Tires on Bridgman Avenue

Seen while walking east on Bridgman Avenue, just north of Dupont Street, from Bathurst Street towards the Tarragon Theatre for a matinee.

[LINK] Two links on primate intelligence

The Atlantic's Lindsay Abrams reports in "Monkeys Can't Pick Up Musical Beats" that rhesus monkeys can't pick up the changing rhythm of music.

PROBLEM: You know how humans are always insisting on clapping along at concerts? Beat induction -- being able to pick up a song's basic units of time -- is integral to our appreciation of music, allowing us to nod, dance, and -- if we must insist upon it -- clap without looking entirely ridiculous being off-rhythm. Even newborn babies are able to follow along to music in this way. And even though it's invariably awkward, it might actually, from an interspecies perspective, be pretty impressive.

METHODOLOGY: Researchers at the University of Amsterdam and the National Autonomous University of Mexico took methodology used to study beat detection in infants and adapted it for rhesus monkeys. Their two subjects, Aji and Yko, were hooked up to electrodes that measured their brain signals while they listened to rhythms played on a drum. This was a more scientific way of doing it than just seeing whether they nodded along: They would omit the downbeat from strictly metrical music and see if Aji and Yko's monkey brains registered the syncopation.

Aside from the dubious ethics of making monkeys listen to excessive drumming, the researchers did everything possible to ensure their subjects' comfort, right down to arranging it so that "the animals were seated comfortably in a monkey chair where they could freely move their hands and feet."

RESULTS: Aji and Yko were able to detect the music's basic rhythm. But omitted beats, which to humans would sound "as if the rhythm was broken, stumbled, or became strongly syncopated for a moment," went unnoticed by their monkey brains.

CONCLUSION: After comparing the monkeys' brain signal patterns to those of humans, the researchers concluded that "rhesus monkeys, contrary to what has been shown for human adults and newborns, show no sign of representing the beat in music."

ScienceNOW Rebecca Widiss, writing at Wired in "Tool-Using Orangutans Learn Like Humans", suggests that (smarter?) orangutans, meanwhile, possess something like regional cultures, at least insofar as tool use is concerned.

Like humans, orangutans have behavioral traditions that vary by region. Orangutans in one area use tools, for example, whereas others don’t. Take the island of Sumatra, in western Indonesia. By the age of 6 or 7, orangutans from swampy regions west of Sumatra’s Alas River use sticks to probe logs for honey. Yet researchers have never observed this “honey-dipping” among orangutans in coastal areas east of the water.

How do such differences arise? Many experts say that social learning is key — that the apes figure out how to honey-dip by watching others. But even the most careful field researcher can have difficulty proving this, says Yale University anthropologist David Watts. Wild apes are always responding to their environment, he says. And it may be influencing their behavior far more than social learning.

An unfortunate series of events has finally allowed scientists to test social learning’s importance. Deforestation has caused a large number of orangutan orphans, many of whom come from both sides of the Alas River, to wind up at the Batu Mbelin shelter in northern Sumatra. At first they’re quarantined, and then they move to large social groups.


Psychologist Thibaud Gruber of the University of Zurich’s Anthropological Institute & Museum in Switzerland and his colleagues began studying Batu Mbelin’s quarantined apes because political unrest made it unwise for the researchers to work in the field. The team gave the orangutans two stick-based challenges: raking food into their cage and dipping for honey. Apes from both sides of the river picked up the raking behavior relatively quickly. This suggests that all of the animals could understand sticks as tools, Gruber says. But while nine of 13 west-side apes “knew” to honey-dip, only two of 10 east-side apes did, Gruber’s team reports this month in Current Biology. What’s more, the savvy west-side apes were just 4 years old on average — too young to have begun honey-dipping when they were in the wild. Gruber says this indicates that specific ways of using tools come from observing others.

The young orangutans who “knew” to honey-dip likely formed the idea of honey dipping in their heads before they were physically able to do it, Gruber says. And when it came to applying this idea years later, they had little trouble. Gruber calls such mental representations of stick use “cultural ideas.” If they really exist, he says, then behavior differences among apes are closer to human cultural differences, which also often stem from ideas.

[BRIEF NOTE] On why monkeys should not be pets

The world-famous story of the monkey Darwin who, left unattended in the parking lot of a Toronto IKEA, escaped, in his photogenic coat, catching the attention of shoppers inside the store, continues on. The monkey's former owner is suing to get the monkey back.

Yasmin Nakhuda said the public may not understand the close relationship she and her family had with the monkey, whose return they are seeking.

"Unless you have owned a primate, you can’t really understand my relationship with Darwin," Nakhuda said Wednesday, during a rally held outside Toronto Animal Services.

"He was not a dog, he was not a cat, he was a little person."

Nakhuda said the monkey is more like a child than a pet.

"Japanese macaques, they have 93 per cent human DNA. So, he would act like a little child, and therefore when I call him my son, I’m not mental," she said. "I don’t think that’s the situation here."

She had even bought the monkey special clothes to wear over the holidays.

"I had bought his Santa Claus and Christmas dress and his bow-tie for the New Year," Nakhuda said.

But “he is not here right now to wear it," she said.

As many people have said already, the few parents who leave their infants unattended in parked cars are not good parents. More germanely still, Andrew Westoll, author of the very compelling award-winning book The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary, which describes a Québec sanctuary for formerly captive chimpanzees, points out in his blog post "Does Darwin the IKEA monkey need a human mother?" that Nakhuda is now the monkey's mother at all, and that pretending otherwise will ultimately be cruel to him.

“He needs his mother the way a child needs his mother,” said Nakhuda.

We agree! Darwin does need his mother. But here’s the rub (which I can’t believe this story necessitates pointing out): Nakhuda isn’t Darwin’s mother. Darwin was taken from his biological mother probably within hours of his birth. His real mother is likely long-since dead, or at the very least continuing to have her babies stolen from her in a breeding “facility.” Say what you will about Nakhuda; she is no Japanese macaque. Story Book, on the other hand, is already home to two of them, Lexy and Julien.

What Darwin needs now is much more than simply a warm primate body to snuggle with. He needs to be socialized with other monkeys of his kind as soon as possible, to kick-start the emotional and cognitive development that has surely been stunted by being raised in a human home. He needs to be fed and sheltered by people who have experience feeding and sheltering traumatized monkeys. He needs to be given the dignity to live like a monkey, however imperfect life in a sanctuary might be, because it’s only through providing a dignified life to animals that we demonstrate real compassion, and set good examples for our own children when it comes to relating to the natural world.

[. . .]

It may not seem cruel to raise a monkey in a human home, but it is. It may not seem cruel to teach a monkey how to brush his teeth like a human, eat like a human or wear clothes like a human, but it is. Why? Because all of these scenarios are destined to end badly for the monkey. They will inevitably result in a profoundly messed up and confused non-human primate, a cross-fostered (and very large) adult with no sense of its own identity, psychologically traumatized, and with the size, strength, aggressiveness and incisors to act out on its condition with potentially catastrophic consequences.

And what happens when owners realize this? The monkey is either abandoned, sold to a roadside zoo or a research lab, or euthanized.

I sincerely hope that Darwin isn't returned to Nakhuda. Darwin deserves better.

[LINK] The Epsilon Eridani system

Found via James Nicoll, this map depicts the planetary system of nearby K2 orange dwarf star Epsilon Eridani--planet Epsilon Eridani b, the location of two more outer-system worlds, and assorted debris belts--comparing it with our solar system at the same scale.



Similar to Alpha Centauri B in many respects save for its youth--anywhere between 200 million and 800 million years old--Epsilon Eridani has long featured in science fiction as a home for planets and alien life. As Nicoll says, "one of the awesome things about the 21st century is that places whose properties were mostly a matter of conjecture are turning into places for which we have maps."

[BRIEF NOTE] On tightly packed planetary systems

Less prominent than yesterday's announcement of the discovery of five planets at Tau Ceti, including one potentially in that star's habitable zone was news of a reanalysis of data concerning planets orbiting the red dwarf star Gliese 667c. News earlier this year suggested one superterrestrial planet orbited that trinary component within its habitable zone; a controversial reanalysis suggests that three might.

A Paul Gilster post at Centauri Dreams, "Tightly Spaced Habitable Zone Candidates", notes the reanalysis, and suggests that so far as solar systems go, our system might actually have fewer planets orbiting in the habitable zone than others.

Philip Gregory (University of British Columbia) has performed a re-analysis of the HARPS data on Gl 667C that is getting play in the press because it identifies not one but three planets in the habitable zone. The star has about a third of the mass of the Sun, so according to Gregory’s figures, a habitable zone planet there produces seven times the radial velocity signature that a similar planet around a G-class star would generate. In 2011 Gl 667C was already known to be orbited by at least one planet, Gl 667C b, with a 7.2 day orbit, and there was evidence for other worlds. Later work confirmed the planet Gl 667C c in a 28-day orbit in the habitable zone.

[. . .]

The result: The detected signals include the already established planets in 7.2 and 28.1-day orbits, but also show possible planets in 30.8 (d), 38.8 (e), 53.2 and 91.3-day orbits (f). Gregory discounts the 53.2-day signal because it seems to be the result of surface activity on the star. All these candidates are more massive than Earth, but e is only 2.4 Earth masses. The signals at 30.8 and 38.8 days, if confirmed, would join Gl 667C c as planets in the habitable zone. Gregory finds that the 91.3 day orbit would take that planet inside the outermost edge of the habitable zone, although its eccentric orbit would keep it outside the HZ for the majority of time.

[. . .]

The scientist is careful to note that new simulations will be needed to determine which of the planetary signals are consistent with a stable planetary system. Look particularly at the closeness of the 28.1 and 30.8 day orbits, where the semi-major axis differs by a mere 0.007 AU. This sets up a closest approach, as Gregory notes, every 323 days, doubtless a fascinating astronomical spectacle from the surfaces of these possible worlds. And the author cites the Kepler mission’s own findings of systems with close planetary separations, including Kepler 36 b and c (0.014 AU), Kepler 42 b and d (0.0038 AU), and KOI 55b and c (0.0016 AU).

We may have to start getting used to solar systems with close planetary separations, unlike the relatively spacious inner system we see around the Sun. I’m reminded of something Steve Vogt (UC-Santa Cruz) said in the news release on the Tau Ceti story: “We are now beginning to understand that Nature seems to overwhelmingly prefer systems that have multiple planets with orbits of less than one hundred days. This is quite unlike our own solar system where there is nothing with an orbit inside that of Mercury. So our solar system is, in some sense, a bit of a freak and not the most typical kind of system that Nature cooks up.” Vogt was not speaking of M-dwarfs, of course, but the statement has no better illustration than Gl 667C’s possible planets.

[MUSIC] Kraftwerk's "Metall auf Metall" vs Sabrina Setlur's "Nur Mir"

SPIN's Marc Hogan wrote about a copyright case in Germany that pitted Kraftwerk's 1979 "Metall auf Metall" influenced German rapper-singer Sabrina Setlur's 1997 single "Nur Mir".

[A]lthough Kraftwerk's music played a huge role in the birth of sampling, they've recently won a legal victory that could restrict other would-be sample-wielders to the "Planet Rock" approach: basically, sampling without sampling. As the German legal publication Juve reports, Germany's highest court for non-constitutional legal matters has ruled in favor of Kraftwerk in a long-running case involving a sample of "Metal on Metal," from the techno-pop trailblazers' landmark 1977 album Trans-Europe Express. At dispute was a sample used in German rapper Sabrina Setlur's 1997 single "Nur Mir" ("Only Me") by producers Moses Pelham and Martin Haas.

After more than a decade of legal wrangling, the Federal Court of Justice of Germany reportedly found that a music producer can't legally copy another artist's recording to that extent that the producer has the ability and the equipment to make the same sounds herself. The judges determined that "Nur Mir" could've recreated Kraftwerk's sounds, "Planet Rock"-style, in 1997, and that's why Kraftwerk won the case.

Still, the ruling opens a whole new can of worms when it comes to sampling in Germany. The Economist, which somewhat confusingly refers to the court (Bundesgerichtshof in German) as "the German supreme court," reports that the judges said the recreation of the sample would have to be good enough to satisfy the typical consumer. That creates something of a paradox, according to Udo Kornmeier, the attorney for the defense, who's quoted as asking, "How can you be sure that the artist has succeeded before the work has been released to the consumer?

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6b5XHOuxk2U&w=420&h=315]

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KQLxP-UX_Y&w=420&h=315]

I can detect a certain similarity between "Nur Mir" and "Metall auf Metall", but nothing very strong. Is this effort at protection of intellectual property, in practice, just a way of sharply limiting legitimate forms of musical influence and citations?

The Economist has a good article, with good comments on the subject.