first human clinical trials of RNA interference techniques, which work by using small pieces of RNA to silence troublesome genes -- in this case, the gene that causes age-related macular degeneration, a leading cause of blindness in the elderly. And the Journal of Clinical Investigation publishes new research in which mice suffering from retinitis pigmentosa, an inherited form of progressive blindness, were spared their otherwise sightless fate via an injection (before the retina had begun to break down) of bone marrow stem cells from other mice. The control mice, by contrast, went completely blind. Remarkable.
--A couple of grim items on the health front. The World Health Organization's program to reduce global tuberculosis rates is apparently failing, according to a recent review in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health (though the program has had some regional successes). And a recent study from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health notes that the health of U.S. children, by most measures, is worse than that of children in most other industrialized countries.
And, lo and behold, I'm out of time. More physical science next week. I promise.
--In Science, a new paper examines the Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL), created from scratch by deaf children in a special-ed program in Managua 30 years ago and evolving ever since. A multinational team of scientists looked at three different age cohorts of students in the program, and found that the language had evolved over those three generations from primitive gestures and physical mimicry of actions to more complex signs underpinned by apparent syntactic rules. Bottom line: Kids not only are "wired" to learn language; by the way the learn it, they can also shape and reshape the way the language itself works. The paper itself, plus an interesting review of it, can be found on Science Online (abstract free with registration; full text requires subscription); nice write-ups appear in New Scientist and news@nature.com.
--Over at Nature, meanwhile, evidence that the ancient Egyptians were as obsessed with their pets as some modern Americans. Based on a chemical analysis of the mummified remains of animals, such as cats, that were buried with their masters, it would appear that the embalming agents and techniques used on these animals were every bit as complex as those used for human remains. Read more at news@nature.com and ScienceNOW (subscription required).
--Several interesting items related to potential techniques to stem or cure blindness. Both the New York Times and New Scientist included interesting features on the first human clinical trials of RNA interference techniques, which work by using small pieces of RNA to silence troublesome genes -- in this case, the gene that causes age-related macular degeneration, a leading cause of blindness in the elderly. And the Journal of Clinical Investigation publishes new research in which mice suffering from retinitis pigmentosa, an inherited form of progressive blindness, were spared their otherwise sightless fate via an injection (before the retina had begun to break down) of bone marrow stem cells from other mice. The control mice, by contrast, went completely blind. Remarkable.
--A couple of grim items on the health front. The World Health Organization's program to reduce global tuberculosis rates is apparently failing, according to a recent review in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health (though the program has had some regional successes). And a recent study from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health notes that the health of U.S. children, by most measures, is worse than that of children in most other industrialized countries.
And, lo and behold, I'm out of time. More physical science next week. I promise.
posted by ahab at 1:17 PM
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