Human Language Gene Changes How Mice Squeak

archatheist writes "Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany have engineered a mouse whose FOXP2 gene has been swapped out for a different (human) version. This is interesting because the gene is implicated in human language, and this has changed how mice squeak. 'In a region of the brain called the basal ganglia, known in people to be involved in language, the humanized mice grew nerve cells that had a more complex structure. Baby mice utter ultrasonic whistles when removed from their mothers. The humanized baby mice, when isolated, made whistles that had a slightly lower pitch, among other differences, Dr. Enard says. Dr. Enard argues that putting significant human genes into mice is the only feasible way of exploring the essential differences between people and chimps, our closest living relatives.' The academic paper was published in Cell."

Comments

Re:this can only end..

[x2A]

How is that more accurate? I've never known anyone who couldn't use another browser in *any* version of Windows. My Mom ran Netscape on Win95 and 98, she runs Firefox on 2000, my dad runs Opera on XP and 2003, and the kids (my young siblings) I noticed recently running Google's Chrome on XP and Vista. Quit letting your opinion be swayed by your bitterness over the fact that a browser from a company you don't like is widely used. If you really have trouble using a non-IE browser, that reflects only on your own abilities.

Re:this can only end..

[x2A]

"It is a frustrating fucking nightmare"

I never have problems with it... sure there was some stagnation issues with there being such a large gap between IE6 and 7 that meant you had to drop in a bit of extra code to support transparent pngs etc, but I much prefer coding under IE to firefox. I had a page the other week, iframe in the middle with a 1 pixel black solid css border around it... IE, Safari, Chrome, Opera, all rendered the black rectangle correctly, Firefox (3.0 and 3.1 beta) was only drawing three sides of it... and that's just a black rectangle. I much prefer the way IE exports the window.event object making it much more readily available than firefox, being able to say
body.onkeypress=functionname; and then being able to access window.event from within the function is way cleaner than having to attach the event in a way that lets you specify passing variables. The setCapture() and releaseCapture() functions make window manager type stuff, or any other kind of dragging where there may be iframes on the page a billion times easier. Iframes... very useful, where did they come from again? Oh yeah, IE. Extra HTML tag properties exported as DOM properties rather than having to use getAttribute and setAttribute I also find preferable. Chrome and Safari4 are also much nicer to code for than Firefox, but they're pretty new. They do however show that it IS possible for other browsers to support features that MS have invented, features that (many of them) actually make things better. How hard would it be to export window.event? I bet it would be a piece of piss, but FF developers haven't, so who's fault is it that stuff doesn't work on it that does on IE?

Basically, whatever platform you're used to programming for, be it mozilla or ie, the other one IS going to seem alien to you, and stuff is frustratingly not gonna work on it. To me, IE, Safari4 and Chrome are a bliss, and I wish firefox would just die. In the latest generation of browsers, it's SO far behind the curve, it's a real pain to support. Thankfully, doing mostly webapp stuff at the moment, I can just get my clients to use any other browser but FF.

But for you, the one you hate is IE rather than FF, which can only lead to the conclusion that IT'S SUBJECTIVE! So quit with the 'better' or 'worse' thing like there's any kind of authority on the issue. All browsers put stuff in that doesn't work on the others, and so lock in is possible on all browsers. So many of the missing features from FF are available in Safari4 and Chrome; they run a lot of my webapps that previously was IE only, I was most glad to see. Proof that it is possible. It's just whinging from the Mozilla corner instead of coding.

Re:this can only end..

[x2A]

"There is a standard"

A?! Incorrect use of the indefinite article there me thinks. There're more 'standards' than you can shake ya stick at. But anyway I think you're giving 'standards' too much credit, fact is that whatever browser you use, you're gonna find holes where they've not fully supported all the standard, which means you still have to know the browsers you're targetting.

"A browser is not a platform"

It SO is, the ease of rolling out software to people by using the browser as a platform is a complete paradigm shift, it's enabling technology, and I'm most glad that I'm not limited to the 'standard' in using it, and whenever I've shown people what I can do with it, what I can enable them to do with it, they go "wow. Work for us.". No one's ever asked for more time to think about it. Experts and computer idiots alike use it every day, and can do anywhere they go, on any machine, without admin rights on the machine or anything, because IE is a completely good enough front end platform by itself. It wouldn't be if it was cripled by sticking to the 'standards'.

"I can't reproduce your border error.""You really should not be attaching events that way"

Again, subjective, I may not want or need more events attached, or just have one handler function that I use dynamically to register certain conditions with. It can be easier to have a specifically coded event marshalling function that you give instructions to, than code multiple functions that you attach in series to the event. Depends on what you're developing. In the case where I do want to just attach a single function to an event, this is a very quick and clean way of doing so.

"It is really pretty rare that you should have to pass variables that way"

No. In one project I have many functions that do things like handle object selection/deselection/deletion etc. Many of the deep level functions act differently depending on what control keys (shift etc) are being held at the time. In order to find that out, in IE, I can just access window.event. Without that, I have to be passing around the event object everywhere just in case a deeper level function needs it. Or of course, all the event triggered functions could have code that globalifies (heh) the event object, but that's then just using code to simulate the window.event thing that IE gives me all by itself.

"It is not subjective. There is a standard. While no browser implements it fully, IE is (still) the worst"

You're wrong, it IS subjective, as to what in your opinion is most important; standards compliant, or does the job you want.

(thanks for the rational debate tho, it's rare to be able to get one on here without being hit back with pure ad hominems, so, respect)