Monday Science Links

This week's science:

• Dr Don Ringe is posting a series at Language Log on Indo-European roots and historical linguistics. This link goes to "horses, gods, and wheeled vehicles", where you can find others: This started with Don Ringe's guest post "The Linguistic Diversity of Aboriginal Europe". He followed up with a more detailed account of "Horse and wheel in the early history of Indo-European", and an answer to some questions under the title "More on IE wheels and horses", and then this morning's post "Inheritance versus lexical borrowing: a case with decisive sound-change evidence". Readers have added a large number of interesting and provocative comments and questions (110 on the original post alone). As usual, responses are often too long to fit comfortably in the comment format, and our traditional practice has been to respond in follow-up posts where interest and time permit. Continuing that tradition, I've posted below Don's response to a comment by Etienne on Don's follow-up post on the history of the word for horse. Though the background is complex, this fragment of the conversation is quite coherent on its own.


• Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy tells us that Galileo wasn't first to turn a telescope to the skies: One of the most common misconceptions people have about astronomy is that Galileo invented the telescope. We know he didn’t; it had been around for years before he used one. What he did do was make one himself that was a big improvement over what had been done previously, and was among the first to turn it to the skies. But that last part is important: he was among the first. He wasn’t the first person to use the telescope to look at astronomical objects, and he wasn’t even the first to document what he saw!


• Bee at Backreaction posts on the entropy of black holes: These days, everybody is talking about entropy. In fact, there is so much talk about entropy I am waiting for a Hollywood starlet to name her daughter after it. To help that case, today a contribution about the entropy of black holes.


• Chris at Ediacaran suggests a new analogy for the "fitness landscape": In the ongoing Adaptationist v. Pluralist debate, both sides agree on a surprising amount. Both sides agree that there is more to evolution than adaptation by natural selection. However, Adaptationist would argue that adaptation by natural selection is the most important, or even the overwhelming, evolutionary process, and that evolution can be described as climbing Mt. Improbable – with adaptation to environment similar to climbing a fitness landscape peak towards optimal fitness (but please note, never, ever, reaching the top!) I disagree. I think genetic drift accounts for most of the evolution that occurs, and natural selection, while very important – especially in creating diversity – accounts for a smaller percentage. However, both have worked together to produce the diversity of life on Earth. I also have a problem with the Mt Improbable analogy...


• Ed Yong at Not Exactly Rocket Science tells us that capuchin monkeys are choosy about the tools they use: From the carpenter choosing the right strength of drill, or the artist selecting the right weight of pencil, humans have a natural talent for picking the right tool for the job. Now, it seems that monkeys are similarly selective about their tools. In the first study of its kind, Elisabetta Visalberghi from the National Research Council, Italy, found that capuchin monkeys are able to pick stones with the right properties for nutcracking. Capuchins often use stones to crack otherwise impenetrable nuts upon hard, flat surfaces, turning innocuous forest objects into their own hammers and anvils. By examining their cracking sites, Visalberghi deduced that the animals were picky about their hammers, for the sites were littered with hard and heavy rocks that weighed as much as 40% of an adult. However, it was entirely possible that the monkeys used any old rocks and those that remained were simply the ones that hadn't eroded yet.

Enjoy!