Good Morning!
It’s unfortunate that there’s a rock stuck in the left front wheel of NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover, which is probably making a racket. If a rock clatters but no humans hear it, does it still clatter? Read on for babbling parrots, shrinking human brains, and the Riflebird dance. |
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If you’ve lost sleep over Styrofoam packing materials, rest easy. Leonardo DiCaprio and Ashton Kutcher invested in a startup, Cruzfoam, that makes biodegradable packing peanuts from shrimp shells. And they’ll still be buoyant enough to make a mess when you open the box. |
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Green-rumped parrots learn to speak like human babies |
You might not think that green-rumped parrotlets (Forpus passerines) have much in common with humans, but a new study says otherwise. Researchers installed camcorders over the birds’ nests to listen in on the newly hatched chicks. They found that, like baby humans, these hatchling parrotlets babbled their way to mastering bird language.
Compared to a human babies, the parrotlets learned in high speed. Chicks started to babble at just 21 days old and quickly increased the complexity of their sounds in the first week. They made 27 distinct calls, ranging from peeps to clicks and grrs, practicing them with their eyes closed in the nest. The sounds were copies of adult calls for contact, alarm, begging, and warbling.
When the researchers gave the parrots small doses of a hormone similar to the cortisol that stimulates language learning in human babies, the birds learned even more quickly. And, lest we think that green-rumped parrots are the only other species that babbles, a 2021 study showed that baby bats babble too. |
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Evolutionary biologist explains how baby name selection patterns aren’t random |
In a recent study, researchers used a maximum-likelihood method to measure fluxes in baby names over time. Looking at about a century of U.S. data, they found a negative frequency dependence. When a name became common (1/100 or more), its popularity declined. When a name became rare (1/1000 or less), its popularity rose.
First name time series data from France, Norway, and the Netherlands showed the same pattern. “This is really a case study showing how boom-bust cycles by themselves can disfavor common types and promote diversity,” said lead study author Mitchell Newberry.
Applying the method to dog breed preferences, the researchers got the same result. This preference for novelty resembles frequency-dependent selection in nature, like in mimicry which stops working if the mimic gets too common. If your neighbors with a Rottweiler have a daughter named Chloe, you’re likely to choose a different dog breed and girl’s name, which keeps a diverse mix of names in the population. Still, biblical names like Mary and John apparently transcend the pattern, remaining popular no matter what. |
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How the universe got its magnetic fields |
Astronomers have detected magnetic fields all over the universe, some big enough to span galaxies. The magnetic field lines that crisscross the universe are invisible to our eyes, but they are huge, the biggest known one 10 million light-years across. Each field line is way weaker than a refrigerator magnet, but collectively they represent a lot of energy.
Where these vast networks of magnetic fields came from has been a mystery to astronomers, especially because they are ordered into spiral structures, instead of the tangled webs you’d expect from all the disarray in the universe. Now, MIT graduate student Muni Zhou, in collaboration with faculty from MIT and elsewhere, has an answer from her supercomputer simulations.
Their recent study demonstrated that magnetic fields can be spontaneously generated and then amplified by astrophysical turbulence in cosmic plasma. Said the researchers, “This work provides the first step in the building of a new paradigm for understanding magnetogenesis in the universe.” |
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Our brain is our control center for thoughts, memories, emotions. And a recent study shows that language differences don’t change its function. The research team observed which regions of the brain lit up in an MRI when native English or Mandarin speakers thought about abstract concepts like gravity or justice. They found a similar pattern of brain activity, regardless of a person’s language and culture.
When thinking about abstract ideas, people from diverse backgrounds use the same neural circuitry. Said study author Marcel Just, “Cultures and languages can give us a particular perspective of the world, but our mental filing cabinets are all very similar.”
Despite this common ground, another study showed that socioeconomic status leaves an imprint on our brains. Neuroscientists see differences in the overall brain volume as well as surface area of cerebral cortex correlating with a suite of indicators that includes income, education, occupation, and neighborhood. Looking across a sample of 23,931 people, the researchers found that both biological and social factors cause brain disparities.
Said study author Gideon Nave, "What we saw in the study is that some of the relationship between the brain and socioeconomic status could be explained by genetics, but there is a lot more to that relationship that remains even after you account for genetics.” That gives us a lot to think about.
And the thing is, brains do more than just supply mental capacities. A recent study mapped the molecular activity in the brain that regulates our body’s response to central nervous system disorders, whether injuries or diseases like Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s. Specialized star-shaped cells called astrocytes support the functions of our nervous systems.
The researchers found regulator molecules that cause cellular changes in astrocytes in a nervous system disorder, which may pave the way for developing therapies. Said study author Joshua Burda, “Ultimately, we would like to use this information to therapeutically enhance adaptive responses, while diminishing maladaptive aspects of astrocyte reactivity.”
Given how dependent we are on the complex workings of our brains, we could be worried about a recent trend — well, geologically recent. A 2021 study finds that our brains have shrunk, mostly during the past 3,000 years, losing about four ping pong balls worth of volume While scientists are not sure why, it may be that we get by on our collective intelligence and don’t need so much individual brain mass anymore.
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Next time we’ll be looking at some key evolutionary innovations like snake venom and fish electric organs. |
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Written by Devin Reese, Edited by Jake Currie Copyright © 2021 Nerd Snacks, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you signed up for the Nerd Snacks Newsletter.
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