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Many dinos were feathersaurs
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Andrey Atuchin
FEATHERS, feathers everywhere. Many dinosaurs had elaborate feathers, new fossils suggest, hinting that plumage was much more common than we thought. Until now it seemed the only feathery dinosaurs were bird-like beasts like Velociraptor, belonging to one of the two major dinosaur groups, the saurischians. Now it seems the second group, the ornithischians, which includes Triceratops and Stegosaurus, also had feathers. Pascal Godefroit of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels and his colleagues studied hundreds of fossils of a new ornithischian, Kulindadromeus zabaikalicus. It was 1.5 metres long, walked on two legs and ate plants. K. zabaikalicus had three distinct kinds of feather. There were bristle-like filaments, downy feathers like those of birds and bundles of odd ribbon-shaped feathers (Science, doi.org/tvt). “This research provides the clearest evidence to date that feathers were present within the ornithischian half of the dinosaur family tree,” says Ryan McKellar of the Royal Saskatchewan Museum in Regina, Canada. The common ancestor of the two groups may have had feathers, or the groups could have evolved them independently.
Drifting away from Earth made moon go all lumpy LEAVING home can change you – and the moon is no exception. As it drifted away from its parent, Earth, the pull of our planet’s gravity gave it an odd bulge on each side and a tilted axis. Uncovering the mystery behind its unusual shape is a step towards finding out exactly when and how the moon formed. Most rocky planets and moons formed from a spinning ball of magma, which gives them a fairly predictable spherical shape. Earth’s moon is thought to have formed when a Mars-sized object
smacked into the infant Earth and shot hot rocky material out into space. That should mean normal rules apply, but instead, the moon has a weird bulge on both the near and far side, giving it a shape like a lemon. There are several ideas for how these bulges formed, but studying them has been difficult because since it formed, the moon has been marred with large basins that mask its original shape. Maria Zuber at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her colleagues
made a model that filled in the largest basins, to see what the moon would have looked like before they formed. The results suggest the lemonlike bulges formed in the first 200 million years, when Earth’s gravity pulled at the moon’s magma, building the crust up more on the points closest to and furthest from Earth (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature13639). The density of the cooling crust was uneven, so it became lopsided. This tilted its polar axis to the 36-degree angle we see today. BAVARIA./getty
Many dinos were feathersaurs
Iron supplements could go nano HERE’S something to chew over. Iron supplements in nanoparticle form might have fewer side effects than those currently available. Anaemia is the most common nutritional disorder in the world, hindering red blood cells’ ability to carry oxygen. As a result, many people take oral iron supplements. These contain soluble iron, but this can react adversely with chemicals and bacteria in the gut, causing constipation and diarrhoea. Dora Pereira’s team at the Medical Research Council’s Human Nutrition Research group in Cambridge, UK, wondered if iron nanoparticles would avoid this, because they are absorbed by cells in a different way that means none of the reactive form is left in the gut. Having confirmed that nanoiron is non-toxic in cell and mouse experiments, the team tested five different formulations on 26 premenopausal women. The one that worked best was 80 per cent as effective as standard supplements in replenishing haemoglobin, but with no side effects (Nanomedicine, doi.org/tvv). The next step is to do larger trials of a wider range of people.
Face tester judges your personality PERHAPS you could use this to update your online dating profile. A computer model can now predict how we will assess someone’s personality based on their looks. We all tend to make snap judgements when meeting people. To find out which facial attributes are most important, Tom Hartley of the University of York, UK, and his colleagues analysed 1000 photos of faces, which others had rated on how trustworthy, dominant and sexually attractive they looked – traits that we are known to assess within 100 milliseconds. The team also
measured the attributes of each face, such as the curvature of the lips. Hartley’s team fed both the facial information and the volunteers’ ratings into programs that find correlations in data. They found that some attributes, particularly in combination, strongly influence the way faces are judged. Faces with an open, smiling mouth and a wide nose tend to be judged trustworthy, for example. Using this information, the group developed a model that can predict how people will rate a face (PNAS, DOI: 10.1073/ pnas.1409860111).
2 August 2014 | NewScientist | 17
Andrey Atuchin
FEATHERS, feathers everywhere. Many dinosaurs had elaborate feathers, new fossils suggest, hinting that plumage was much more common than we thought. Until now it seemed the only feathery dinosaurs were bird-like beasts like Velociraptor, belonging to one of the two major dinosaur groups, the saurischians. Now it seems the second group, the ornithischians, which includes Triceratops and Stegosaurus, also had feathers. Pascal Godefroit of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels and his colleagues studied hundreds of fossils of a new ornithischian, Kulindadromeus zabaikalicus. It was 1.5 metres long, walked on two legs and ate plants. K. zabaikalicus had three distinct kinds of feather. There were bristle-like filaments, downy feathers like those of birds and bundles of odd ribbon-shaped feathers (Science, doi.org/tvt). “This research provides the clearest evidence to date that feathers were present within the ornithischian half of the dinosaur family tree,” says Ryan McKellar of the Royal Saskatchewan Museum in Regina, Canada. The common ancestor of the two groups may have had feathers, or the groups could have evolved them independently.
Drifting away from Earth made moon go all lumpy LEAVING home can change you – and the moon is no exception. As it drifted away from its parent, Earth, the pull of our planet’s gravity gave it an odd bulge on each side and a tilted axis. Uncovering the mystery behind its unusual shape is a step towards finding out exactly when and how the moon formed. Most rocky planets and moons formed from a spinning ball of magma, which gives them a fairly predictable spherical shape. Earth’s moon is thought to have formed when a Mars-sized object
smacked into the infant Earth and shot hot rocky material out into space. That should mean normal rules apply, but instead, the moon has a weird bulge on both the near and far side, giving it a shape like a lemon. There are several ideas for how these bulges formed, but studying them has been difficult because since it formed, the moon has been marred with large basins that mask its original shape. Maria Zuber at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her colleagues
made a model that filled in the largest basins, to see what the moon would have looked like before they formed. The results suggest the lemonlike bulges formed in the first 200 million years, when Earth’s gravity pulled at the moon’s magma, building the crust up more on the points closest to and furthest from Earth (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature13639). The density of the cooling crust was uneven, so it became lopsided. This tilted its polar axis to the 36-degree angle we see today. BAVARIA./getty
Many dinos were feathersaurs
Iron supplements could go nano HERE’S something to chew over. Iron supplements in nanoparticle form might have fewer side effects than those currently available. Anaemia is the most common nutritional disorder in the world, hindering red blood cells’ ability to carry oxygen. As a result, many people take oral iron supplements. These contain soluble iron, but this can react adversely with chemicals and bacteria in the gut, causing constipation and diarrhoea. Dora Pereira’s team at the Medical Research Council’s Human Nutrition Research group in Cambridge, UK, wondered if iron nanoparticles would avoid this, because they are absorbed by cells in a different way that means none of the reactive form is left in the gut. Having confirmed that nanoiron is non-toxic in cell and mouse experiments, the team tested five different formulations on 26 premenopausal women. The one that worked best was 80 per cent as effective as standard supplements in replenishing haemoglobin, but with no side effects (Nanomedicine, doi.org/tvv). The next step is to do larger trials of a wider range of people.
Face tester judges your personality PERHAPS you could use this to update your online dating profile. A computer model can now predict how we will assess someone’s personality based on their looks. We all tend to make snap judgements when meeting people. To find out which facial attributes are most important, Tom Hartley of the University of York, UK, and his colleagues analysed 1000 photos of faces, which others had rated on how trustworthy, dominant and sexually attractive they looked – traits that we are known to assess within 100 milliseconds. The team also
measured the attributes of each face, such as the curvature of the lips. Hartley’s team fed both the facial information and the volunteers’ ratings into programs that find correlations in data. They found that some attributes, particularly in combination, strongly influence the way faces are judged. Faces with an open, smiling mouth and a wide nose tend to be judged trustworthy, for example. Using this information, the group developed a model that can predict how people will rate a face (PNAS, DOI: 10.1073/ pnas.1409860111).
2 August 2014 | NewScientist | 17