Rosa's excellent @cp-trendsgenetics.bsky.social piece on genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of speech, language & reading traits offers a nice opportunity to (re)post a selection of the research articles she covers. (And we are only just getting started!) .... 🧪1/n

Simon Fisher@profsimonfisher.bsky.social · last yr.

Highly recommend this superb forum article on genomics of human communication traits, free to read in @cp-trendsgenetics.bsky.social. Beautifully succinct & accessible overview by @rosagisladottir.bsky.social on where the field is now & where it's heading. 🗣️💬🧠🧬🧪 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Like other 53 million+ people in Spain & Portugal, we've been affected by the blackout yesterday, but I just wanted to say that I am impressed by what I saw: how well people handled it on the roads, on the streets, waiting for the busses, in shops... Chapeau! 👏 (context.reverso.net/translation/...)

Remember the cool finding by @bodowinter.bsky.social et al. that the "trilled r" [r] is associated with roughness? Well, Rémi Anselme, François Pellegrino (@laboratoireddl.bsky.social) & myself show in www.nature.com/articles/s41... that this seems more general and applies to all "r-like" sounds.

Not just the alveolar trill, but all “r-like” sounds are associated with roughness across languages, pointing to a more general link between sound and touch - Scientific Reports

Scientific Reports - Not just the alveolar trill, but all “r-like” sounds are associated with roughness across languages, pointing to a more general link between sound and touch

nature.com

I believe you already know, but Ian Maddieson (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Mad...) passed away this Sunday ☹️. He was an amazing person, typologist and phonetician and we will miss him a lot. Personally, he was one of the few who in 2007 didn't laugh at the idea that genes might affect linguistic tone.

Hey, this! Thanks to everyone who have pre-ordered. It really, really matters for the book, for books, for people who can benefit from what’s in this one.

Not newsworthy at all, but just to say that today I finally deactivated my Twitter (yes, I still call it Twitter!) account -- what can I say? RIP...

I guess you might have already seen this, but there's three very interesting job openings at Turku University in the BEDLAN group bedlan.net/news/three-p... in "Evolutionary Language Sciences", "Archaeogenomics" and "Evolutionary Health" -- deadline 31/01/2025

AI and data centers may impose a $20 billion public health bill on the US by 2030 - with associated emissions and air pollution causing an estimated 600,000 asthma cases annually. A new study also estimates current public health costs from existing data centers. www.newscientist.com/article/2459...

Energy-hungry AI is already harming health – and it's getting worse

The electricity required to support Silicon Valley’s AI ambitions could contribute to approximately 600,000 asthma cases and create a $20 billion public health burden by 2030

newscientist.com

Beethoven, one of the most celebrated musicians in history, scored unremarkably on the musicality-related polygenic index, ranking between the 9th & 11th percentile based on modern samples. In our paper we explain why this is no surprise & how it offers a nice example for teaching complex genetics.

Sisena sessió del SeRIAL! 🪢🗣️ Mireia Farrús @mireiafarrus.bsky.social presentarà SCRIBAL, el transcriptor automàtic per a docència universitària que ha desenvolupat el grup #CLiC 💻👩‍🏫 ‼️ Atenció al canvi d'aula (1.3) 📅 Dijous 12/12 🕓 16 h 📌Aula 1.3 (Edifici Josep Carner, @filcomub.bsky.social)

My first post on 🦋 is (predictably 😜) about our new paper in JASA pubs.aip.org/asa/jasa/art... connecting the alveolar trill [r] with a jagged line (and [l] with a smooth line) across 28 languages from 12 families. (Interestingly, this is even stronger than the classic bouba/kiki effect!)

The alveolar trill is perceived as jagged/rough by speakers of different languages

Typological research shows that across languages, trilled [r] sounds are more common in adjectives describing rough as opposed to smooth surfaces. In this study

pubs.aip.org