- Email: [email protected]
Botox blitz for stomach cancer
University of Auckland
in Brief Stretchy plastics hide secret images
Sometimes it pays to be the lesser of two weevils THE latest sex tapes confirm it: size doesn’t matter – so long as you’re sneaky. Smaller male New Zealand giraffe weevils use their diminutiveness to their advantage to mate with females under the noses of their larger peers. The bizarre-looking male giraffe weevil (Lasiorhynchus barbicornis) uses its enormous snout, or rostrum – which can make up over half its body length – to joust with other males and win mating rights. But some males have snouts just one-sixth the length of those of their most well-endowed peers. Small males don’t let this disadvantage stand in their
way, though, says Christina Painting at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. She monitored the private lives of 79 weevils and found that small males with short snouts instead use sly sexual behaviour to mate. Some would hide under a female while she copulated with a large male, ready to jump in should the larger male get distracted by a rival. Others would slowly slide unnoticed between a copulating pair and take over from the larger male. Using these tactics, small males were as sexually successful as larger ones, mating just as often (Behavioral Ecology, DOI: 10.1093/beheco/aru140). “It’s very hard to explain how something as insane as a long rostrum has evolved if there’s no difference in mating success across size classes,” says Painting. “We imagine the story is bigger than what we’ve revealed so far.”
Chimps mimic pupil size in show of trust IT’S one in the eye for a “uniquely” human trait. Chimpanzees may share our ability to empathise with other individuals by involuntarily matching their pupil size. The signalling may reinforce social bonds. Pupils constrict in response to an unfamiliar target, and then adjust and dilate. In humans, our pupils dilate more rapidly when we interact with a human whose 16 | NewScientist | 30 August 2014
pupils are also dilating. Our pupils dilate more slowly if the second human’s pupils are constricting. Now Mariska Kret at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands and her colleagues have shown that the same thing happens in chimps. The team showed chimp and human subjects images of chimp and human pupils either dilating or constricting, while monitoring
the subjects’ pupil size with a camera. Humans and chimps both involuntarily altered the rate of pupil dilation in response to the different images – although the effect was more subtle in chimps. The study also showed that humans don’t adjust their pupils to match chimpanzee pupils, and vice versa (PLoS One, doi.org/vbr). “The fact pupil mimicry is stronger within species suggests it has a social function,” says Kret. “It may be a signal of trust and empathy.”
IT COULD be the ultimate stress ball for spies. An invisible ink creates secret messages on bendy plastic that are only revealed when you give it a squeeze. Jianping Ge of the East China Normal University in Shanghai and his colleagues embedded an array of silica crystals in a plastic gel. The crystals reflect light at a certain wavelength depending on their spacing, so the relaxed gel appears green, but squeezing or stretching it turns it blue or red. The team then coated the surface with another gel, and put a cut-out of a secret image on top. They shone ultraviolet light on the set-up, which linked the two gels around the cut-out. Once the cutout was removed, its silhouette only appeared when the gels were squeezed (Advanced Functional Materials, doi.org/f2tmtp). Ge says the technique could protect against counterfeit goods in the form of “anti-fake labels”.
Botox blitz for stomach cancer FAMOUS for smoothing wrinkles, botox could help fight stomach cancer too. Stomach cancer is hard to treat because gastric tumours don’t always respond to chemotherapy. As nerve signalling can stimulate tumour formation, treatment can involve cutting nerve branches to the stomach. But this is invasive, so Timothy Wang of Columbia University, New York, and his team looked at blocking these signals using botox. They found that injections of the toxin can stop the growth of new tumours in mice with advanced gastric cancer (Science Translational Medicine, doi.org/vbs). Wang now plans to test botox in people whose gastric tumours are resistant to chemotherapy.
in Brief Stretchy plastics hide secret images
Sometimes it pays to be the lesser of two weevils THE latest sex tapes confirm it: size doesn’t matter – so long as you’re sneaky. Smaller male New Zealand giraffe weevils use their diminutiveness to their advantage to mate with females under the noses of their larger peers. The bizarre-looking male giraffe weevil (Lasiorhynchus barbicornis) uses its enormous snout, or rostrum – which can make up over half its body length – to joust with other males and win mating rights. But some males have snouts just one-sixth the length of those of their most well-endowed peers. Small males don’t let this disadvantage stand in their
way, though, says Christina Painting at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. She monitored the private lives of 79 weevils and found that small males with short snouts instead use sly sexual behaviour to mate. Some would hide under a female while she copulated with a large male, ready to jump in should the larger male get distracted by a rival. Others would slowly slide unnoticed between a copulating pair and take over from the larger male. Using these tactics, small males were as sexually successful as larger ones, mating just as often (Behavioral Ecology, DOI: 10.1093/beheco/aru140). “It’s very hard to explain how something as insane as a long rostrum has evolved if there’s no difference in mating success across size classes,” says Painting. “We imagine the story is bigger than what we’ve revealed so far.”
Chimps mimic pupil size in show of trust IT’S one in the eye for a “uniquely” human trait. Chimpanzees may share our ability to empathise with other individuals by involuntarily matching their pupil size. The signalling may reinforce social bonds. Pupils constrict in response to an unfamiliar target, and then adjust and dilate. In humans, our pupils dilate more rapidly when we interact with a human whose 16 | NewScientist | 30 August 2014
pupils are also dilating. Our pupils dilate more slowly if the second human’s pupils are constricting. Now Mariska Kret at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands and her colleagues have shown that the same thing happens in chimps. The team showed chimp and human subjects images of chimp and human pupils either dilating or constricting, while monitoring
the subjects’ pupil size with a camera. Humans and chimps both involuntarily altered the rate of pupil dilation in response to the different images – although the effect was more subtle in chimps. The study also showed that humans don’t adjust their pupils to match chimpanzee pupils, and vice versa (PLoS One, doi.org/vbr). “The fact pupil mimicry is stronger within species suggests it has a social function,” says Kret. “It may be a signal of trust and empathy.”
IT COULD be the ultimate stress ball for spies. An invisible ink creates secret messages on bendy plastic that are only revealed when you give it a squeeze. Jianping Ge of the East China Normal University in Shanghai and his colleagues embedded an array of silica crystals in a plastic gel. The crystals reflect light at a certain wavelength depending on their spacing, so the relaxed gel appears green, but squeezing or stretching it turns it blue or red. The team then coated the surface with another gel, and put a cut-out of a secret image on top. They shone ultraviolet light on the set-up, which linked the two gels around the cut-out. Once the cutout was removed, its silhouette only appeared when the gels were squeezed (Advanced Functional Materials, doi.org/f2tmtp). Ge says the technique could protect against counterfeit goods in the form of “anti-fake labels”.
Botox blitz for stomach cancer FAMOUS for smoothing wrinkles, botox could help fight stomach cancer too. Stomach cancer is hard to treat because gastric tumours don’t always respond to chemotherapy. As nerve signalling can stimulate tumour formation, treatment can involve cutting nerve branches to the stomach. But this is invasive, so Timothy Wang of Columbia University, New York, and his team looked at blocking these signals using botox. They found that injections of the toxin can stop the growth of new tumours in mice with advanced gastric cancer (Science Translational Medicine, doi.org/vbs). Wang now plans to test botox in people whose gastric tumours are resistant to chemotherapy.