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Do snails dream of slime-covered sheep?
Foto Natura Stock/FLPA
IN BRIEF Small cut, big problem
Do snails dream of slimecovered sheep? IT’S not just humans that benefit from the occasional power nap. Snails do too. Richard Stephenson and Vern Lewis of the University of Toronto in Canada noticed that great pond snails (Lymnaea stagnalis) in tanks in their lab spent 10 per cent of the time in a “quiescent” state: they would attach themselves to a solid surface and sit still with their muscles relaxed and their tentacles partially withdrawn. An animal that is sleeping rather than resting should be less responsive to stimulation. So the pair reasoned that if the quiescent snails only sluggishly withdrew into
their shells when prodded in the head with a metal rod, they are probably sleeping – which is exactly what they found. This is the first evidence of sleep in gastropods, says Stephenson (Journal of Experimental Biology, DOI: 10.1242/jeb.050591). Surprisingly, unlike most animals, snails do not sleep at a regular time each day. “Their sleeping behaviour is organised over two to three days,” Stephenson says. He thinks the snails haven’t evolved tight control of their sleep patterns because they need so little. Euan Brown of the Anton Dohrn Zoological Station in Naples, Italy, says the evidence for a sleep-like state is “very convincing”. Animals sleep more if they regularly need to store new memories – not such an issue for the snail’s plant-eating lifestyle, Brown says.
Why some numbers have a nice ring OVER 4 billion text messages are sent each day in the US alone. Could all this thumb gymnastics be subtly changing the way we feel about numbers? Sascha Topolinski at the University of Würzburg, Germany, found that 27 study participants rated seemingly random numbers such as 373863 and 7245346 as equally pleasant. But when a further 38 participants were asked
to dial the numbers on a cellphone before rating them, they significantly preferred 373863 – equivalent to using the predictive text function to type “friend” in German – to 7245346 – German text for “slime”. Topolinski also found that companies are more liked if their phone number spells out a company-related word, like “corpse” for a mortician
(Psychological Science, DOI: 10.1177/0956797610397668). Many companies already choose phone numbers precisely because they spell out a companyrelated word, but Topolinski says the number-word association occurs subconsciously, offering companies an opportunity for less explicit manipulation. For instance, a betting company might choose a number that spells out the word “successful” rather than the company name.
A MINOR cut may be all that is needed to rouse dormant cancer cells into forming a tumour. To investigate how cancerous genetic mutations become tumours, Sunny Wong at the University of California, San Francisco, and colleagues engineered mice to express a human cancer gene in hair follicle stem cells. They then sliced the skin on some of the mice, while leaving the others unharmed. Only the wounded mice developed tumours, which were clustered around their injury (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/ pnas.1013098108). When skin is cut, hair-follicle stem cells migrate to the injury. Wong says precancerous cells can lie dormant in the body until a trigger such as radiation pushes them into forming a tumour: “In this case, wounding got cancerous cells out of their resting phase.”
Bee sensor picks up wanderlust vibes TIME for a new hive? The accelerometers that detect motion in smartphones have been turned into listening devices for predicting when a queen honeybee will desert her old hive. Martin Bencsik’s team at Nottingham Trent University, UK, embedded accelerometers into the back wall of two hives to detect the motion caused by the buzzing insects. Over five months, their computer learned the language of the buzzing hives, he says. About 10 days before swarming, the bees produce a distinct vibration that could alert beekeepers to prepare for the event, when they might otherwise lose many bees (Computers and Electronics in Agriculture, DOI: 10.1016/j.compag.2011.01.004). 19 February 2011 | NewScientist | 17
IN BRIEF Small cut, big problem
Do snails dream of slimecovered sheep? IT’S not just humans that benefit from the occasional power nap. Snails do too. Richard Stephenson and Vern Lewis of the University of Toronto in Canada noticed that great pond snails (Lymnaea stagnalis) in tanks in their lab spent 10 per cent of the time in a “quiescent” state: they would attach themselves to a solid surface and sit still with their muscles relaxed and their tentacles partially withdrawn. An animal that is sleeping rather than resting should be less responsive to stimulation. So the pair reasoned that if the quiescent snails only sluggishly withdrew into
their shells when prodded in the head with a metal rod, they are probably sleeping – which is exactly what they found. This is the first evidence of sleep in gastropods, says Stephenson (Journal of Experimental Biology, DOI: 10.1242/jeb.050591). Surprisingly, unlike most animals, snails do not sleep at a regular time each day. “Their sleeping behaviour is organised over two to three days,” Stephenson says. He thinks the snails haven’t evolved tight control of their sleep patterns because they need so little. Euan Brown of the Anton Dohrn Zoological Station in Naples, Italy, says the evidence for a sleep-like state is “very convincing”. Animals sleep more if they regularly need to store new memories – not such an issue for the snail’s plant-eating lifestyle, Brown says.
Why some numbers have a nice ring OVER 4 billion text messages are sent each day in the US alone. Could all this thumb gymnastics be subtly changing the way we feel about numbers? Sascha Topolinski at the University of Würzburg, Germany, found that 27 study participants rated seemingly random numbers such as 373863 and 7245346 as equally pleasant. But when a further 38 participants were asked
to dial the numbers on a cellphone before rating them, they significantly preferred 373863 – equivalent to using the predictive text function to type “friend” in German – to 7245346 – German text for “slime”. Topolinski also found that companies are more liked if their phone number spells out a company-related word, like “corpse” for a mortician
(Psychological Science, DOI: 10.1177/0956797610397668). Many companies already choose phone numbers precisely because they spell out a companyrelated word, but Topolinski says the number-word association occurs subconsciously, offering companies an opportunity for less explicit manipulation. For instance, a betting company might choose a number that spells out the word “successful” rather than the company name.
A MINOR cut may be all that is needed to rouse dormant cancer cells into forming a tumour. To investigate how cancerous genetic mutations become tumours, Sunny Wong at the University of California, San Francisco, and colleagues engineered mice to express a human cancer gene in hair follicle stem cells. They then sliced the skin on some of the mice, while leaving the others unharmed. Only the wounded mice developed tumours, which were clustered around their injury (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/ pnas.1013098108). When skin is cut, hair-follicle stem cells migrate to the injury. Wong says precancerous cells can lie dormant in the body until a trigger such as radiation pushes them into forming a tumour: “In this case, wounding got cancerous cells out of their resting phase.”
Bee sensor picks up wanderlust vibes TIME for a new hive? The accelerometers that detect motion in smartphones have been turned into listening devices for predicting when a queen honeybee will desert her old hive. Martin Bencsik’s team at Nottingham Trent University, UK, embedded accelerometers into the back wall of two hives to detect the motion caused by the buzzing insects. Over five months, their computer learned the language of the buzzing hives, he says. About 10 days before swarming, the bees produce a distinct vibration that could alert beekeepers to prepare for the event, when they might otherwise lose many bees (Computers and Electronics in Agriculture, DOI: 10.1016/j.compag.2011.01.004). 19 February 2011 | NewScientist | 17