Monday Science Links

This week's sciency goodness:

• I very much wanted to put in a post from David at Neuron Culture on the curveball last week, but didn't. But now he's written a second post on Koufax and the curve and I must (yes, read the link at the beginning for the first part!): Found some Koufax footage. About halfway through this short clip he Ks Mantle, looking, and a bit later, in the dark footage toward the end, is a good strip of him throwing the devastating curve. Note there the emphatic downward motion of his shoulder — which brought down his hand the faster, which (along with big, flexible hands and fingers) helped him make the ball spin 15 times on the way to the plate instead of the MLB-standard 12-13.


• Ed at Not Exactly Rocket Science tells us that city mockingbirds can recognized people: While the rapid expansion of human cities have been detrimental for most animals, some have found ways of exploiting these brave new worlds and learned to live with their prolific inhabitants. The Northern mockingbird is one such species. It's very common in cities all over America's east coast, where it frequently spends time around humans. But Douglas Levey from the University of Florida has found that its interactions with us are more complex than anyone would have guessed. The mockingbird has the remarkable ability to tell the difference between individual humans, regardless of the clothes they wear. After less than a minute, they can tell one person from another and adjust their responses according to the threat they pose to its nest. This ability suggests that these birds are both intelligent and very flexible in their behaviour - two traits that must surely stand them in good stead in the urban jungle.
  


• And Ed again, this time on altruistic chimps: Two years ago, a group of Ugandan chimps provided a blow to the idea that humans are the only animals that truly behave selflessly to one another. These chimps showed clear signs of true selflessness, helping both human handlers and other unrelated chimps with no desire for reward.


• Martin at Aardvarchaeology talks about archaeology misused: A headline caught my eye: "Archaeology in the Struggle for Jerusalem". As usual when archaeology is used for political ends, it is actually subservient to written history in this case. In the Bustan neighbourhood of the Silwan precinct in East Jerusalem, the municipality of Jerusalem has ordered 88 buildings torn down. Most are inhabited by Palestinians, most were built without a permit, most can be expected to sit on top of interesting archaeology. But not just any cool anonymous Prehistoric stuff for us nerds: the municipality wants to make an national archaeological park of the area to show off a certain historically documented period. They're not curious about the Chalcolithic, they don't itch to learn more about Canaanite settlement, they aren't fans of Saladin curious about the 12th century AD. When we learn that the nationalist settler association Elad are intended to run the park, we know what levels they're going for: The Kingdom of David and the 1st Millennium BC.
  


• Mark Liberman at Language Log talks about the relation between perfect pitch and tonal languages: Leaving aside entirely the question of whether absolute pitch will make you a better musician or not, it's well established that absolute pitch is more common among Chinese music students than among American music students. One source of evidence is an earlier study by Prof. Deutsch and colleagues, whose lay-language version is "Perfect Pitch in Tone Language Speakers Carries Over to Music: Potential for Acquiring the Coveted Musical Ability May be Universal at Birth", 148th ASA Meeting, 2004.

And enjoy!