Number 85 - To see a tree asmiling.

Yep, a very good day

From NPR:

ugust 16, 2010
These words you are reading are really just a collection of arbitrary symbols. Yet, after some decoding by your brain, these symbols convey meaning. That's because humans have evolved a brain with an extraordinary knack for language. And language has given us a major advantage over other species.

Yet scientists still don't know when and how we began using language.

"The Earth would not be the way it is if humankind didn't have the ability to communicate, to organize itself, to pass knowledge down from generation to generation," says Jeff Elman, a professor of cognitive science at the University of California, San Diego. "We'd be living in troops of very smart baboons," he says.

Instead, language has allowed us to cooperate in groups of millions instead of dozens, he says. It also lets us share the complex ideas produced by our brains, and it's flexible in ways you don't find in the communication systems of other species.

Bees, for example, use an elaborate communication system to tell one another precisely how to get from the hive to a source of pollen, Elman says. "But that's all it does," he says. "They can't talk about politics. They can't talk about who's having an affair with what other bee — and these are things that we can do."

The Ingredients For Language

There's no single module in our brain that produces language. Instead, language seems to come from lots of different circuits. And many of those circuits also exist in other species.

For example, some birds can imitate human speech. Some monkeys use specific calls to tell one another whether a predator is a leopard, a snake or an eagle. And dogs are very good at reading our gestures and tone of voice. Take all of those bits and you get "exactly the right ingredients for making language possible," Elman says.

But language is a behavior, not a physical attribute. So there is no fossil record of when it first appeared, says David Armstrong, who spent decades studying the origin of language before retiring from Gallaudet University, a university for the deaf and hard of hearing in Washington, D.C.

"We have no way of knowing exactly when or how people began to speak, or in the case of sign language, when they began to sign or to gesture in a way that was complex enough for us to consider it to have been language," Armstrong says.

An Aptitude For Language
A remarkably wide range of animals are capable of communication of some kind. Here's a sampling of some of them from the NPR archive:


Alex The Parrot, An Apt Student, Passes Away
The famous parrot shattered the notion that parrots are only capable of mimicking language.

science
The Chimp That Learned Sign Language
Whistling Orangutan Impresses Zoo Researchers
Feb. 20, 2009
Language means more than just having a label for an ax — it means being able to convey a message like, "The ax works better if you hold it this way."

There are several competing hypotheses about how that ability emerged.

Signing Before Speaking?

Armstrong says he thinks gestures involving the hands may well have been the earliest form of complex human communication.

Evidence from fossils supports that idea, Armstrong says. It shows that a modern hand capable of sign language evolved not long after our ape-like ancestors stopped walking on their knuckles a few million years ago.

In contrast, the modern vocal tract seems to have arrived much later, Armstrong says.

And the modern version of a gene called FOXP2, which is important for speech and language, didn't appear until perhaps 100,000 years ago, he says

So early human ancestors probably used gestures to communicate, Armstrong says, because "articulate speech of the sort that we employ would have been probably difficult."

Also, sign language would have suited the early human lifestyle, Armstrong says. Groups of hunters could have used visual signs to communicate during a hunt without alerting their prey. It's possible that gestures eventually became associated with sounds, which got more sophisticated as the human vocal tract evolved, Armstrong says.

Even now, there are close links between the brain centers involved in speech and those involved in sign language. Of course, once spoken language appeared, Armstrong says, it would have given our ancestors a huge advantage when they weren't hunting. They would have been able to communicate in the dark and while using hand tools.

Think, Speak:

When Did We Become Mentally Modern?
The notion that objects can represent ideas is one of the key traits that make us human.

From Grunting To Gabbing: Why Humans Can Talk
Chimps and humans have the same basic vocal apparatus. So why are we the ones talking?
Melodic Minds

Another idea about the origin of language is that it came from song. Ani Patel of The Neurosciences Institute in San Diego says this idea just feels right to a lot of people.

"We feel music just taps into this kind of pre-cognitive archaic part of ourselves," he says. So it seems to make sense that music came "before we had this complicated articulate language that we use to do abstract thinking."

Even Charles Darwin "talked about our ancestors singing love songs to each other before we could speak articulate language," Patel says.

And musical ability is similar to language in that you can see aspects of it in other species. Some monkeys can recognize dissonant tones, songbirds use complicated patterns of pitch and rhythm, and a few parrots can even dance to a beat.

And modern humans still combine music and speech in ways that seem innate, Patel says.

When a parent speaks to a baby, "it's this kind of lilting intonation," he says. "There is a lot of rhythm, a lot of exaggerated pitch contours, and people have speculated that this way of communicating with infants may have been one of the important roots to language in our species."

Moreover, our brains process music and language in a similar fashion. But just finding a connection between music and language doesn't prove that music came first, Patel says.

Whales are able to differentiate calls from specific pods. This may help them identify one another. He says it's possible that language emerged without help from either gestures or music. It might have come from a behavior you see in another smart mammal with a long life span: the killer whale.

Scientists have shown that calls from whales in the same pod share a distinctive dialect, which seems to help them identify one another.

Our ancestors also lived in small groups "where affiliation and identity was important," Patel says. So perhaps they began making distinctive sounds for the same reason whales did, he says, and these sounds eventually led to language.

Interesting sumac................ I think the first word was "beer".....
That aparently is the thing that stopped us from being nomads to settling down in one spot to grow stuff to make alcohol.

Grin.

I read or saw that, Danon. Beer as a driver for agriculture.

Yep, that'l do it.

Even today, give a man a fish and he'll have a meal - teach him to fish and he'll sit in a boat drinking beer all day.

Good cleecking all.....................

All clicked, and stay cool Danon.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/23/opinion/23homer-dixon.html?th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print

"August 22, 2010
Disaster at the Top of the World
By THOMAS HOMER-DIXON
Aboard the Louis S. St-Laurent

STANDING on the deck of this floating laboratory for Arctic science, which is part of Canada’s Coast Guard fleet and one of the world’s most powerful icebreakers, I can see vivid evidence of climate change. Channels through the Canadian Arctic archipelago that were choked with ice at this time of year two decades ago are now expanses of open water or vast patchworks of tiny islands of melting ice.

In 1994, the “Louie,” as the crew calls the ship, and a United States Coast Guard icebreaker, the Polar Sea, smashed their way to the North Pole through thousands of miles of pack ice six- to nine-feet thick. “The sea conditions in the Arctic Ocean were rarely an issue for us in those days, because the thick continuous ice kept waves from forming,” Marc Rothwell, the Louie’s captain, told me. “Now, there’s so much open water that we have to account for heavy swells that undulate through the sea ice. It’s almost like a dream: the swells move in slow motion, like nothing I’ve seen elsewhere.”

The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet, and this summer its sea ice is melting at a near-record pace. The sun is heating the newly open water, so it will take longer to refreeze this winter, and the resulting thinner ice will melt more easily next summer."

We're missing both ehBeth and High Seas and both are posting on the mosque thread.

Just read some of the postings

Looks like the discussion has about ended.

At any rate, it will be NY voters who will decide the outcome.

If NY construction unions refuse to work on it?

August 23, 2010
Acid Rain 30 Years On
Just over 30 years ago, a skeptical Daniel Patrick Moynihan persuaded his Senate colleagues to approve a major study to see whether a relatively unknown phenomenon called acid rain was worth worrying about. The study, completed in 1990, showed that pollution blowing eastward from coal-fired power plants was killing off aquatic life. One-quarter of the Adirondacks’ 3,000 lakes and streams had become too acidic to support fish life, or were headed that way.

Mr. Moynihan became a believer. And the study helped usher in two decades worth of laws and regulations — most important, the 1990 Clean Air Act — requiring major reductions in power plant emissions of sulfur dioxide. Evidence suggests that in the last decade pollution levels have dropped and that streams, lakes and forests have rebounded.

More can be done. The Environmental Protection Agency recently proposed a sound new regulation, which aims, over the next four years, to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions by about 70 percent from 2005 levels and cut nitrogen oxide emissions in half. It would require utilities to install pollution controls, retire their oldest plants or switch to cleaner fuels like natural gas.

Senator Thomas Carper, Democrat of Delaware, has proposed a bill that would trim sulfur dioxide emissions by 80 percent, cut nitrogen oxides by half and, for the first time, mandate reductions in mercury pollution. The E.P.A. rule is almost a sure thing, but could be vulnerable to court challenge. A law would be even better.

The Senate, which so far has shown little interest in environmental legislation, needs to pick up Mr. Moynihan’s mantle. The lesson of acid rain and the Adirondacks is that good legislation can deflect and even reverse an environmental disaster.

Stradee, I think you're right --- this should be about it for this --- well, we made it to Number 85 and helped to save close to 100 acres (not quite, but getting there) in our group alone. That's doing something worthwhile.

If anyone starts a new thread - let me know.

Thank you both for putting up with me for all these years.

It's certainly been a pleasure.

All clicked, and Danon, heard that you are going to get a break in the heat department tomorrow. It is moderating slightly here down out of the constant 90's.

WHAT!!!

I was talking about the 'Mosque" thread, Dan!

Not the Rainforest thread!

I luv stopping by here each day and saying hi.

Ya all must've sent the heat wave to CA cause today was a scourcher! Triple digits and not a breeze.

Stay cool wildclickers

August 24, 2010
A Gulf Science Blackout
By LINDA HOOPER-BUI
Baton Rouge, La.

THE Deepwater Horizon blowout may be capped and the surface oil slick dispersed, but the scientists’ job has just begun: hundreds of us are working in and around the gulf to determine the long-term environmental impact of the drilling disaster.

Although we are all doing needed research, we’re not receiving equal money or access to the affected sites. Those working for BP or the federal government’s Natural Resource Damage Assessment program are being given the bulk of the resources, while independent researchers are shoved aside.

The problem is that researchers for BP and the government are being kept quiet, and their data is unavailable to the rest of the community. When damages to the gulf are assessed in court or Congress, there might not be enough objective data to make a fair judgment.

Transparency is vital to successful science: researchers must subject their proposals to the scrutiny of colleagues, and publications require peer review. When it comes to field research, scientists need equal access to the same sites to test competing hypotheses.

But BP, which controls access to the Deepwater Horizon site and vast stretches of the water around it, seems unconcerned about those principles. Some suspect that the oil company is focusing its research on gathering material to support its legal case; we can’t know for sure, though, because researchers who get money from BP must sign strict three-year confidentiality agreements. In any case, whatever research comes out of BP’s efforts will be tainted by secrecy.

The damage-assessment process isn’t much more accessible. It has amassed enormous amounts of data but offered only vague promises to make it public, and it likewise requires confidentiality agreements from the researchers it finances. This research will probably be used against BP in court; chances are, then, that it will not be subject to outside scrutiny out of fear that a weakness in the government’s case could be exposed.

Independent researchers like me and my team — we study the effect of things like oil and dispersants on insects — have had to rely on the meager discretionary funds provided by our university departments, particularly in the early weeks of the disaster. And, as the weeks have rolled into months, we have found ourselves blocked from a widening list of sites, all of which are integral to completing our investigations.

True, the National Science Foundation has a rapid-response grant program that has been a lifeline to independent researchers, dispersing more than $14 million to 90 short-term research projects associated with the disaster. My team submitted a proposal that was quickly peer-reviewed and approved, allowing us to continue our research. But given the unprecedented nature of the disaster, that’s not nearly enough money.

Instead, we need a unified national research plan administered by the National Science Foundation. It would place a priority on coordinated, independent research, with a finance stream unconnected to BP or the damage-assessment process. Proposals would be peer-reviewed and methods vetted, and all results would be available for public scrutiny.

Moreover, the federal government should require that all credentialed scientists have access to the affected sites. Without such a commitment to independent financing and equal access, the legal process and the rehabilitation of the gulf will be seriously undermined.

Linda Hooper-Bui is a professor of entomology at Louisiana State University.

They may not be able to investigate the immediate site, but isn't the gulf open to scientific investigation? Are independent study groups talking about grants? Whatever the case, BP will be spending years in court.

Stradee,
It sounds as if already collected data on certain sites is not open for scientific investigation. And if BP controls access to certain sites, then what can a researcher do?


August 24, 2010
Birding Along the Cloud Forests
By DAVE SHERWOOD
AGUAS CALIENTES, Peru — On a lookout near Intipunku, the Incan Sun Gate to the ancient city of Machu Picchu, I found it hard to focus on anything but the postcard-perfect ruins of the 500-year-old city below.

“Amazing, isn’t it?” said Virgilio Yábar, tipping his binoculars to his eyes and tilting his head back in awe. “And its song is so exquisite.”

I snapped to attention from my tourist stupor and raised my binoculars in time to see Yábar’s stout frame scrambling down the cobblestone path in hot pursuit.

The Inca wren, a species found only in this valley and the surrounding region, fluttered about the pucker brush. It was drab and brown; subtle, not startling like the colorful tropical bird that graces children’s cereal boxes.

Yábar, a 39-year-old Peruvian bird guide, born and raised in Cusco, 70 or so miles by train from Machu Picchu, had seen hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Inca wrens in his years as a guide, but his passion for “endemics” — species found only in one location on earth — was boundless.

This was one of hundreds of species of birds we would see in three days of birding from the Altiplano of the Andes to the verdant cloud forests of Machu Picchu.

As with the wren, Machu Picchu’s true splendor lies not in glitter or gold but in its subtleties — the perfect fit and longevity of its meticulous stonework, the tiered method of farming that allowed for a dazzling array of crops and a system of aqueducts that provided pure, running spring water to a city of hundreds.

It’s no coincidence that this Incan hideaway and its surroundings are one of South America’s most spectacular, and underrated, birding destinations. The Incas chose this place, Yábar said, for its “Goldilocks” climate — not too hot, not too cold — well protected from friajes, chilly downdrafts off the steep flank of the Andes, and from Antarctic cold fronts that regularly send temperatures below zero just a few miles away.

This little valley, it seems, had spawned its own microclimate, sandwiched between the saw-toothed, snowy peaks of the Andes and the sultry blanket of rainforest in the neighboring Amazon basin — and as such had evolved a unique set of birds.

As Yábar and I descended from Machu Picchu to the Urubamba River valley below, we poked about forests draped in a tangled, almost blinding array of life: orchids, bromeliads, mosses, ferns, vines, grasses and tree species. He reminded me that Hiram Bingham, the famous explorer, had long ago discovered Machu Picchu in much the same way — the hard way.

Like Bingham, I was hoping for a bigger discovery, perhaps one of the more glamorous species of the region — the gaudy, mopheaded cock of the rock, the wildly colored Andean toucan and the enormous Andean condor — emblematic species that birders who have traveled the world put high on their list.

“You think we might see the cock of the rock?” I said to Yábar in Cusco the week before our trip.

“Maybe,” he replied, careful not to succumb to the infamous what-if question insistently posed by excitable bird watchers, anglers and weather watchers the world round.

But a “maybe” from Yábar carried more weight than most.

His family helped pioneer the region’s still-budding ecotourism industry in the early 1980s, at a time when the Shining Path, a roving group of Maoist guerrillas, dominated the countryside and highlands and struck fear into the hearts of tourists and locals.

Through it all, the Yábars persevered, building a faithful clientele and an ecolodge in the foothills of the Amazon, near Manu, that is now an almost mandatory stop for ornithologists and birders traveling to South America.

By the end of our third day, Yábar’s sharp eye and experience had turned up an impressive list of species, including local marvels like the Andean duck, the puna tapaculo, the shining sunbeam and the versicolored barbet. But the cock of the rock still eluded us.

Yábar was tireless, playing the cock of the rock’s croaking call on a small cassette player he carried in a hip pack.

Near a bridge at the base of the trail to Machu Picchu, in the mounting darkness, we heard the mystical song of the Andean solitaire echoing against a distant valley wall. Yábar called it into range and excitedly pointed it out to me.

“Good bird,” he said, perhaps sensing my disappointment. The diminutive solitaire perched on the mossy limb of an enormous tree, gazing at me with a curious eye.

It was subtle and beautiful, its notes on par with those of the most exquisite flutist, but still not a cock of the rock.

We continued back along the rutted dirt road in near darkness, dodging buses carrying loads of happy tourists sharing photographs on their digital cameras.

We did not speak. We had had three remarkable days birding, from the snowfields of the Andes to majestic Machu Picchu. It felt unconscionable to be disappointed.

A half-moon had risen overhead, its pale light illuminating the fortresslike silhouette of Machu Picchu far above us. Yábar stopped suddenly. “Escuche,” he said, signaling me with a hand cupped to his ear.

High above, where the forest met the sheer canyon walls, we heard a whirring sound, something unusual. I stopped short, my heart pounding and my hope renewed.

“Lyre-tailed nightjar,” Yábar said. “I’m going to call it.”

We waited, watching intently, then saw what looked like a child’s streamer fluttering against the last vestiges of Andean azure sky.

It danced above us, then landed on a tree branch, its long and delicate tail rising and falling with the cool breeze that whispered through the valley.

I looked over at Yábar. He was smiling.

It wasn’t the cock of the rock, but the Inca, I had learned, never parted easily with their secrets.

New microbe discovered eating oil spill in Gulf

By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, AP Science Writer
38 mins ago

WASHINGTON – The Gulf of Mexico oil spill has revealed a previously unknown type of oil-eating bacteria, which is suddenly flourishing.
Scientists discovered the new microbe while studying the underwater dispersion of millions of gallons of oil spilled into the Gulf following the explosion of BP's Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.
And the microbe works without significantly depleting oxygen in the water, researchers led by Terry Hazen at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory reported Tuesday in the online journal Science Express.
"Our findings, which provide the first data ever on microbial activity from a deepwater dispersed oil plume, suggest" a great potential for bacteria to help dispose of oil plumes in the deep-sea, Hazen said in a statement.
Environmentalists have raised concerns about the giant oil spill and the underwater plume of dispersed oil, particularly its potential effects on sea life. A report just last week described a 22-mile long underwater mist of tiny oil droplets.
"Our findings show that the influx of oil profoundly altered the microbial community by significantly stimulating deep-sea" cold temperature bacteria that are closely related to known petroleum-degrading microbes, Hazen reported.
Before the spill the microbes in the deepest parts of the Gulf were not well known and there was little carbon present in the area of cool temperatures and high pressure.
"We deployed on two ships to determine the physical, chemical and microbiological properties of the deepwater oil plume," Hazen said. "The oil escaping from the damaged wellhead represented an enormous carbon input to the water column."
Their findings are based on more than 200 samples collected from 17 deepwater sites between May 25 and June 2. They found that the dominant microbe in the oil plume is a new species, closely related to members of Oceanospirillales.
This microbe thrives in cold water, with temperatures in the deep recorded at 5 degrees Celsius (41 Fahrenheit).
Hazen suggested that the bacteria may have adapted over time due to periodic leaks and natural seeps of oil in the Gulf.
Scientists also had been concerned that oil-eating activity by microbes would consume large amounts of oxygen in the water, creating a "dead zone" dangerous to other life. But the new study found that oxygen saturation outside the oil plume was 67 percent, while within the plume it was 59 percent.
The research was supported by an existing grant with the Energy Biosciences Institute, a partnership led by the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Illinois that is funded by a $500 million, 10-year grant from BP. Other support came from the U.S. Department of Energy and the University of Oklahoma Research Foundation.
Sciencexpress is the online edition of the journal Science.
___

It appears that it is just the three of us now. Anything we can do to get ehBeth and High Seas back?

They both are so busy with work, travel, and summer stuff, i hope they will visit more often.

FB has a Care2 clicking site...in fact, you can just about visit any of your fav sites from one page. With no more team clicking offered at care2, i suppose many of the wildclickers are visiting the site from other areas of the net.

It's been a wonderful ride though.