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Selfish dogs would rather play than help out a human
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in Brief Odd rock blasted in from Kuiper belt
Selfish dogs would rather play than help out a human MAN’S best friend? Dogs may be more self-centred than their sterling reputation suggests. Our canine companions are unusually good at communicating with us – better than creatures such as chimpanzees, says Patrizia Piotti at the University of Portsmouth, UK. But when dogs know something that humans don’t, they are unlikely to come to our aid. Piotti and Juliane Kaminski, studied 24 family dogs in the lab to see if they would help a human find a lost possession. Testing each one individually, the researchers put a dog toy in one corner of the room and in the other
corner they stashed either a notebook that the dog had seen someone using or a stapler that it hadn’t seen before. This was done with the dog watching. When the notebook owner returned and searched for their “lost” item, the dogs indicated the toy more often than either of the other objects. And when they did indicate the location of the items, they were no better at pointing out the notebook that the human cared about than the unimportant stapler (PLoS One, doi.org/bn2q). It could be that the dogs didn’t understand the task or they struggled to help without direction. “Does the dog take an interest in an object that a human is interested in or only in objects that dogs are interested in?” asks Clive Wynne at Arizona State University in Tempe. “That got a clear-cut result: dogs only like objects that dogs like.”
Mystery over proton radius deepens JUST how big is the proton? Despite new data, we still don’t know. For years, the proton’s radius seemed pinned down at 0.877 femtometres. But in 2010, Randolf Pohl at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany, got a different answer using a new technique. This kicked off the “proton radius puzzle”. Pohl’s team altered a hydrogen 14 | NewScientist | 20 August 2016
atom by switching its electron for a heavier particle called a muon. They then zapped the atom with a laser. Measuring the resulting change in the atom’s energy levels allowed the team to calculate the size of its proton nucleus. To their surprise, it came out 4 per cent smaller than the traditional value measured via other means. Pohl’s team also applied this technique to deuterium, a
hydrogen isotope with one proton and one neutron in its nucleus, called a deuteron. This offers an indirect way of measuring the proton radius. Accurately calculating the deuteron’s size took a long time, but we now know that it also comes up short: in this case, by 0.8 per cent (Science, doi.org/bn2v). Only further experiments will show if these results are wrong or if we don’t understand something fundamental about the proton.
A FIREBALL that streaked across the sky over a decade ago may have brought the first meteorite from the edge of the solar system. Most meteorites found on Earth are thought to start out in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. But the Tagish Lake meteorite, which fell on an icy lake in British Columbia, Canada, in 2000, looks nothing like other space rocks. That might be because it formed in the Kuiper belt, the ring of icy bodies beyond Neptune. Bill Bottke at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, and his colleagues suggest that a fifth giant planet, later ejected from the solar system, may have hurled debris from the outskirts into the asteroid belt. And some rocks, including the Tagish Lake meteorite, might then have travelled onwards to Earth (The Astronomical Journal, doi.org/bn2w).
Robotic training reduces paralysis FROM virtual to reality. Eight paralysed people have regained some feeling in their legs after training with brain-controlled robotic systems. Miguel Nicolelis at Duke University in North Carolina and his team used a virtual reality tool connected to the brain to simulate controlling legs with thought in people with spinal cord injuries. As well as regaining some sensation, most also developed better bladder control, meaning they could use catheters less, lowering their infection risk (Scientific Reports, doi.org/bn2z). “Until now, nobody has seen recovery of these functions in a patient so many years after being diagnosed with complete paralysis,” says Nicolelis.
in Brief Odd rock blasted in from Kuiper belt
Selfish dogs would rather play than help out a human MAN’S best friend? Dogs may be more self-centred than their sterling reputation suggests. Our canine companions are unusually good at communicating with us – better than creatures such as chimpanzees, says Patrizia Piotti at the University of Portsmouth, UK. But when dogs know something that humans don’t, they are unlikely to come to our aid. Piotti and Juliane Kaminski, studied 24 family dogs in the lab to see if they would help a human find a lost possession. Testing each one individually, the researchers put a dog toy in one corner of the room and in the other
corner they stashed either a notebook that the dog had seen someone using or a stapler that it hadn’t seen before. This was done with the dog watching. When the notebook owner returned and searched for their “lost” item, the dogs indicated the toy more often than either of the other objects. And when they did indicate the location of the items, they were no better at pointing out the notebook that the human cared about than the unimportant stapler (PLoS One, doi.org/bn2q). It could be that the dogs didn’t understand the task or they struggled to help without direction. “Does the dog take an interest in an object that a human is interested in or only in objects that dogs are interested in?” asks Clive Wynne at Arizona State University in Tempe. “That got a clear-cut result: dogs only like objects that dogs like.”
Mystery over proton radius deepens JUST how big is the proton? Despite new data, we still don’t know. For years, the proton’s radius seemed pinned down at 0.877 femtometres. But in 2010, Randolf Pohl at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany, got a different answer using a new technique. This kicked off the “proton radius puzzle”. Pohl’s team altered a hydrogen 14 | NewScientist | 20 August 2016
atom by switching its electron for a heavier particle called a muon. They then zapped the atom with a laser. Measuring the resulting change in the atom’s energy levels allowed the team to calculate the size of its proton nucleus. To their surprise, it came out 4 per cent smaller than the traditional value measured via other means. Pohl’s team also applied this technique to deuterium, a
hydrogen isotope with one proton and one neutron in its nucleus, called a deuteron. This offers an indirect way of measuring the proton radius. Accurately calculating the deuteron’s size took a long time, but we now know that it also comes up short: in this case, by 0.8 per cent (Science, doi.org/bn2v). Only further experiments will show if these results are wrong or if we don’t understand something fundamental about the proton.
A FIREBALL that streaked across the sky over a decade ago may have brought the first meteorite from the edge of the solar system. Most meteorites found on Earth are thought to start out in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. But the Tagish Lake meteorite, which fell on an icy lake in British Columbia, Canada, in 2000, looks nothing like other space rocks. That might be because it formed in the Kuiper belt, the ring of icy bodies beyond Neptune. Bill Bottke at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, and his colleagues suggest that a fifth giant planet, later ejected from the solar system, may have hurled debris from the outskirts into the asteroid belt. And some rocks, including the Tagish Lake meteorite, might then have travelled onwards to Earth (The Astronomical Journal, doi.org/bn2w).
Robotic training reduces paralysis FROM virtual to reality. Eight paralysed people have regained some feeling in their legs after training with brain-controlled robotic systems. Miguel Nicolelis at Duke University in North Carolina and his team used a virtual reality tool connected to the brain to simulate controlling legs with thought in people with spinal cord injuries. As well as regaining some sensation, most also developed better bladder control, meaning they could use catheters less, lowering their infection risk (Scientific Reports, doi.org/bn2z). “Until now, nobody has seen recovery of these functions in a patient so many years after being diagnosed with complete paralysis,” says Nicolelis.