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Can elephants run?
GOPAL CHITRAKER/REUTERS
IN BRIEF Superbugs blamed on shoddy repairs
Full steam ahead for elephants’ unique gait SEEING an elephant run may be as rare as seeing one fly. It turns out that instead of running in the conventional sense, they adopt a unique gait at speed, with the fore limbs trotting and the hind limbs walking. Norman Heglund of the Catholic University of Louvain (UCL) in Belgium and colleagues built an 8-metre-long platform to record the downward forces created when an elephant pounded over it. This allowed them to calculate the changes in an elephant’s centre of mass (COM). In all, 34 elephants at the Thai Elephant Conservation Center in Lampang were walked slowly or “run” at
speeds of up to 5 metres per second over the platform. When most animals walk, their COM sways from side to side. This switches to bouncing like a pogo stick when they run, a motion that wastes energy. But the team found that an elephant travelling at speed keeps its COM at a constant height from the ground, even though its front legs bounce up and down in a trotting motion. The result is a pogo element to an elephant’s motion, but no vertical shift in its COM (The Journal of Experimental Biology, DOI: 10.1242/jeb.035436). John Hutchinson of the Royal Veterinary College in Hatfield, Hertfordshire, UK, who also studies elephant gait, questions whether it counts as running, as by some definitions all feet must be off the ground at the same time – something that does not happen with elephants.
Injured brains escape the material world DAMAGE to a specific brain area may increase feelings of transcendence, which are part of some religious experiences and other forms of spirituality. The posterior parietal cortex (PPC) helps the brain separate self from the environment. To find out whether it also helps us feel we are transcending the physical world, Cosimo Urgesi of the University of Udine in Italy turned 16 | NewScientist | 20 February 2010
to 88 people with brain cancers. Urgesi’s team tested them on a personality trait called selftranscendence before and after surgery to treat the cancers. High scores for this trait are gained by people who feel so connected to others that they “feel there is no separation” and “so connected to nature that everything feels like one single organism”. Such people also tend to believe in miracles,
extrasensory perception and other non-material phenomena. The 34 people who had neurons in the PPC removed scored higher after surgery than before, while those who lost neurons in another region, or whose surgery did not remove neurons, scored the same before and after (Neuron, DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2010.01.026). Urgesi speculates that people who by nature have low activity in the PPC could be predisposed to self-transcendent feelings too.
BACTERIA that survive an antibiotic attack emerge stronger, with an ability to repel new drugs. The conventional idea is that susceptible bugs perish, leaving behind a few individuals whose drug resistance is passed on as they multiply. This does not, however, explain why bacteria treated with one drug tend to resist others too. Now Jim Collins at Boston University and his team have found that several different kinds of antibiotics can actively create mutations that confer this multidrug resistance. The antibiotics produce toxic molecules called free radicals that damage the DNA of Escherichia coli, and the mutations are locked in when a sloppy repair system fails to put the DNA back together properly (Molecular Cell, DOI: 10.1016/j.molecel.2010.01.003). Collins hopes that blocking DNA repair will slow the emergence of multidrug-resistant superbugs.
Black hole’s spin spews super jets “BACKWARDS” black holes may kick out stronger jets of matter than their standard counterparts. As black holes eat material, they spew some of it out as jets. But no one knows why some jets are more powerful than others. A team led by Daniel Evans of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology studied the region around a black hole called 3C 33, which spins in the opposite direction to its orbiting disc of dust and gas. It has particularly powerful jets, perhaps because its inner disc is empty, due to the gravitational effect of counter-rotation. This may leave space for magnetic fields to build up enough strength to accelerate the jets (The Astrophysical Journal, vol 710, p 859).
IN BRIEF Superbugs blamed on shoddy repairs
Full steam ahead for elephants’ unique gait SEEING an elephant run may be as rare as seeing one fly. It turns out that instead of running in the conventional sense, they adopt a unique gait at speed, with the fore limbs trotting and the hind limbs walking. Norman Heglund of the Catholic University of Louvain (UCL) in Belgium and colleagues built an 8-metre-long platform to record the downward forces created when an elephant pounded over it. This allowed them to calculate the changes in an elephant’s centre of mass (COM). In all, 34 elephants at the Thai Elephant Conservation Center in Lampang were walked slowly or “run” at
speeds of up to 5 metres per second over the platform. When most animals walk, their COM sways from side to side. This switches to bouncing like a pogo stick when they run, a motion that wastes energy. But the team found that an elephant travelling at speed keeps its COM at a constant height from the ground, even though its front legs bounce up and down in a trotting motion. The result is a pogo element to an elephant’s motion, but no vertical shift in its COM (The Journal of Experimental Biology, DOI: 10.1242/jeb.035436). John Hutchinson of the Royal Veterinary College in Hatfield, Hertfordshire, UK, who also studies elephant gait, questions whether it counts as running, as by some definitions all feet must be off the ground at the same time – something that does not happen with elephants.
Injured brains escape the material world DAMAGE to a specific brain area may increase feelings of transcendence, which are part of some religious experiences and other forms of spirituality. The posterior parietal cortex (PPC) helps the brain separate self from the environment. To find out whether it also helps us feel we are transcending the physical world, Cosimo Urgesi of the University of Udine in Italy turned 16 | NewScientist | 20 February 2010
to 88 people with brain cancers. Urgesi’s team tested them on a personality trait called selftranscendence before and after surgery to treat the cancers. High scores for this trait are gained by people who feel so connected to others that they “feel there is no separation” and “so connected to nature that everything feels like one single organism”. Such people also tend to believe in miracles,
extrasensory perception and other non-material phenomena. The 34 people who had neurons in the PPC removed scored higher after surgery than before, while those who lost neurons in another region, or whose surgery did not remove neurons, scored the same before and after (Neuron, DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2010.01.026). Urgesi speculates that people who by nature have low activity in the PPC could be predisposed to self-transcendent feelings too.
BACTERIA that survive an antibiotic attack emerge stronger, with an ability to repel new drugs. The conventional idea is that susceptible bugs perish, leaving behind a few individuals whose drug resistance is passed on as they multiply. This does not, however, explain why bacteria treated with one drug tend to resist others too. Now Jim Collins at Boston University and his team have found that several different kinds of antibiotics can actively create mutations that confer this multidrug resistance. The antibiotics produce toxic molecules called free radicals that damage the DNA of Escherichia coli, and the mutations are locked in when a sloppy repair system fails to put the DNA back together properly (Molecular Cell, DOI: 10.1016/j.molecel.2010.01.003). Collins hopes that blocking DNA repair will slow the emergence of multidrug-resistant superbugs.
Black hole’s spin spews super jets “BACKWARDS” black holes may kick out stronger jets of matter than their standard counterparts. As black holes eat material, they spew some of it out as jets. But no one knows why some jets are more powerful than others. A team led by Daniel Evans of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology studied the region around a black hole called 3C 33, which spins in the opposite direction to its orbiting disc of dust and gas. It has particularly powerful jets, perhaps because its inner disc is empty, due to the gravitational effect of counter-rotation. This may leave space for magnetic fields to build up enough strength to accelerate the jets (The Astrophysical Journal, vol 710, p 859).