Scientists at the University of Reading have discovered that ‘I’, ‘we’, ‘who’ and the numbers ‘1’, ‘2’ and ‘3’ are amongst the oldest words, not only in English, but across all Indo-European languages. What’s more words like ‘squeeze’, ‘guts’, ‘stick’, ‘throw’ and ‘dirty’ look like they are heading for history’s dustbin – along with a host of others.

Evolutionary language scientists from the University of Reading, one of the world’s leading centres in this field of research, have been investigating how languages evolve, and whether that evolution followed any rules. Until recently they believed they would not be able to track words back in time for more than 5,000 years, however their new IBM (NYSE: IBM) supercomputer has enabled them to go back almost 30,000 years, and finally provide the answers.

The scientists have been able to analyse the family of Indo-European languages – of which English is a modern-day example – reconstruct the rate at which words evolve and predict future changes to our vocabulary. The oldest words we use today have been in existence for at least 10,000 years.

Looking to the future, the less frequently certain words are used, the more likely they are to be replaced. Other simple rules have been uncovered – numerals evolve the slowest, then nouns, then verbs, then adjectives. Conjunctions and prepositions such as: ‘and’, ‘or’, ‘but’ and ‘on’, ‘over’, ‘against’ evolve the fastest, some as much as 100 times faster than numerals. ‘Throw’ which is expected to evolve quickly, has a half-life of 900 years, there are 42 unrelated sounds for it across all the languages. In 10,000 years time, it will likely have been replaced in 10 of them – possibly including English, unless of course we all do our part to keep the word in circulation.

“50% of the words we use today would be unrecognisable to our ancestors living 2,500 years ago. If a time-traveller came to us, and told us he wanted to go back to that period, we could arm him with the appropriate phrase book, and hopefully keep him out of trouble” explained Mark Pagel, Professor of Evolutionary Biology at the University of Reading.

The IBM supercomputer at the University of Reading, known as ThamesBlue, is now one year old. Before it arrived, it took an average of six weeks to perform a computational task such as comparing two sets of words in different languages, now these same tasks can be executed in a few hours.

Professor Vassil Alexandrov, the University’s leading expert on computational science and director of the University’s ACET Centre¹ said “The new IBM supercomputer has allowed Reading to push to the forefront of the research community, it underpins other important research at the university, including the development of accurate predictive models for environmental use. Based on weather patterns and the amounts of pollutant in the atmosphere, our scientists have been able to pinpoint likely country-by-country environmental impacts, such as the affect airborne chemicals will have on future crop yields and cross-border pollution”.

Caroline Isaac, Deep Computing Executive at IBM said “Supercomputers are enabling the world to become increasingly interconnected, instrumented and intelligent.  We have now reached a tipping point in price/performance that’s allowing breakthroughs in university research that were previously unimaginable”.

Notes to editors

¹ACET – Advanced Computing and Emerging Technologies Centre

The Indo-European languages are most of those originally found across Europe, the Middle-East and the Indian subcontinent. Examples include: Celtic, Roman, Greek, Germanic, Nordic (with the exception of Finnish), Slavic, Armenian, Iranian, Afghan, Gujarati, Hindi, Bengali, Napali and Kashmiri, and of course modern-day derivations such as English and Spanish.

Researchers call words that persist relatively untouched across the ages ‘cognates,’ which means that the words have a systematic sound correspondence that proves their common ancestry. For example, cognates meaning “water” exist in English (water), German (wasser), Swedish (vaten) and Gothic (wato) – read them again and you can discern the ‘aht’ sound common to all. The most resilient cognates, the numerals, have not changed significantly in their entire history.

The half-life of a word is the expected amount of time for there to be a 50% chance for that word to be replaced by an entirely different word.

The research has shown that word types evolve in the following order (from slowest to fastest):  numerals, pro-nouns, nouns, verbs, adjectives, prepositions and conjunctions.

When the IBM supercomputer was installed it was one of the most powerful in the country. It consists of a JS21 cluster, comprised of 700 servers, with a total of 2800 Power PC processors running at 2.5GHz and delivering a peak performance of 28TFlops (28 million million) floating point operations per second.

About the University or Reading

The University of Reading is ranked as one of the UK’s top research-intensive universities. The quality and diversity of the University’s research and teaching is recognised internationally as one of the top 200 universities in the world.

The University is home to more than 50 research centres, many of which are recognised as international centres of excellence such as agriculture, biological and physical sciences, European histories and cultures, and meteorology.

The University takes a real-world perspective to its research and is consistently one of the most popular higher education choices in the UK.

For further information visit: www.reading.ac.uk

About IBM
For more information about High Performance Computing from IBM, please visit: www.ibm.com/deepcomputing

Source: IBM

Post from: AmacamA

Scientists discover oldest words in the English language

The Pursuit of Truth

Many of the scientific discoveries and inventions that have occurred up until now are absolutely amazing. Using our advanced knowledge to uncover unknown truths is a marvelous thing. Finding truth is the core of what research is and is what drives scientists to dedicate themselves to it. But that doesn’t mean every piece of published research is worthy of this distinction.

To avoid having any influence on the results of a research study, researchers must have a strictly unbiased outlook on the results. Although this can be hard to accomplish, bias can inadvertently lead to changes in the design and protocol of a study that ultimately alter it’s outcome. A biased study leads to a biased truth which isn’t really the truth at all.

A Conflict of Interest

In today’s fiercely competitive marketplace, corporations are looking for any advantage they can get to sell their products. For a company selling a product in the health and fitness field, one of the most valuable advantages they can get is to back their product’s claim with scientific research. But keep in mind that a scientific study can be very expensive and cost millions of dollars. Unfortunately, this all leads to a situation where potential for profit drives the need for research rather than the need for honest answers.

Probably the most despicable aspect of modern research is that large corporations are funding, staffing, designing, and running their own research. This is a major conflict of interest and it’s being taken advantage of. Two of the most glaring examples are the pharmaceutical and food industries. For the FDA to approve a pharmaceutical drug, they require the drug company prove through research that the drug is safe and effective. But they leave it up to the drug company to do this! If you don’t believe me, the following quote is directly from the FDA website: “It is the responsibility of the company seeking to market a drug to test it and submit evidence that it is safe and effective.” Unbelievable, but true.

Next time you interview for a job, why not ask if they’ll let you be a reference for yourself? As ridiculous as that sounds, it’s basically what’s happening, and chances are that millions of people won’t be risking their health by taking dangerous drugs as a result of your new job.

Dishonest Intentions

As shocking as it may sound, some drug manufacturers rig their research to get the results they want and get their drug out on the market and back it with substantial health claims. The unfortunate part about this is that dangerous risks are sometimes being covered up. One major example of this is with cholesterol drugs. If you want to read about grossly we can be misled by bad science, I highly recommend that you read The Cholesterol Myths: Exposing the Fallacy that Saturated Fat and Cholesterol Cause Heart Disease by Uffe Ravnskov MD, PhD.

Another insidious example to read about is genetically engineered foods and how the food industry and FDA allowed these foods to enter the market based on flimsy and inaccurate science. You can read about this in the book Seeds of Deception: Exposing Industry and Government Lies About the Safety of the Genetically Engineered Foods You’re Eating by Jeffrey M. Smith.

In many cases, as you will learn from the two books mentioned above, most people who read scientific research typically only read the concluding statements. In many cases, these statements absolutely contradict the data produced by the study. It’s as if the study only takes place as a formality and the people in charge conclude whatever they’d like to. Does that sound like something you’d like to base health decisions on?

The Choice is Yours

I hope I’ve opened your mind to the fact that the scientific community isn’t nearly as pristine as you may think. This isn’t to say that all science is bad, but that you really need to have a critical opinion and not base your belief solely on the so called support of scientific research. As I always say, you have to take responsibility for your own health, and part of this is doing your own research to review the available evidence until you’re satisfied with your answer.

Vin Miller is a health and fitness professional and is certified as a Functional Diagnostic Nutritionist, Metabolic Typing Advisor, Holistic Lifestyle Coach, and Certified Personal Trainer. Vin has gained most of his knowledge through rebuilding his own health and is passionate about helping others to do the same. To learn more, visit his website at http://www.healthfitnessandfun.com.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Vin_Miller http://EzineArticles.com/?The-Truth-About-Scientific-Research&id=1894152

Post from: AmacamA

The Truth About Scientific Research