An elephant in a South Korean zoo is using his trunk to pick up not only food, but also human vocabulary.
An international team of scientists confirmed Friday what the Everland Zoo has been saying for years: Their 5.5-ton tusker Koshik has an unusual and possibly unprecedented talent. The 22-year-old Asian elephant can reproduce five Korean words by tucking his trunk inside his mouth to modulate sound, the scientists said in a joint paper published online in Current Biology. They said he may have started imitating human speech because he was lonely. |  |
Video: Not Just Parroting Back: Alex the Parrot Knew His Numbers
Alex, an African grey parrot who died 5 years ago and was known for his ability to use English words, also understood a great deal about numbers. In a new study in this month's Cognition, scientists show that Alex correctly inferred the relationship between cardinal and ordinal numbers, an ability that has not previously been found in any species other than humans. After learning the cardinal numbers—or exact values—of one to six, Alex was taught the ordinal values (the position of a number in a list) of seven and eight—that is, he learned that six is less than seven, and seven is less than eight.
Polly Want a #$%@!
The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is trying to find a good home for a parrot that swears all the time. Why do parrots repeat things that humans say?
Because there aren’t any other birds around. Most animals are born with their species’ distinctive calls programmed into their brains. Parrots are among the few animals, along with dolphins, whales, hummingbirds, songbirds, bats, and some primates, that learn their species’ communication patterns. Wild parrots typically only repeat the sounds that other parrots make, although they’ve occasionally been observed mimicking other species. When forced to live with humans, parrots repeat what their owners say. |  |
Incredible images of Mars show signs of ancient glaciers under surface
These incredible new images of Mars, taken on 6 June by the high-resolution stereo camera on ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft, show the stunning beauty of the Martian landscape - and reveal the telltale signs that water was once commonplace on the red planet, and could still be there in huge underground glaciers.
They show the rugged terrain of Nereidum Montes, an area that marks the far northern extent of Argyre, one of the largest impact basins on Mars. Nereidum Montes stretches almost 1150 km and was named by the noted Greek astronomer Eugène Michel Antoniadi (1870–1944). |  |
Video game teaches relativity by slowing down the speed of light
To make the admittedly weird concept of relativity easier to understand, a team of developers has created a video game that slows down the speed of light.
Relativity is the theory that space and time are relative concepts rather than absolute concepts, developed by Albert Einstein in 1905.
“People think that relativity is extremely weird,” Gerd Kortemeyer a visiting professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Game Lab, explains in the introductory video below to the game “A Slower Speed of Light”.
Relativity is the theory that space and time are relative concepts rather than absolute concepts, developed by Albert Einstein in 1905.
“People think that relativity is extremely weird,” Gerd Kortemeyer a visiting professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Game Lab, explains in the introductory video below to the game “A Slower Speed of Light”.
Rats Control Human Avatars
Biologists are well-known for using lab rats in experiments, but a few may now have the chance to work with rats in a unique way.
A team of engineers has set up a system that lets lab rats control a human-shaped avatar in a virtual environment, while humans control a rat-size robot inside the rat's cage. The result? A six-foot human and a six-inch rat get to interact with each other remotely, and they get to each get to see either a virtual avatar or a robot that's close to their own size. |  |
Dolphins filmed fishing in trawler nets: Modifications needed to reduce bycatch
Murdoch University researchers have caught bottlenose dolphins on camera repeatedly raiding trawler fishing nets for food in northern Western Australia.
The recording of this behaviour could help with the modification of trawler fishing nets so that fewer dolphins are killed as bycatch say researchers Vanessa Jaiteh, Simon Allen and Professor Neil Loneragan of the Murdoch University Cetacean Research Unit and Professor Jessica Meeuwig of the University of Western Australia. |  |
'Island of the Blue Dolphins' woman's cave believed found
The yellowing government survey map of San Nicolas Island dated from 1879, but it was quite clear: There was a big black dot on the southwest coast and, next to it, the words "Indian Cave."
For more than 20 years, Navy archaeologist Steve Schwartz searched for that cave. It was believed to be home to the island's most famous inhabitant, a Native American woman who survived on the island for 18 years, abandoned and alone, and became the inspiration for "Island of the Blue Dolphins," one of the 20th century's most popular novels for young readers. |  |
Shark brains 'similar to those of humans'
Great white sharks have killed an unprecedented number of surfers and swimmers off Australia's west coast in the past year.
The government last month announced a new catch-and-kill policy for sharks that stray too close to beaches after five fatalities in 10 months. But it is also funding research into other measures, including technology to repel them. University of Western Australia shark researcher Kara Yopak, who has dissected the brains of more than 150 species, said new studies of the great white shark's brain had revealed important similarities to human brains. |  |
Exhaustive family tree for birds shows recent, rapid diversification
A Yale-led scientific team has produced the most comprehensive family tree for birds to date, connecting all living bird species — nearly 10,000 in total — and revealing surprising new details about their evolutionary history and its geographic context.
Analysis of the family tree shows when and where birds diversified — and that birds’ diversification rate has increased over the last 50 million years, challenging the conventional wisdom of biodiversity experts. |  |
Truro experts uncover '6000-year-old' causeway
Remains of a prehistoric enclosure have been discovered by archaeologists in Truro, Cornwall.
It is understood the enclosure was built during the early Neolithic period (3800 BC to 3600 BC). Archaeologists say it was built at the same time as Carn Brea, a tor enclosure near Redruth. The team will now take samples to verify the date of the enclosure, before re-burying the site, in line with national guidelines. |  |
Huge Saturn Moon Titan Glows in the Dark
Saturn's giant moon Titan glows in the dark like an enormous neon sign, a new study shows.
NASA's Cassini spacecraft has spotted a glow emanating from Titan — not just from the top of the moon's atmosphere, but also from deep within its nitrogen-rich haze. "This is exciting because we've never seen this at Titan before," study lead author Robert West, a Cassini imaging team scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in a statement. "It tells us that we don't know all there is to know about Titan and makes it even more mysterious.". |  |
The Eternal Youth of Asteroid Vesta
Solar system bodies unprotected by even a bit of atmosphere inevitably age—except, apparently, for the asteroid Vesta. Other airless bodies, including the moon, fall prey to blasts of cosmic dust and charged particles in the sun's wind. But viewed from Earth, 550-kilometer-diameter Vesta seemed immune to all that.
This week, researchers analyzing spectral color data returned by the Dawn spacecraft can confirm that Vesta has mysteriously escaped eons of the kind of "space weathering" that has aged the surface of other asteroids. And Dawn's spectral observations are also showing how a well-known "gardening" process on asteroids is smoothing out Vesta's age spots. |  |
Astronomers measure cosmic 'fog,' estimate space between stars
Stars may burn out and die, but their light goes on forever. All the light ever produced by stars is still circulating through the universe, a phenomenon known as extragalactic background light or EBL. This light is a kind of cosmic "fog" that dims light from distant stars passing through it, much like the beams from a lighthouse are dimmed by real fog. Now, for the first time, astronomers have been able to measure the sum total of EBL and to calculate the spacing of stars in the cosmos. They reported Thursday in the journal Science that the average density of stars in the universe is about 1.4 per 100 billion cubic light-years. That means that the average distance between stars is about 4,150 light-years.
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IBM's Watson supercomputer goes to medical school
IBM's Watson supercomputer is to help train doctors at a medical school in Cleveland, Ohio.
The machine gained fame when it beat two human contestants on the US quiz show Jeopardy last year. Its technology will now be put to a more practical use helping students to consider challenging cases and offering potential diagnoses. |  |
Monkeys keep the beat without outside help
Devoid of any external time cues, monkeys can still tell time. Animals learned to move their eyeballs once every second, a completely internal timing feat made possible by the rhythmic behavior of small groups of nerve cells, researchers propose online October 30 in PLOS Biology.
Time is often measured with clues from the environment, says study coauthor Geoffrey Ghose of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. A quick glance at a clock indicates that your meeting will start soon, and a look outside at a low sun tells you that it’s time to leave work. But some time-telling abilities rely on purely internal processes — just a feeling that minutes, hours or days have ticked by, Ghose says.
Time is often measured with clues from the environment, says study coauthor Geoffrey Ghose of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. A quick glance at a clock indicates that your meeting will start soon, and a look outside at a low sun tells you that it’s time to leave work. But some time-telling abilities rely on purely internal processes — just a feeling that minutes, hours or days have ticked by, Ghose says.
Key test for re-healable concrete
Experimental concrete that patches up cracks by itself is to undergo outdoor testing.
The concrete contains limestone-producing bacteria, which are activated by corrosive rainwater working its way into the structure. The new material could potentially increase the service life of the concrete - with considerable cost savings as a result. The work is taking place at Delft Technical University, the Netherlands. |  |
Coiled Beams Of Light Send 100 Terabits Per Second Through The Air
By twisting light beams, engineers could produce the fastest Internet ever. Today, for the speediest broadband, fiber-optic cables transmit information in pulses of light. Since the early 2000s, physicists have been working to make data travel even faster by bouncing light off a liquid crystal to twist it. Several coiled beams can nest within one another and move through the same space at the same time.
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Quantum entanglement shows that reality can't be local
Quantum entanglement stands as one of the strangest and hardest concepts to understand in physics. Two or more particles can interact in a specific ways that leave them entangled, such that a later measurement on one system identifies what the outcome of a similar measurement on the second system—no matter how far they are separated in space.
Repeated experiments have verified that this works even when the measurements are performed more quickly than light could travel between the sites of measurement: there's no slower-than-light influence that can pass between the entangled particles. However, one possible explanation for entanglement would allow for a faster-than-light exchange from one particle to the other. Odd as it might seem, this still doesn't violate relativity, since the only thing exchanged is the internal quantum state—no external information is passed. |  |
Mystery of Angkor Wat Temple's Huge Stones Solved
The massive sandstone bricks used to construct the 12th-century temple of Angkor Wat were brought to the site via a network of hundreds of canals, according to new research.
The findings shed light on how the site's 5 million to 10 million bricks, some weighing up to 3,300 pounds (1,500 kilograms), made it to the temple from quarries at the base of a nearby mountain. "We found many quarries of sandstone blocks used for the Angkor temples and also the transportation route of the sandstone blocks," wrote study co-author Estuo Uchida of Japan's Waseda University, in an email. |  |
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