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In the first few months of their lives, babies cry, babble, gurgle and make a variety of other peculiar sounds. It can be difficult to imagine that they are actually laying the foundations for later speech with these utterances. However, there is a determining element that proves that even their cries can be assigned to a particular language: the speech melody - or, more accurately: prosody. Every language is characterised by specific musical elements, which we call prosody, says Kathleen Wermke. Prosody, in simple terms, is the combination of intonation (melody) and rhythm. Earlier studies have shown that even newborns are able to distinguish different languages, like German or French, using prosodic cues, particularly melody. With the help of these musical elements, infants recognise the respective language long before they are able to perceive its special features such as consonants, vowels or syllables.
Credit: Liu et al
With a small snout, a short and curled tail, and a big, round stomach, mini pigs are the epitome of cute and sometimes, they snore. Now, researchers think these snoring pigs can be used to study obstructive sleep apnea. A study appearing January 19 in the journal
Heliyon found that obese Yucatan mini pigs do have naturally occurring sleep apnea and that MRI scans taken while they re in sedated sleep can be used to gain new insights into what happens in the airways during sleep apnea episodes via computational flow dynamic (CFD) analysis. These are very fat pigs, says first author Zi-Jun Liu, a research professor and principal investigator in the Department of Orthodontics at the University of Washington.