though only a thousandth of the energy in their sonar signal penetrates into water, and only a millionth of the original energy gets reflected back. Presenting a theoretical model of this process, Anatoli Stulov of the Institute of Cybernetics in Estonia (stulov@ioc.ee) argues that the bat can nonetheless detect fish easily, by broadcasting sonar of several different frequencies and comparing the results (2pAB7). In separate research, Peter Narins of UCLA (pnarins@ucla.edu) will describe new evidence that a frog employs the electrical "noise" naturally present in its nervous system to aid the transmission of nerve signals in its body (4aAB3).

Wired by Words

One of the most intriguing recent theories in psycholinguistics asserts that babies essentially form all the nerve-cell connections in the brain required to comprehend the sounds of their native language by the time they are a year old, even if they cannot yet vocalize their words. Specifically, Patricia Kuhl of the University of Washington (pkkuhl@u.washington.edu) has proposed the "native language magnet effect," in which the baby's nerve cells wire themselves to perceive distinctions between different types of sounds in its native language. In an effort to understand further how the infant brain wires itself to incoming language information, Kuhl will present new experimental studies of brain activity in 7-month-olds listening to sounds from their native language (3aSC2).

Sonar Monitoring of Seafood

As worldwide consumption of seafood steadily grows and habitats are destroyed, fish populations are becoming badly depleted. While sonar systems have traditionally been employed to find and catch fish, scientists are now improving the technique with specialized networks to study and count the populations of fish and p
'"/>

Contact: Ben Stein
bstein@aip.acp.org
301-209-3091
American Institute of Physics
13-May-1998

Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Related biology news :

1. Biggest Bacteria Ever Found
2. Largest Acoustics Meeting In History Expected
3. ESA 89th Annual Meeting
4. Organization for Human Brain Mapping 2004 Annual Meeting
5. National Academies advisory: NAS Annual Meeting April 17-20
6. Society of Nuclear Medicines 51st Annual Meeting June 19-23, 2004
7. Meeting of the minds leads new era in fight against cancer
8. Citizens, scientists and policymakers debate ways to restore ocean health at AAAS Town Hall Meeting
9. ASM Biodefense Research Meeting
10. Lunch workshop at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Annual Meeting
11. Free, public events at the 2004 AAAS Annual Meeting