Part II:Speed
For babies, walking opens a whole new world
by Laura Sanders 8:00am, December 12, 2013
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Yesterday, Baby V and I were hanging out in the living room talking about some of her friends. I was running down the list, saying the names of all of her fun pals at day care, her jovial librarian and her enchanting doctor. When I got to the stuffed animals and said “Teddy,” she jerked her head up and looked toward her room, the big brown bear’s habitat.
I held her hands as she stood and motored toward her room. As we rounded the corner and discovered Teddy, she shrieked with joy and nearly wriggled out of my grasp. I think she might even have her own version of the word: a high-pitched “duh” followed by a lower “dee.” Further experiments to follow.
With these new skills — walking (with two-handed help) and talking (sort of) — Baby V’s world is expanding. Fast.
Compared with her previous nine months alive, these last few weeks have been a whole new kind of crazy. She’s able to not only observe her world, but to change it too. Instead of watching me hide my face with a blanket, she can play peek-a-boo herself, precisely timing the big reveal for maximum hilarity. She’s clearly the boss of her own self.
A big contributor to this newfound autonomy is her ability to move around. Baby V can zoom around a room on her hands and knees and pull herself up on furniture. She thinks she can walk, and even run, but still needs two big hands to help balance. All of this dizzying motion catapults a baby into a new world, changing the context in which a baby grows and learns, a new study in Developmental Psychology suggests.
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[Time 3]
Independent of age, babies who walk earlier have a bigger vocabulary, the study found. Researchers followed 44 babies from about 10 months of age to 13 1/2 months — prime time for walking and talking to emerge. As walking skills increased, so did the number of words a baby could understand and say. Crawlers understood about 75 words. Babies who had been walking for 8 weeks knew more than 100, the team found. Likewise, babies who crawled could produce just over 10 words, while experienced walkers could say about 30.
The results, like most studies of babies, are observations, and can’t explain whether learning to walk actually causes vocabulary gains. But the idea is plausible for several good reasons, the authors write, and my own experience agrees.
Compared with a crawling Baby V, a walking Baby V moves faster, has a better view and has two hands free (we’re still working on that one). A nimble, roaming Baby V will command more of my verbal attention. She will be able to point at friendly doggies, inviting people to describe the animals. She will be able to go get her favorite book and carry it over to her dad. Her motion will elicit all sorts of interesting new words from adults, like “Get down from that amplifier!”
For Baby V, walking will be what some scientists call a “setting event,” one that propels a baby into a new realm and influences a baby’s growth in lots of different ways. Baby V hasn’t arrived into the walking world quite yet, but she’s beating a path there fast.
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Source: Science News
https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/growth-curve/babies-walking-opens-whole-new-world
NASA's chief scientist on Mars, moons and money
by Alexandra Witze 13 December 2013
[Time 4]
Planetary geologist Ellen Stofan joined NASA in August as the agency’s chief scientist, an overarching role in which she advises on the science of all NASA programmes. Nature caught up with Stofan at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, where she was taking in a raft of discoveries, from developments on Mars to the possibility of water on Jupiter’s moon Europa.
Why should NASA send humans to Mars when robots have been so successful?
We’re not sending generic people to Mars — we’re sending scientists to Mars, we're sending explorers. While robotic explorers are important and gain you amazing information, if you think of the ground that’s been covered by the rovers Opportunity and Spirit, or by Curiosity — that could be covered by humans in a fraction of the time. I have a personal bias that if we’re truly going to understand Mars as a habitable planet, it’s going to take human geologists and human astrobiologists on the surface to find that out.
Is planetary science at NASA really in dire financial straits?
Whenever you get more than US$1 billion of US taxpayer money, in my mind the situation is never dire. It maybe is not the programme you would like to execute, but it’s a lot of money. We spend it wisely and we have a very vigorous programme. We just launched the Mars orbiter MAVEN, and we have many missions on the books. With the budget that we have, we feel we are returning significant science.
What has been the best part of the job so far?
Learning about the utilization of the International Space Station and some of the scientific results that have come out of that. But it is a finite asset. Right now it’s only running through 2020, and NASA is looking at extending its life through 2028. Are we making the best case that the space station is a critical asset for this nation? Are we maximizing scientific research there to the best extent that we can? In spring we’ll be launching the first rodent laboratory up to the station, and there will be a lot of exciting stuff going on.
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What has been the worst part?
Probably the budget uncertainty. We are looking at the possibility of another budget sequester in January. A second sequester will have huge effects on the agency. It’s a distraction that’s depressing. This is the greatest space agency in the world, and we can’t plan the way we should be able to.
You have proposed a mission to Saturn’s moon Titan. When is NASA going there?
Not soon enough. One of my focuses coming into the job is to see how we can utilize the assets that we have and the money that we have to try to get as much access to scientific data as we can. These might be small mission lines, infusing new technology to bring the cost down, or looking at problems differently. I was really proud of the concept of going to a sea on Titan. People said it would cost a huge amount of money and we demonstrated that it could be done for far less.
NASA associate administrator John Grunsfeld has suggested that the next call for ideas for a small discovery mission would be in 2015, and for a bigger mission under the New Frontiers Program in 2022. Why so long?
The decadal survey [of community priorities] had hoped for a faster cadence of missions. This is the cadence that’s possible with the current budget.
How can NASA do things differently?
If we’re innovative and if we apply new technologies. One of the big frustrations, which drives up overall mission cost, is launch cost. What if you had a bigger rocket and could cut the travel time to Titan in half?
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Source:Nature
http://www.nature.com/news/nasa-s-chief-scientist-on-mars-moons-and-money-1.14350
Mars was habitable longer, more recently than thought
by Andrew Grant 12:00pm, December 9, 2013
[Time6]
The dried-up Martian lakebed where NASA’s Curiosity rover landed last year could have supported microbial life for millions of years, ending as recently as about 3.5 billion years ago. The findings, described in six studies published December 9 in Science, expand what scientists thought was a very brief window of time during which life could have thrived on the Red Planet.
Curiosity, an SUV-sized rover, landed on Mars in August 2012 in a region full of rocks that resemble weathered clays on Earth. In March, researchers announced that minerals in a sample drilled in an area known as Yellowknife Bay had formed long ago in a lake that was neither salty nor acidic. The lake’s water may have been hospitable to bacteria (SN Online: 3/12/13). Now, after finding multiple layers of clays in the area and determining the chemical composition and ages of several samples, researchers are confident that this temperate era was prolonged, perhaps giving simple life a chance to take hold.
Curiosity hasn’t detected complex organic chemicals that are essential for life. But project scientist John Grotzinger of Caltech notes that many of the ancient rocks Curiosity analyzed reached the surface relatively recently, so their molecules haven’t been severely battered by solar radiation. He adds that the rocks are about the same age as the oldest rocks on Earth with signs of life, possibly allowing researchers to compare the planets’ early life-friendly environments.
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Source:Science News
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/mars-was-habitable-longer-more-recently-thought
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