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NPR Science: February 7

February 11, 2011 in Teaching Resources

Week of February 7, 2011

Click on the logo above to go the the NPR Science site, or use the links below to navigate to one of the stories that I thought may interest you.

Speaking In Defense Of Science - text
It’s Time For ‘Big History’ - text
Homeopathy Skeptics Survive Overdoses - text

Without Language, Large Numbers Don’t Add Up (3:40)
Fossil Suggests Lucy Had The First Modern Foot - text
Teeny Janitors Attack Gulf Spill, Then Vanish - text

Meat-Eating Furniture - text

My Neutrophils Can Kick Your White Blood Cells’ Butt - text

Tags: art, Australopithecus, biological art, birth defect, carnivore, carnivorous furniture, clock, flea, flea jumping, flies, fly, fly clock, footprint, gulf oil spill, homeopathy, James Randi, language, Lucy, methane, methanogens, neutrophils, NPR, npr science, number, prenatal surgery, science, spina bifida, sputnik, walking, walrus, walruses, white blood cells, youtube 1 Comment »

by Eric Kessler

How Evolution Gave Us The Human Edge

January 22, 2011 in Teaching Resources, Technology

Click on the image above to access this unique NPR Resources containing

4 Interactives on Brewing a Human, An Upright Primer, Lost Cousins and Fossil Forensics (the last two are a small portion of the Smithsonian Human Origins Initiative)
A collection of 20 NPR audio stories previously broadcast on Morning Edition or All Things Considered that provide an eclectic and pretty comprehensive prespective on human evolution. Topics include, skin color, walking and running, tools and weapons, diet, brain development, talking and language, culuture and belief systems.

I have not used this resource in class having just noticed it while preparing my previous post on the NPR Science site. If you have used it before and have particular suggestions on its integration please share your experiences with a comment.

Tags: belief systems, brain, cultural evolution, culture, diet, Evolution, human evolution, human origins initiative, language, natural selection, NPR, running, skin color, smithsonian, talking, the human edge, tools, walking, weapons No Comments »

by Eric Kessler

New Language Discovered: Prairiedogese

January 20, 2011 in KABT News, Nature, Student Research Ideas, Teaching Resources

Reposted from NPR’s Morning Edition by Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich

If you learn a second language, there’s usually a moment where things click — you overhear some snippet of conversation and suddenly, you just get it, effortlessly. Professor Con Slobodchikoff of Northern Arizona University has spent the past 30 years studying a foreign tongue. But there are no instructional podcasts or evening classes to help him: Slobodchikoff is trying to learn prairie dog.

View interactive media demonstrating some of the discoveries Dr. Slobodchikoff has made and listen to the 7 minute NPR Story at the following link.

http://www.npr.org/2011/01/20/132650631/new-language-discovered-prairiedogese

for those of you with access to prairie dogs colonies, it could be quite interesting to attempt to replicate Dr. Slobodchikoff’s.

Additional Links of Potential Interest

Video Clip on Dr. Slobodchikoff’s work from the BCC Program Prairie Dogs Talk of the Town

BBC Video Clip on Coyote Predation Prairie Dogs

Purchase the research article that most likely motivated the NPR Story at:
Semantic information distinguishing individual predators in the alarm calls of Gunnison’s prairie dogs
C.N. Slobodchikoff, J. Kiriazis, C. Fischer and E. Creef
Department of Biological Sciences, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ 86011, U.S.A.
Animal Behavior, Volume 42, Issue 5, November 1991, pages 713-719
Purchase Dr. Slobodchikoff’s recent book on prairie dog communiction at:

Con Slobodchikoff’s Website – http://www.conslobodchikoff.com/
Animal Language Institute where Slobodchikoff is the Director
BBC News Story – Burrowing US prairie dogs use complex language, this link has a couple more BBC video clips that I couldn’t find via YouTube

Tags: animal behavior, animal communication, animal language, badger, badgers, BBC, communication, coyote, coyotes, language, Morning Addition, Northern Arizona University, NPR, prairie dog, prairie dogs, predator alarm calls, Robert Krulwich, Slobodchikoff No Comments »

by Eric Kessler

Steven Pinker Lecture

August 31, 2008 in KABT News

The following information on the Steven Pinker Lecture was cut and pasted from the KCPL Website.

What: Lecture on his newest book – The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature
Where: KC Public Library – Central Branch, 14 W. 10th Street
When: September 9, at 7pm

Read the rest of this entry →

Tags: human nature, language, Lecture, psychology, thought 1 Comment »

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NPR Science: February 7

How Evolution Gave Us The Human Edge

New Language Discovered: Prairiedogese

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