HENRY

By just four months of age, infants can tell if a speaker is using a different languages, purely by the movement of their lips (i.e. no sound).

Abstract:

 This study shows that 4- and 6-month-old infants can discriminate languages (English from French) just from viewing silently presented articulations. By the age of 8 months, only bilingual (French-English) infants succeed at this task. These findings reveal a surprisingly early preparedness for visual language discrimination and highlight infants’ selectivity for retaining only necessary perceptual sensitivities

ScienceDaily has more info here.

Back to business! National Geographic has a nice article on the hail of fireballs story which I mentioned briefly a few days ago:

The timing of the impact, according to Kennett, coincides with an era of climate cooling known as the Younger Dryas.

“We are suggesting for the first time that this very abrupt and large cooling that occurred at 12.9 thousand years ago … was triggered by the extraterrestrial impact,” he said.

The impact would have destabilized an ice sheet over North America, which allowed large bodies of fresh water to drain into the ocean and alter circulation patterns, he explained. The change in currents included a temporary halt to one that brings warm, tropical waters to the North Atlantic.

One of the most interesting social psychologists out there, Jonathan Haidt (author of The Happiness Hypothesis), talks about the “five foundations of morality” at the 2007 New Yorker Conference.

Sorry, we’re having a few *technical difficulties*. Will be back soon. In the meantime, I do apologise for any inconvienience.

Update: Should be all fixed up now. Do let me know if you run into any glitches.

–Simon

The U.N. has declared 2008 to be the International year of Languages

The Observer is reporting that

Scientists will outline dramatic evidence this week that suggests a comet exploded over the Earth nearly 13,000 years ago, creating a hail of fireballs that set fire to most of the northern hemisphere.

More when I can find it.

One of the great mysteries of the Pacific is how Kumara (sweet potato) got there. We know it came from South America, but the people (the Austronesians) who settled that part of the world came from Taiwan.

Did they sail over there in waka over 8,000km of open sea and pick them up? (and leave behind other handy food crops like maize and legumes) or did kumara manage to drift across the sea? Could the seeds have been carried in sea bird bellies?

Currently the first scenario (directed voyaging) is mostly accepted – these people were excellent sailors after all, but a new simulation study possibly lends support to the kumara drifting across the sea. As reported in Nature by Brendan Borrell:

In the simulation, sweet-potato seed pods that started off in these American waters could reasonably hit seven different island groups, and had the best chance of landing on the Marquesas. “Among the three most likely targets that get hit, two are within the area where people believe the crop was introduced,” says Montenegro. But the trip took at least four months. Even coconuts can’t survive in salt water that long.

More likely, says the team, a loaded vessel was blown out to sea and landed on the islands — which could take as little as 90 days, they report in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science. Montenegro notes that seed pods are transported by currents alone, but a drifting vessel gains momentum from the wind.

The paper is yet to be released, but a preprint is available at Álvaro Montenegro’s webpage (PDF)

update: I do apologise about the title of this post. It was late at night, and it seemed funnier then.