- Email: [email protected]
Mussel glue makes scars good as new
AUSCAPE/UIG VIA GETTY IMAGES
IN BRIEF Mussel glue makes scars good as new
Ladybirds use origami skills to fold up their thin wings THEY certainly know how to fold. A see-through artificial wing case has been used to watch for the first time as ladybirds put away their wings after flight. Ladybirds have long, transparent wings that they fold under their bright, spotted wing cases, or elytra, when they’re not in use. To get a peek at what happens under the elytra, Kazuya Saito at the University of Tokyo and his colleagues have devised a clear prosthetic wing case. The team used UV-cured resin, much like the material used for long-lasting nail polish, and moulded it like real elytra. The group fastened the artificial elytra onto an
anaesthetised ladybird and used high-speed video to watch the insect fold its wings. They found that prominent veins along the edge of the wings allow creases to form and fold the wings away in a complex, origami-like shape. A bend in the wing can drift down a vein as it gets folded, but the wing is ready to spring back to a rigid form when the elytra open. “The wing frame has no joint,” Saito says. “Usually, transformable structures require a lot of parts, including joints and rigid parts. Ladybirds effectively use flexibility and elastic behaviour in the structures and achieve complex transformation by very simple structures.” This folding mechanism could help us build solar array paddles that unfold themselves in space, foldable wings for small vehicles, or even lead to better umbrellas.
Lava waves criss-cross on Jupiter moon SURF’S up on Jupiter’s moon. Magma waves travelling both clockwise and anticlockwise have been spotted for the first time on the surface of a lava lake on Io, the solar system’s most volcanically active body. We’ve known since the 1970s that the lake, called Loki Patera, periodically brightens and dims. Previous observations suggested that these changes are caused by
the lake recycling itself. As the top layer of lava cools, it solidifies and grows dense, until eventually it sinks beneath the underlying magma and pulls nearby crust with it in waves moving across the surface. Now Katherine de Kleer at the University of California, Berkeley, and her colleagues have created a time-lapse sequence of changing temperatures across the lava
lake’s surface. Surprisingly, the temperature map revealed two sets of waves moving in different directions, one clockwise and the other anticlockwise. The waves started at different times and ran around a cool island in the lake’s centre (Nature, doi.org/b62t). De Kleer thinks understanding how magma is exposed on Loki Patera’s surface can offer insight into volcanism on planets and moons that are different from Earth.
DON’T want that cut to turn into a scar? Try flexing some mussels. A substance secreted by the marine molluscs is part of a glue that neatly closes skin wounds in rats. Scars appear when the collagen scaffolding in skin is broken apart and reforms in bundles. A skin protein called decorin can help by holding the fibres apart as they grow, allowing them to weave neatly between each other. But it is hard to synthesise. Now, Hyung Joon Cha at Pohang University of Science and Technology in South Korea and his colleagues have created a simplified version of decorin, which they combined with a chemical secreted by mussels. When tested in rats with large wounds, the glue closed 99 per cent of the wound with virtually no scarring. Untreated wounds closed by 78 per cent and left thick, purple scars (Biomaterials, doi.org/b622).
Vain vultures put on facial make-up VULTURES have been filmed putting on make-up, a rare phenomenon in birds known as cosmetic coloration. The Egyptian vulture normally has a yellow face surrounded by a halo of white hair. But on Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands, many sport reddish heads and necks. These vultures dip their heads in red soil and swipe them from side to side, carefully dyeing their head, neck and chest red. Thijs van Overveld at Doñana Biological Station in Seville, Spain, whose team filmed the behaviour, says this has a great effect on the appearance of these otherwise white birds, but it’s not yet clear what it might be signalling (Ecology, doi.org/b644). 20 May 2017 | NewScientist | 17
IN BRIEF Mussel glue makes scars good as new
Ladybirds use origami skills to fold up their thin wings THEY certainly know how to fold. A see-through artificial wing case has been used to watch for the first time as ladybirds put away their wings after flight. Ladybirds have long, transparent wings that they fold under their bright, spotted wing cases, or elytra, when they’re not in use. To get a peek at what happens under the elytra, Kazuya Saito at the University of Tokyo and his colleagues have devised a clear prosthetic wing case. The team used UV-cured resin, much like the material used for long-lasting nail polish, and moulded it like real elytra. The group fastened the artificial elytra onto an
anaesthetised ladybird and used high-speed video to watch the insect fold its wings. They found that prominent veins along the edge of the wings allow creases to form and fold the wings away in a complex, origami-like shape. A bend in the wing can drift down a vein as it gets folded, but the wing is ready to spring back to a rigid form when the elytra open. “The wing frame has no joint,” Saito says. “Usually, transformable structures require a lot of parts, including joints and rigid parts. Ladybirds effectively use flexibility and elastic behaviour in the structures and achieve complex transformation by very simple structures.” This folding mechanism could help us build solar array paddles that unfold themselves in space, foldable wings for small vehicles, or even lead to better umbrellas.
Lava waves criss-cross on Jupiter moon SURF’S up on Jupiter’s moon. Magma waves travelling both clockwise and anticlockwise have been spotted for the first time on the surface of a lava lake on Io, the solar system’s most volcanically active body. We’ve known since the 1970s that the lake, called Loki Patera, periodically brightens and dims. Previous observations suggested that these changes are caused by
the lake recycling itself. As the top layer of lava cools, it solidifies and grows dense, until eventually it sinks beneath the underlying magma and pulls nearby crust with it in waves moving across the surface. Now Katherine de Kleer at the University of California, Berkeley, and her colleagues have created a time-lapse sequence of changing temperatures across the lava
lake’s surface. Surprisingly, the temperature map revealed two sets of waves moving in different directions, one clockwise and the other anticlockwise. The waves started at different times and ran around a cool island in the lake’s centre (Nature, doi.org/b62t). De Kleer thinks understanding how magma is exposed on Loki Patera’s surface can offer insight into volcanism on planets and moons that are different from Earth.
DON’T want that cut to turn into a scar? Try flexing some mussels. A substance secreted by the marine molluscs is part of a glue that neatly closes skin wounds in rats. Scars appear when the collagen scaffolding in skin is broken apart and reforms in bundles. A skin protein called decorin can help by holding the fibres apart as they grow, allowing them to weave neatly between each other. But it is hard to synthesise. Now, Hyung Joon Cha at Pohang University of Science and Technology in South Korea and his colleagues have created a simplified version of decorin, which they combined with a chemical secreted by mussels. When tested in rats with large wounds, the glue closed 99 per cent of the wound with virtually no scarring. Untreated wounds closed by 78 per cent and left thick, purple scars (Biomaterials, doi.org/b622).
Vain vultures put on facial make-up VULTURES have been filmed putting on make-up, a rare phenomenon in birds known as cosmetic coloration. The Egyptian vulture normally has a yellow face surrounded by a halo of white hair. But on Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands, many sport reddish heads and necks. These vultures dip their heads in red soil and swipe them from side to side, carefully dyeing their head, neck and chest red. Thijs van Overveld at Doñana Biological Station in Seville, Spain, whose team filmed the behaviour, says this has a great effect on the appearance of these otherwise white birds, but it’s not yet clear what it might be signalling (Ecology, doi.org/b644). 20 May 2017 | NewScientist | 17