Music Training Aids Speech Processing

RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS THIS WEEK MARINE ECOLOGY these differences, suggesting that these compounds could be Blue whales mediating the effects on Popular articles SOCIAL SELECTION on social media bounce back gut flora and the immune system. A population of blue whales Sci. Transl. Med. 6, 252ra120 The language of deception has reached pre-whaling levels (2014) and is no longer endangered. A PLoS ONE paper on language patterns in fraudulent papers Cole Monnahan at the NEUROSCIENCE has sparked social-media speculation about new ways to spot University of Washington dishonest work. Researchers at Cornell University in Ithaca, in Seattle and his colleagues Music training aids New York, took advantage of a singular resource to study the modelled a population of speech processing linguistics of fraud: the collected works of Diederik Stapel, blue whales (Balaenoptera a Dutch social psychologist who confessed to faking data in musculus) in the eastern North The more music training many of his papers. The Cornell team analysed papers that had Pacific along with the number children receive, the better been deemed fraudulent by three investigative committees, of ships and their collisions their brains become at and compared them with his genuine publications. They with the mammals between distinguishing between similar found that the falsified papers had a linguistic signature. 1905 and 2050. They found speech sounds. Among other things, they tended to have fewer qualifying that whale numbers in this Nina Kraus at Northwestern words (such as ‘possibly’) and more amplifying words such as region were at their lowest in University in Evanston, ‘extremely’. “Lucky he had enough false papers for analysis!” 1931 and have since increased Illinois, and her colleagues tweeted Grace Lindsay, a neuroscience graduate student at to about 2,200 — nearly the studied children aged six to Columbia University in New York City. maximum population size that nine years from low-income PLoS ONE 9, e105937 (2014) the ecosystem can sustain. neighbourhoods in Los The team also estimates Angeles, California, who that ship strikes are unlikely took part in an after-school Based on data from altmetric.com. NATURE.COM to threaten the population programme of musical Altmetric is supported by Macmillan For more on in the near future, but says instruction. The authors AScienceltmetric and Education, which owns popular papers: that collision numbers are found that children who were Nature Publishing Group. go.nature.com/uzywif currently above legal US levels. in the programme for two Mar. Mammal Sci. http://doi.org/ years had faster and more- vh8 (2014) sensitive brainwave responses propane production by two to syllables such as ‘ba’ and orders of magnitude. MICROBIOLOGY AND IMMUNOLOGY ‘ga’ than those who had been Propane is an ideal biofuel enrolled in the class for only because as a gas, it can be Early diet a year. separated from the cultivation shapes gut flora This kind of speech medium and easily liquefied processing is important for for efficient storage, the Breast- and bottle-fed reading and language skills, the authors say. monkeys develop distinct authors say, adding that music Nature Commun. 5, 4731 (2014) immune systems and training could improve brain STEPHEN DALTON/MINDEN PICTURES/CORBIS DALTON/MINDEN STEPHEN communities of gut microbes. function in children. ZOOLOGY Populations of gut flora vary J. Neuro. 34, 11913–11918 (2014) among adult primates, but little Archer fish show is known about what drives BIOFUELS how to sharpshoot these differences. Dennis Hartigan-O’Connor of the Bacteria generate Archer fish can control the above the water, the fish University of California, Davis, propane gas water jets they shoot from produced a jet that remained and his colleagues found that their mouths to nab prey from stable over a longer period of breast-fed rhesus macaques Genetically engineered a variety of distances. time — by opening its mouth (Macaca mulatta) reared by bacteria could one day be Peggy Gerullis and Stefan more gradually — than when their mothers had different gut harnessed to make renewable Schuster at the University aiming for a target 20 cm flora from bottle-fed macaques propane fuel. of Bayreuth in Germany above the water. raised in a nursery. Patrik Jones at Imperial trained the fish (Toxotes This ability is analogous to Breast-fed infants also College London, Kalim Akhtar jaculatrix; pictured) to throwing in humans and could developed a larger population at University College London fire at specific targets from similarly have contributed to of immune-system cells and their colleagues introduced defined locations. They then the evolution of cognitive skills called TH17 cells, which are genes for various enzymes from used a high-speed camera in the fish, the authors say. important mediators of anti- different species of bacteria to film the animals as they Curr. Biol. http://dx.doi.org/ pathogen responses. These into Escherichia coli, so that the shot at targets of different 10.1016/j.cub.2014.07.059 differences persisted for six microbe could convert glucose heights. They found that (2014) months after the infants began into propane gas. With genetic the fish adjusted the jets of receiving identical diets. tinkering and by increasing water so that they were most NATURE.COM Some metabolites, including the levels of oxygen to which focused and forceful just For the latest research published by arachidonic acid, in the the engineered bacterium was before reaching the target. Nature visit: macaques’ stool correlated with exposed, the team boosted For a target 60 centimetres www.nature.com/latestresearch 11 SEPTEMBER 2014 | VOL 513 | NATURE | 147 © 2014 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved.

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