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Singing Mice and Brain Chemistry
Shirlockc writes "The Public Library of Science has a research article on how male mice actually sing in the presence of females. They actually posted some of the audios adjusted for human ears as these songs are ultrasonic. The authors are comparing these warbles to bird songs. The songs are quite complex so do the mice learn them and/or improve on them? This can be a potential model for investigating how brain chemistry works during learning."
This should not be a surprise. Mice are truly the smartest most intelligent species to inhabit the Earth, followed by dolphins, then humans.
My singing attracted the ladies.. :-(
- Aetheral Research -
They are merely reciting all of the different types of cheese they have eaten in their lifetime. This is why more mature male mice have better songs (more cheese-eating opportunities). :)
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
DJ Rat is recording his new mixed tape, which should be released early next Spring. The FCC; however, is not so thrilled, because the mixed tape "is one of the dirtiest fowlest things I have ever heard" said an FCC spokesman. "But it wasn't a suprise I guess, you know- he is a rat after all".
public class null extends java applet { System.out.print ("Tabula Rasa"); }
That's copyright infringemnt! Those mice songs are rip off from our records! ;P
--
Error 500: Internal sig error
Are they sure it wasn't the mouse equivalent of "Hey baby, are you a parking ticket? Cause you have 'fine' written all over you!"
CHEEEEEESE-ings, nothing more than cheeeeese-ings
Trying to forget my CHEEEESE-ings for you
CHEEEEEEESE-ings,
Woah woah woah CHEEEEEESE-ings,
Woah woah woah CHEEEEEESE-ings,
OK, that's enough, I'm now annoying even myself.
M-I-C, K-E-Y, M-O-U-S-E!
Hey there, hi there, ho there, you're as welcome as can be.
M-I-C, K-E-Y, M-O-U-S-E!
Mickey Mouse! (Donald Duck!) Mickey Mouse! (Donald Duck!)
Forever let us hold his banner high, high, HIGH, HIGH!!
Come along and sing the song and join the jamboree.
M-I-C, K-E-Y, M-O-U-S-E!
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
you'll hear, "Hey babe, I got your provolone, right here! Want a piece? It's on me!"
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Is it perhaps Dire Straits? After all, there is probably a shortage of Fuolornis Fire Dragons (read ch22 too) in the lab environment.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
Maybe to get help in the female department, you can try developing some social skills.
This isn't "dumb research". It actually helps understand things like language development in humans, learning processes in animals and such, since songs (birdsong included) are quite complex.
I've been emitting high-pitched squeals whenever attractive women come near me for years. Why does nobody call it a "song" then? ;(
Don't be ignorant. Examining the behavior of animals that can be thoroughly experimented on is integral to neurological and psychological research. Unless you're about to volunteer yourself for the kind of stuff we can do to lab rats, I suggest you pipe down.
Grasshopper mice are known to howl and hunt for meat. They are the wolves of the mouse world.
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
Watched male and female humans in their late teens to mid 20's when they really want a "piece of the action"?
Its almost amusing! Like watching the waggle dance of a bee or something.
Seriously, if your in that age group, do whatever your hormones tell you to do. But for us outside of that, you guys and gals are really funny.
And yes, I've "been there done that". It seemed right at the time (hormones again). But humans when they are at their most "animal-like" are pretty funny. Fights can be a part of it, but those are funny too all to themselves.
The important question here is: do they run on linux????
People who have no sig are cool
The female department part was a joke, maybe you could work on your social skills yourself, specifically the humor section.
I would rather that funded research of any kind was put into something a little more worth while, like trying figuring out how to cure a virus, there are no known cures for any viruses out there, we know how to treat them, how to make the person more comfortable, but we can't fix them. Maybe they work on some cures for cancer and AIDS.
Compared to that sort of research, this isn't exactly the most important research on the planet.
- paul
Pmp @ DeviantArt
42
and already has recording mice patented and copyrighted. They are seeking to pass legislation through congress that will allow them to plug all of the analog holes these mice may have, unless the mice are genetically altered and the alteration is not open source.
Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns
Now we just need to work on reverse-engineering their secret ultrasonic communications so that we can find out what they plan to do with us.
11*43+456^2
Though the article makes a brief reference to insects' mating vocalizations, it really doesn't capture the image of a male fruit fly running after a female with his wings out as he frantically "sings" to her. In doing a quick search for the genes responsible for producing the correct song in D. melanogaster I stumbled across this appropriately named gene.
"It's hard to bargle nawdle zouss
With all these marbles in my mouth"
Has anyone tried playing the original (ultrasonic) tracks in a room where there are cats?
I am wondering if the cats would react?
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
That's just so damned cute though!
"I'm seriously wondering where we manage to get so much money from in order to just waste it on dumb research."
This is why unimaginative people wouldn't be good scientists. From the writeup:
"This can be a potential model for investigating how brain chemistry works during learning."
The study isn't about putting on an all-mouse musical, it's about animal behavior, which has all sorts of other applications. Just because you can't imagine what those might be doesn't make it useless research.
I always wondered why there were so many female mice following Mariah Carey around. Those ain't vocal harmonics she's ripping, rather she's singing mouse love songs!
Mind you, if noisy environments where you can't hear yourself think are inherently repellent, I guess all the nightclubs should have gone out of business years ago...
to the Hamster Dance.
I for one welcome our new singing mice overlords (or at least will when they figure out the answer to life, the universe, and everything).
Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns
A saying about how the "world will beat a path to your door" comes to mind. Why haven't I heard more about how this phenomenon might be used for rodent control? Surely the sounds could be either digitized and played back, or ... even better ... a heuristic process could listen to the male's response to a pheromone bait-trap, and then the 'gizmo' would warble back ...
Am I the only one who is thinking this?
Big money here. Rodents cause many millions of dollars of damage to grains stores annually.
Congratulations.
Not a single Brain and Pinky reference, yet.
ooops. er,... never mind.
Crashed the hell out of artsd, and made a nest in my computer case close to the processor. Even Ksysguard had trouble catching the little shit.
Well, looking at your MSN space, I can tell you're a spoiled, stupid, american retard.
Look, I realize you barely made it out of high school, but often research advances in one area will suppliment those in another. Nevermind the advance of science in any field is a worthy endevour -- at least much better than living on one's parents' basement complaining about things.
So, how about you leave the science to those that actually understand it. We'll do an excellent job, regardless of you brainless idiots.
Ever heard of diminishing returns? Apparently not. Ever heard of serendipity? Didn't think so. I'm glad there's people out there whose curiosity pushes them to investigate things that seem trivial and obvious, because no one knows where the next big breakthrough will come from.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
What are we going to do tonight pinky?
We're going to do what we do every night...
1..2..1..2..3..4...
"New York, New York...."
"I'm going to f***ing bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to f***ing kill Google"
Shame! None of you spotted the obvious Christmas beat-up. We're sure to see the return of those 'Chipmunk'-like music album gimicks in time for the festive season! Who said the RIAA and Music Industry couldn't get back at you?! ;-)
How hard did they squeeze these mice before they started singing? And who did they rat out? Or would that be mouse out?
And finally, who is going to get in trouble for using torture methods to get these mice to sing?
Brain: Let's take over the world woth pur ultrasonic singing! Pinky: YAY! The chicken crossed the road!
People who have no sig are cool
mouse puntang.
Scientists around the world are baffled at the conclusion of this experiment. Unable to reproduce many of the results that the pair of scientists claimed to have achieved in their own laboratory mice, a panel of prominent behavioral research scientists has been assembled to test the verity of these peculiar findings. In the transcript of the trial, the originators of this experiment claim their mouse's song went something like this:
Hello my baby, hello my honey, hello my ragtime gal,
Send me a kiss by wire, baby my heart's on fire!
If you refuse me, honey you'll lose me, then you'll be alone,
Oh baby, telephone, and tell me I'm your own!
David Attenborough, noted naturalist, remarked upon the discovery of a rare night-singing tree mouse found in the Sheba Islands in the south Pacific. The musendrophilus has a very haunting song. Also their webbed paws are highly prized by the natives for the creation of their musical instruments.
It is unknown if they are related to the rare "tree squeaks" that live in the treetops and squeak every time the wind rustles their home's boughs.
[copyvio]
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that the ghosts of Salvatore Phillip "Sonny" Bono and Walter Elias Disney aren't out to get you.
I mean really.
No Sigs!
I'm not objecting to all research in this area, it just seems that this is the only type of research we ever hear about. I don't really care what you do to lab rats and mice, they are genetically identical and meaningless in the big scheme of things, which is why research labs use them.
Anyway, what was meant to be a bit of light hearted fun was instead taken up by a bunch of people who take themselves far to seriously.. yourself excluded.
- paul
Pmp @ DeviantArt
When did "audio" become a countable noun?
Which makes it that much more important for us to geneticly enhance ourselves to trigger our ears to regrow in such a fashion to hear the range those evil mice are conversing in. Ha! They thought they had us fooled!
1. Fund some obscure research department
2. Have them teach mice to sing.
3. Publish results to world, touting the musical abilities of mice.
4. Make micro-nano iPods to affix to the mice.
5. PROFIT!!!
Does anyone else wonder why there are so many references to this book on this site? Is that book suppossed to be so great? Because I read it to find what all the slashdot fuss was about. I did not hate the book, but I did not love it either, certainly I did not find it as funny as some Slashdotters make it out to be; so I never will read the rest of the series. Can I be the only one who thinks this book is not so great? I am reading Kurt Vonnegut's "Hocus Pocus" and it is truly funny. Vonnegut seems to always think of a deceptively simple phrase for his works, for Hocus Pocus it was "I had to laugh like Hell", in Slaughterhouse Five it was, "so it goes". Such simple phrases, but I find that Vonnegut has such power as an author I am changing my speech. If you want to read another example of a book worth raving about try reading: "The Few Things I Know About Glafkos Thrassakis" by Vassilis Vassilikos. It is like no other fiction because the author invents a whole narrative genre, the narrator is a fictional biographer doing a fictonal biography, and the novel is the biography in progress, which will never finish.
P.S. The parent post is actually a funny comment unlike most of the actual humour in the Hitchhiker's Guide. Unlike Vonnegut's Hocus Pocus which I had to laugh like Hell reading. So it goes.
Does the sound trail up or down when the mouse trap snaps around their necks?
Stupid troll. Took away MY first post. Happy now? Ruined my chances of getting a first post. Life sucks.
1. Whistle 2. ? 3. Cheese 4. Sex!
Smile.
I'm not objecting to all research in this area, it just seems that this is the only type of research we ever hear about.
/.
You should complain then to the mainstream media for forging a misleading image of science and of scientists. There are some good writings on this area, I think one of them was linked from
And, speaking about cancer cure news that don't reach the mainstream media, did you know that an effective vaccine for a common virus that is the leading cause of cervical cancer (the virus spreads *mainly* during sexual contact) is being attacked by US conservative and religious groups because, in their own words, it will sabotage the moral agenda of the pro-abstinence groups they support and, according to them, because the vaccine will somehow encourage pre-marital sex? Did you know that over 3000 women die in the US alone of cervical cancer? Did you know that these groups believe that fighting STDs is a sin just like pre-marital sex, because STDs are God's punishment to fornicators?
My point is, science here in the US is being attacked from every possible angle by religious groups and the media that is pushing their agenda. This is why you see this kind of research being ridiculed and used to ridicule science as a whole.
Attention, parent poster and anyone who agrees with him: please stop enjoying all the fruits of scientific research done by anyone, anywhere, ever. Shut off your computers, stop getting vaccinated, refuse to eat food obtained by any means other than hunting and gathering, and go off and live your nasty, brutish, and short lives in a cave somewhere while the rest of us enjoy life in the civilized world. Thank you.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Yup.
We must not forget that ironically, many of the greatest discoveries in history were either failures or accidents. (The transistor - failed attempt at creating the first FETs, the telephone - a lucky short in the presence of a strong magnet, buckyballs - a forgotten test tube during one night's clean-up, breathable liquids - a rogue mouse that fell in a beaker, etc.)
I read it before the movie came out. I read the 1980 Harmony Books edition, I am most certain.
I did not hate it or have trouble finish reading it, I never contemplated quiting the book like when I read Tom Clancy's "Every Man a Tiger", which was worse than hell. I just did not love it and am wondering why it is mentioned so much on this site.
Well, you see, if we funded that particular avenue of research any more, well, they'd be able to hire people who don't really want to do it. You know, people in it just for the money. Usually, these kinds of people do not the best researchers make. Plus, if you only attempt to research highly known unknowns, you don't know what you might miss.
Sig
You don't think it's "so long, and thanks for all the cheese", do you?
Rats! The Vogons are getting close!
how male mice actually sing in the presence of females
And here all along I thought it was the other way around...
I challange someone to make a music remix out of this!
Perhaps Mr. Paul, you need to work on your humor skills too, because it wasn't even remotely funny.
one passage came back: "Developers, developers, developers!" Another translated to "Come on, come on, get up, get up, give it up for meeeee!" It must be noted that the female mice at this point were paying attention but seemed quite uncomfortable and ready to bolt.
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
With this news we should be able to program small robots to seek out the singers and kill them. Or draw female mice to a killer robot with a fake male mouse song.
Phillip
The study isn't about putting on an all-mouse musical.
Great idea!
Just...gotta make sure 'Mice' isn't playing anywhere near where 'Cats' might be playing.
Well, Australian then. Wow, so you're stupider than the average american? Why bother to correct me. When I want to hear the opinion of an insular, highly bigoted continent of criminals I'll go look for it, otherwise sod off.
My assumptions are based on evidence. They may or may not be technically true, however, they are correct nevertheless, you are a fucking moron.
As for anonymous posting, who cares? I can't be bothered to spend 5 minutes to sign up for this den of morons.
bad karma, shit I might come back as a singing rat
So why do the male mice sing to the females, eh? I mean, it's not like they need sound to find each other or tell the pitchers from the catchers -- they can sniff each other out in the total dark, et cetera.
/. and hoping horny girls mod you +5, Insightful Interesting Funny Yes Yes Oh Yes Take Me Now You Utter Stud.
Why would natural selection push male mice to develop this talent?
I sure don't know, but just for amusement I'll propose something along the lines of the OP's comment: suppose we argue an important characteristic of mice is that they are damn clever for their size. Seems likely they're a lot smarter, for example, than snakes or lizards or even birds of equivalent mass. Maybe they need smarts to succeed at a lifetime of scampering and hiding and thieving bits of food from larger predators.
If this is so, maybe it makes sense that the smartest males want to advertise their intelligence, and females are interested in listening to those ads, so that they can pick out good genes for the pups.
Now, clearly it takes brains to learn a complex song, spice it up with a couple of individual flourishes, and memorize it. So maybe what these mice fellas are doing by singing is advertising how smart they are. And maybe the girl mice by listening in are evaluating the sexy braininess of boy mice as it's expressed in their composition.
It would be, in essence, the auditory equivalent of posting clever comments on
funny thing is, he could do all that, and end up healthier than the rest of us.
the test was done after exposing the mice to urine swabs of females. i'm not sure i would be singing if i was sniffing urine.
Geez Louise,
Just don't mate the fuckers with the ones that we have got drinking red wine or white wine (don't ask, well not unless you'd like a dissertation on why the Australian Wine Board funded us to study the effect of red wine versus white wine versus water and high fat content mouse chow on murine atherosclerosis).
Pissed singing mice, just totally sick (in the nicest possible way, I think, maybe).
Deeply disturbing
Is that book suppossed to be so great?
I generally stop reading comments when they contain gems like this early on. I don't feel any particular need to defend a book to someone whose commentary on it isn't in the same language as the book.
Is alcohol a hormone? If so, then I'm guilty.
You do realise that you just responded to a post from someone who all they really know about computers is that they use mice. He does his blogging on MSN for Gods sake show some pitty. If you put him on a real terminal without a mouse he would be lost!
You're in brisbane. Come visit IMB at St Lucia, or QIMR in Herston, or CICR at Greenslopes and you can see what research is really about... these things take time!
Eirinn
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
But rats laugh!!! hahaha
t m
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/85711.s
Learn more about Steorn at Free Energy Tracker
You are so intelligent. Grammar and spelling are imposed on languages. There is no real true grammar or spelling.
...
...
.... Noah Webster and many other early dictionary compilers made their own spelling reforms, that is invented which spelling they felt best. I wonder where enlightened holy men such as you were to inform him that there is one true spelling for every word. Perhaps the cloud nine?
Have you ever heard a teacher say that you are not supposed to say, may, instead of, can I go to the bathroom? This is one example of grammar imposed on language. No one thinks can is wrong as used in living language(speech) save for grammar nazis(dead artifical language).
"Webster had declared boldly for simpler spellings in his early spelling books; in his dictionary of 1806 he made an assault at all arms upon some of the dearest prejudices of English lexicographers. Grounding his wholesale reforms upon a saying by Franklin, that those people spell best who do not know how to spelli. e., who spell phonetically and logicallyhe made an almost complete sweep of whole classes of silent lettersthe u in the -our words, the final e in determine and requisite, the silent a in thread, feather and steady, the silent b in thumb, the s in island, the o in leopard, and the redundant consonants in traveler, wagon, jeweler, etc. (English: traveller, waggon, jeweller). More, he lopped the final k from frolick, physick and their analogues. Yet more, he transposed the e and the r in many words ending in re, such as theatre, lustre, centre and calibre. Yet more, he changed the c in all words of the defence class to s. Yet more, he changed ph to f in words of the phantom class, ou to oo in words of the group class, ow to ou in crowd, porpoise to porpess, acre to aker, sew to soe, woe to wo, soot to sut, gaol to jail, and plough to plow. Finally, he antedated the simplified spellers by inventing a long list of boldly phonetic spellings, ranging from tung for tongue to wimmen for women, and from hainous for heinous to cag for keg."
"Webster had declared boldly for simpler spellings in his early spelling books; in his dictionary of 1806 he made an assault at all arms upon some of the dearest prejudices of English lexicographers. Grounding his wholesale reforms upon a saying by Franklin, that those people spell best who do not know how to spelli. e., who spell phonetically and logicallyhe made an almost complete sweep of whole classes of silent lettersthe u in the -our words, the final e in determine and requisite, the silent a in thread, feather and steady, the silent b in thumb, the s in island, the o in leopard, and the redundant consonants in traveler, wagon, jeweler, etc. (English: traveller, waggon, jeweller). More, he lopped the final k from frolick, physick and their analogues."
Do your elitist ass a favor and read H.L. Mencken's: The American Language
So what I put in an extra s. At least I expressed an opinion worth expressing! Unlike the parent poster expressing nothing but elitism. And I am an American speaking the American language, not English, I am not from the isles like Douglas Adams.
OK I'm not sure if it's just that it's high pitched, but my I've never seen my cat react to a sound like he did for this. He was all interested and looking around. Wonder if he understands what it means better than I do?
Anyone else with pets care to share observations?
Very funny a Greek friend said you should be named aristos. The first modern Greek grammar never appeared till 1941 because of people like you. Grammarians and elitist snobs did not have a modern Greek grammar or much of a modern literature, but they had more archaic literature and grammar so they wrote in katharevusa which was a middle ground between archaic Atticist greek and modern greek. Elitist greeks had no faith in the modern language, but Manolis Triandafyllidis did and finally produced a modern Greek grammar in 1941 which is still used in Greek schools. That is he made up a grammar by studying the sparse modern Greek literature. And now his grammar is used in every school so it is a kind of law.
I guess you are full of yourself mister lawyer. I bet you think learning is something linear with a finite point. But learning is a process that never ends, something elitists only interested in GPAs never understand. It was Seferis who said he pitied authors like Palamas and other writers of katharevusa, for writing in a dead language they never spoke, a language they never truly knew and struggled with.
Or maybe (just maybe), it's about fishing for a government grant to continue to have a job and get paid.
As for these songs...ya what the fuck ever. I mean seriously! If these mice can sing a song, I want to hear the same song repeated over and over without error and maintain complexity. Otherwise, it's just random squeeking and chirping.
Calling this music is like calling my grunting-like-an-ape in the mornings music.
Life is not for the lazy.
All I could think of when i read this was R. Kelly.
"I want to piss on you.. I really do..."
Slartibartfast:"Is that your robot?"
Marvin:"No, I'm mine."
Mice singers have groupies! And they don't even play guitar. That freaks me out, man.
I dream of a better world... one in which chickens can cross roads without their motives being questioned.
Look at the URL. It was an April Fool's joke.
the test was done after exposing the mice to urine swabs of females.
I wonder if the mice were actually singing or crying in disgust?
Creativity uninhibited www.kreeti.com
We've already seen singing mice before.
Georgia Tech, the leader in Chia(tm) technology.
I feel like singing:
Hickory, dickory, dock!
The mouse ran up the clock;
The clock struck one,
And down he run,
Hickory, dickory, dock!
Creativity uninhibited www.kreeti.com
most of really popular singers I see do appear to have mouse brains.
So they altered their brain chemistry to make them imitate singing? Sounds like what they did with Christina Aguilera.
How about this for a grammar rule... If you have nothing to say, then keep it that way.
Greengrocer's apostrophe! Since you like reading so much, combine it with your grammar snootishness to read the Sci-fi you love and get paid for it as an editor or proofreader. But otherwise shut up and study to become a lawyer. You are really so full of yourself.
This is funny, even for non-Americans... Well, if it is the right person who is on the receiving end...
Considering that they eat their own feces, I don't they'd be disgusted.
Yet again, the Americans are claiming credit for "discovering" something that has been known about for decades in other countries. Anybody who grew up watching Bagpuss on the TV in the UK could have told you that mice can sing.
"Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get tired" ~Jules Renard
What made the research ground breaking was the fact that nobody had before considered that there may be such rich information to be found in mouse sqeaks at frequencies inaudible to us, in the range of from 30 KHz to almost 100KHz. But the author failed to prove, or to mention a citation, proving that mice can actually hear and descriminate sounds in that frequency range. Was this already so well proven previously that it didn't even need mention, or is this a major flaw in his research?
Cats etc don't hear "ultrasound" as a distinct thing. They hear what is for them perfectly normal noise that happens to be high-pitched. But they'll as likely recognise an unusually low-pitched mouse call as you would recognise an unusually low pitched meow or bark.
Except that even the cards with the 192kSample/sec DACs won't reproduce much above 20 kHz. Remember, in a proper design you have to follow the DAC with a reconstruction filter as your signal will have spectral aliases every Fs. The idea of running a 192 kSample/second rate is to allow the reconstruction filter to gradually roll off from 20kHz to the Nyquist frequency of 96kHz, rather than the rather sharp roll-off from 20kHz to 22.05 kHz you see in 44.1kSample/sec gear. You also avoid the sin(x)/x roll-off in the reconstructed audio, as the roll-off in a 96kHz Nyquist frequency system is still pretty flat at 20kHz.
However, if you wanted to experiment with this, you could try to find an old (and I do mean old) Zenith remote control from the 1970's - they used ultrasound rather than IR as modern gear does, at about a 30kHz frequency. You could then drive that speaker from a DAC on the printer port, possibly with a simple timer chip to create the sample clock so that the computer "thinks" it is seeing a normal printer on the interface (that way you can avoid a great deal of the latency issues, especially if you use a printer port with a hardware FIFO.) You could eliminate the reconstruction filter as the transducer will do most of your filtering for you. Failing that, here are some transducers that will Git 'R Done.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Video evidence here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/classic/clangers/ (realplayer, sadly)
Anyone else here think that this was a hardware review of an advanced audio mouse?
I guess all those dollar store ultrasonic rodent prevention gadgets might actually have some merit.. unless there output translates to "come infest my house" in mice speak... who knew!
----------------------------
Esobofh - Currently drinking fresh mango juice.
So, there's this doctor in town who always likes to relax after work with his favorite beverage, a hazelnut martini. Well, one day, as the doctor comes in, the bartender realizes he's all out of the ingredients for a hazelnut martini, so he mixes up something similar and serves it. The doctor takes a sip, frowns, and says, "This tastes odd. Is this a hazelnut martini?" The bartender replies, "No, it's a hickory daiquiri, Doc."
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
As someone who works in the lab that just released this paper (but who was not an author), it's interesting to read the discussion about whether this counts as "dumb research" that shouldn't be funded.
A little background: whether or not these mouse vocalizations count as "song" is in no way the primary focus of our lab. Our work actually focuses on using the pheromone-detection system of mice (aka the accessory olfactory system) as a (relatively) simple model system in which questions about pattern recognition and memory formation can be asked. The idea isn't that how mice recognize other mice and what they do next is intrinsically interesting, but rather that questions of how mammalian brains put together circuitry that can recognize and remember patterns in incoming sensory information is both intrinsically interesting and in the long run highly pertinent to many areas of medical research (ranging from exploring the causes of autism to developing treatments for Alzheimer's) - and that this system happens to be one of the most accessible systems in which these phenomenon can be studied.
This paper was actually a complete tangent to this primary focus, which came about when my boss and a coworker were trying to use these vocalizations as a behavioral indicator of whether a male mouse thinks it is or is not detecting the presence of a female (something that can help us understand the rest of our lab's data). As long as they were recording the vocalizations, however, they figured they might as well look at them a bit - and were startled to discover how complex they were. Thinking that this it was possible that knowing about this complexity could prove useful to other researchers who study stuff more related to this kind of thing (for example, the study of how birdsong develops is proving to be really fruitful right now - but if you could do this kind of work in an animal where genetic modification is becoming routine, the pace could be improved even more), they submitted a paper that contained primarily an analysis of the original point of the research but with an additional section analyzing the vocalizations. It was the journal itself that suggested that it made more sense to publish the analysis of the vocalizations as a separate paper.
We in the lab have all been rather taken aback by the press coverage of this story. Seeing as it was in many ways a tangent to the main purpose of the lab (and not actually a part of ANY grant, just to answer the implied question in a comment a bit further down), it's a bit startling to see it become a popular story. It's really somewhat frustrating to realize just how much a science story's media coverage is determined by the "cuteness" of the story - in this case, the popularity of the story seems to be due primarily to the fact that 1) all of the words involved are easy to understand (everyone knows what mice are, and knows what singing is...), 2) people like to hear about things that have to do with mating and/or relationships and/or pheromones, and 3) the mental picture of mice singing songs is cute.
Partly because of this, we've been wondering a bit what the impact of this coverage will be on the public's perception of the utility of science funding. I absolutely believe that funding of basic science is in the long run the best way to promote major advances with real utility - the discovery of DNA through an offshoot of what seemed to be obscure molecular work and its current centrality to the majority of medical research is one of the best examples - and I certainly wouldn't be working the hours I work for the pay I receive if I didn't believe in what I was doing. But even in the 4-5 years I've been at this institution the decrease in the availability of funds for basic research has been obvious, and I worry a lot about the extent to which this concept is communicated to the public & what failures in this realm will mean for future funding of basic research.
If anything, this recent experience of how the media covers science has made me
I agree this is an important caution to bear in mind. It's a variant of what I call "The Sherlock Holmes" rule:
Just because you have an explanation doesn't mean you have the explanation.
I call it the SH rule because, when you read "Sherlock Holmes" stories, you always read about these brilliant, very long chains of logic by which Holmes figures out stuff that buffaloed Lestrade of the Yard. Holmes is always right, of course (ha ha, that buffoon Lestrade), even though his logic chain is so long that its existence was entirely overlooked by everyone else, and we need Watson to exclaim "But how did you do it Holmes?" so that we can get a paragraph or so explaining it.
But there's a good reason why Holmes is fictional. In real life, very long chains of logic quite often lead to the wrong answer. Not because there's something wrong with the logic, mind you, but because there is some other chain of logic leading from a different cause to the same effect, a chain which was overlooked.
Short chains of deduction ("If I drop the vase, it will fall and break") very often admit of only one possible chain of explanation, and even when there is more than one possible explanation, it's usually easy to list and study them all, to figure out which is right. But the longer and longer the logic chain gets, the more possible explanations there are, and the easier it gets to overlook a possibility or fifty.
Which is why I'm an empiricist. An ounce of dumb measurement is worth a pound of brilliant theory any day.
in a related news story, unlike humans, for whom 4/4 and other power of 2 metres are the most common, mainstream music in the mice community is almost invariably in (2+4)/4. this is because, while humans, because of their anatomy, march in a duple rhythm (giving rise to 2/x metre which can be grouped in pairs to form 4/x), mice spend some time on 4 legs, and some time on 2--thus (2+4)/4. :^]
What do you not understand? Most of the length of my last post was material pasted from the 2nd edition of H.L. Mencken's "The American Language ..." (especially the chapter on Webster's influence), it is not a troll. I have read the 3rd edition of that work, which is a better edition at my local library. What do you not understand, lexicographers have invented spellings they have felt are right for a long time and lexicographers have also used spellings they found in sample literature. There is no one true spelling, if you consult certain dictionaries or older dictionaries you will find different spellings. The only way there is one true spelling is when someone like a teacher is imposing such things on you.
...
... "I have a New York edition, dated 1848, which contains an advertisement stating that the annual sale at that time was more than a million copies, and that more than 30,000,000 copies had been sold since 1783. In the late 40's the publishers, George F. Cooledge & Bro., devoted the whole capacity of the fastest steam press in the United States to the printing of it. This press turned out 525 copies an hour, or 5,250 a day. It was "constructed expressly for printing Webster's Elementary Spelling Book [the name had been changed in 1829] at an expense of $5,000." Down to 1889, 62,000,000 copies of the book had been sold." ...
Another example from Webster:
"The successive editions of his dictionary show still further concessions. Croud, fether, groop, gillotin, iland, instead, leperd, soe, sut, steddy, thret, thred, thum and wimmen appear only in the 1806 edition. In 1828 he went back to crowd, feather, group, island, instead, leopard, sew, soot, steady, thread, threat, thumb and women, and changed gillotin to guillotin. In addition, he restored the final e in determine, discipline, requisite, imagine, etc. In 1838, revising his dictionary, he abandoned a good many spellings that had appeared in either the 1806 or the 1828 edition, notably maiz for maize, suveran 11 for sovereign and guillotin for guillotine. But he stuck manfully to a number that were quite as revolutionary--for example, aker for acre, cag for keg, grotesk for grotesque, hainous for heinous, porpess for porpoise and tung for tongue--and they did not begin to disappear until the edition of 1854, issued by other hands and eleven years after his death."
and the popularity of Webster's dictionary work:
This is no troll, the most respected American lexicographer has picked spellings he felt were right that did not appear in literature, he wanted to reform the language with these spellings. Some of his reforms survive today, some do not. What dorks like you do not realize; languages live and change all the time, dictionaries, spelling books, and grammars are dead and at best can only every represent the language at a certain period in time. Not only did Webster invent spellings and add more new words then other more conservative dictionaries, he became the most popular dictionist in the English speaking world doing so. Meaning alot of the reforms he invented which were "wrong" probably according to people like you since they did not appear in conservative Oxford editions, were more right than you could imagine because his work became the most consulted.
The person I was replying to one of the resident condescending slashdot guardians of grammar and spelling. He did not just merely "correct" me, but his holyness went on to imply my opinion was not worthy. If anything such people are the trolls.
This is an informal site and besides... If there was one true grammar, then there would not exist multiple grammar books, if there was one true spelling and dictionary there would be only one dictionary named: "The one True Spelling Book and Dictionary". But Oxford, Merriam Webster, Cambridge and American Heritage, among others all compile very different dictionaries.
So what is correct spelling when the makers of dictionaries and spelling books often just pick spellings that fit their fancy or take spellings from sample literature. Noah Webster made the best selling dictionary of his time by including spellings he thought were best. Languages are living things. Correct spelling, correct grammar only exists when a teacher, employer, or publishing editor can impose such things on you. Because there are more than one grammar book, that is authority on grammar and more than one dictionary. In Shakespeare's time there was
... "How could the Bard of Avon, someone we are taught to revere as semi-divine, have not known how to compare adjectives? For us, there really is no excuse for writing "more strong," "more strange," and "more sweet" in some plays and "more fitter," "more corrupter," and "most poorest" in others. And while we can forgive Shakespeare for not attending Oxford or Cambridge, can we ever forgive him for not knowing the distinction between "who" and "whom": "Who wouldst thou serve?"; "To who, my lord?" (King Lear l.iv.24, V.iii. 249); "Who does he accuse?" (Antony and Cleopatra Ill.vi.23). If left to our own devices, of course, we still tend to begin questions with "who," whether it is correct or not. But, damn it, we expect more of Shakespeare. For anyone seeking perfection from our most famous writer, this disappointment may be "the most unkindest cut of all"!
Over 1/4 million hits on Google for supposed spelled with ss(suppossed). Good enough authority for me!
Why Shakespeare did not know grammar
"When the alumna asked me the reason for these "errors," I somewhat archly replied that Shakespeare didn't observe the rules of grammar because he didn't have them. The look she gave me taught me much about our attitudes towards grammar: it was a mixture of skepticism (after all, she knew I liked to tease her!) and pure horror. In one way, I was teasing her because what we usually call the rules of grammar, those codified do's and don't's that are drilled into us during the serenity of adolescence, are very different from what a linguist or an anthropologist would call grammar, which is really nothing more than usage. Her look also reminded me that we tend to accept these learned rules of grammar as having a divine origin, as if they were a kind of appendix to the Ten Commandments that Moses also brought down from Mount Sinai. Of course, they aren't.
"In fact, generations of students have long suspected a more diabolical source for these rules. After all, who would demand that you know when to add "-er" and "-est" to adjectives or use "more" and "most" with them? Who would insist that you know the difference between "who" and "whom"? By now some of you are saying to yourselves, "It must have been a faculty member! Probably in the English Department!" Your paranoia is perfectly understandable, and in this case, it is absolutely correct.
"But who were these teachers? And why were they doing this to us? The answers to these questions bring us to a time 150 years after the death of Shakespeare, the middle of the eighteenth century. It was a time very different from the Elizabethan Age when the old cosmology, the old political values of a central monarchy, and the very structure of English society had changed utterly. The idea of change itself was only beginning to be seen as a good thing. Whereas we see change as a sign of health, as a basic element in nature itself, many in the eighteenth century saw it as a sign of decay, a falling away from the perfection of Nature, and a reminder of our own fallibility as human beings. That is why those conservative schoolmasters and grammarians of Britain were obsessed with the changes they saw occurring in English. Most of them recognized that language was in a state of continual change, but for them this was a bad thing. The Elizabethan Age may have gloried in coining new words, but the eighteenth century wanted to define and limit their meani
Why do people want to mate with more physically "attractive" people?
I agree with your reasoning. But I've also heard an alternative, wilder hypothesis which is intriguing. It begins by asking what, precisely, do we mean by "beauty?" Suppose arguendo we say "beauty" is just a measure of how close you are to some certain ideal; in other words, beauty is the inverse of how far you are from the species mean. The more "unique" you are, the uglier you are.
So then the question is: why be so intent on picking someone who looks like the species mean? Your argument (it means the genes are healthy) is one possibility, but it really only explains those who have actual deformities, e.g. cleft palate as you say. But what about people who just have a big schnoz, or flappy ears, or little piggy (but perfectly useful) eyes, men with hair coming out their ears or women with asymmetric teats? Why would we select against people who are perfectly healthy in every respect but who just look different?
Well, we know we have shared the planet with at least one other species of hominid (H. neanderthalenis). Maybe there were others! If so, consider: the most dangerous competitor you could have would be a separate species (so you can't interbreed) which is so similar that they occupy a very similar ecological niche. That means they eat the same things, like the same shady spots of real estate, and need the same materials to make their tools and huts. Possibly they even carry diseases that can infect you easily. Foreigners like this are a terrible threat, because they want to consume the same resources you need to survive, but they can't contribute anything to your gene pool, and they can't even mingle their genes with yours so you become one big happy family.
Under these conditions there might indeed be a strong selection against people whose sexual attraction wasn't specific enough. That is, if, as a young Cro-Magnon male, you routinely got as turned on by hot Neanderthal* chicks as you did by girls of your own species, you might well have a much lower reproductive success. Those who bred successfully (and became our ancestors) were then those whose sexual preferences were so narrow that they could easily distinguish between the two species, and get it on with one but be left completely cold by the other.
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* "Neanderthal" is just a stand-in for an unknown competitor species with who we are not cross-fertile.