Monday Science Links

Here's this week's science:

• Martin at Aarvachaeology offers us a silver figurine from storied Lejre in Denmark: She's wearing a floor-length dress. And a shawl. And four finely sculpted bead strings. This is a standard depiction of an aristocratic lady of the later 1st Millennium. The Lejre figurine is a direct counterpart to the Aska pendant (below), which is universally understood as the effigy of a goddess. The high seat is Odin's, allright. But the occupant is most likely Frigga or Freya. Or maybe, just maybe, Thor in drag during the hammer reclamation mission. That is so cool! This find will mess with everybody's mind!
  


• Kim at All Of My Faults Are Stress Related discusses earthquake triggers vs. causes: There have been a number of studies in the past decade or so that suggest that earthquakes can be triggered by little things, such as the passage of seismic waves. The studies are fascinating, in part because the triggers seem so small in comparison to any other force (like the weight of the rock). How could such a little thing unleash an earthquake?


• David at Irregular Web Comic muses on computer voice recognition: I know it's a hard problem to tackle from a computer science point of view. But I can't help feeling that we are puny ants on the face of an edifice of such size and elegance that we can't discern the patterns for which we seek. That computer science is tackling the problem of voice recognition in completely and utterly the wrong way.


• Ed at Not Exactly Rocket Science tells the story of FOXP2, the 'language gene': Several years on, and it is clear that talk of a "language gene" was premature and simplistic. Nevertheless, FOXP2 tells an intriguing story. "When we were first looking for the gene, people were saying that it would be specific to humans since it was involved in language," recalls Simon Fisher at the University of Oxford, who was part of the team that identified FOXP2 in the KE family. In fact, the gene evolved before the dinosaurs and is still found in many animals today: species from birds to bats to bees have their own versions, many of which are remarkably similar to ours. "It gives us a really important lesson," says Fisher. "Speech and language didn't just pop up out of nowhere. They're built on very highly conserved and evolutionarily ancient pathways."


• And at The White Coat Underground, PalMD looks at the resurgence of mumps: The resurgence of vaccine-preventable diseases is a fascinating, if unwanted, phenomenon. Pertussis, measles, and now mumps are cropping up after long periods of quiescence. Mumps has been generally very well-controlled since the adoption of wide-spread vaccination, with no nation-wide outbreaks, but there have been a number of regional outbreaks, most notably in 2006 and now again in 2009. ... The vaccination rate among those infected was significantly lower than the average for New York state, but still somewhat high (around 72% for those in whom vaccination status was known). This is below herd immunity rates, but obviously raises questions.

Enjoy!