Tag Archives: Research

News

New research shows that babies learn language patterns in the womb

2 Comments

Story from Live Science. (H/T Secondhand Smoke via ECM)

Excerpt:

From their very first days, the cries of newborns already bear the mark of the language their parents speak, scientists now find. French newborns tend to cry with rising melody patterns, slowly increasing in pitch from the beginning to the end, whereas German newborns seem to prefer falling melody patterns, findings that are both consistent with differences between the languages. This suggests infants begin picking up elements of language in the womb, long before their first babble or coo.

Prenatal exposure to language was known to influence newborns. For instance, past research showed they preferred their mother’s voice over those of others. Still, researchers thought infants did not imitate sounds until much later on. Although three-month-old babies can match vowel sounds that adults make, this skill depends on vocal control just not physically possible much earlier. However, when scientists recorded and analyzed the cries of 60 healthy newborns when they were three to five days old — 30 born into French-speaking families, 30 into German-speaking ones — their analysis revealed clear differences in the melodies of their cries based on their native tongue.

I told you that babies are scheming in the womb, but none of you believed me.

News

New study reveals how school choice benefits the poorest students

Leave a comment

Article in the Wall Street Journal. (H/T Jay P. Greene)

Excerpt:

Opponents of school choice are running out of excuses as evidence continues to roll in about the positive impact of charter schools.

Stanford economist Caroline Hoxby recently found that poor urban children who attend a charter school from kindergarten through 8th grade can close the learning gap with affluent suburban kids by 86% in reading and 66% in math. And now Marcus Winters, who follows education for the Manhattan Institute, has released a paper showing that even students who don’t attend a charter school benefit academically when their public school is exposed to charter competition.

Mr. Winters focuses on New York City public school students in grades 3 through 8. “For every one percent of a public school’s students who leave for a charter,” concludes Mr. Winters, “reading proficiency among those who remain increases by about 0.02 standard deviations, a small but not insignificant number, in view of the widely held suspicion that the impact on local public schools . . . would be negative.” It tuns out that traditional public schools respond to competition in a way that benefits their students.

[…]One of the most encouraging findings by Mr. Winters is how charter competition reduces the black-white achievement gap. He found that the worst-performing public school students, who tend to be low-income minorities, have the most to gain from the nearby presence of a charter school. Overall, charter competition improved reading performance but did not affect math skills. By contrast, low-performing students had gains in both areas, and their reading improvement was above average relative to the higher-performing students.

Conservatives love choice and competition, especially in education. We oppose equalizing outcomes regardless of individual liberty and responsibility. Liberals want government to run everything to make sure that everyone gets the same crap level of service. This is what the lazy teacher unions prefer. But conservatives want teachers to be responsive to their customers – the children.

News

Science Daily reports the biological functions supported by Junk DNA

2 Comments

Here’s the Science Daily article. (H/T Evolution News)

Excerpt:

…during early development, the proteins required for cell division come from the mother. The researchers speculate that the heterochromatin of the male D. melanogaster‘s X chromosome has rapidly evolved, such that after mating, the machinery involved in DNA packaging from a D. simulans mother no longer recognizes the D. melanogaster father’s “junk” DNA, Ferree said.

Casey Luskin writes:

Basically, so-called “junk”-DNA is involved in helping to package chromosomes in the cell. If two species have different “junk” DNA, then this prevents the proteins in the egg from properly packaging the chromosomes donated by the sperm. The organism does not develop properly.

Good news for pro-ID guys like me!