Pill for learning language
We learn from the newspaper that Salk Institute researchers recently have found two new drugs, Aicar and GW1516, that improve muscle tone in mice without requiring them to exercise. And that's exactly what all us couch potatoes have been dreaming about–a pill rather than a treadmill. Okay, it hasn't been applied to humans yet, but just you wait.
Aicar works on a user's own genetics, mimicking the effects of exercise and signaling the cells that it has burned the necessary energy and needs to generate more through a process called pharmacological exercise. They say red wine works almost the same way, but you need to drink gallons of it to get the same effect. So why are we reporting this in Language Log?
Read the rest of this entry »
Permalink Comments off