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Morning sickness may indicate high IQ child
RICK&NORA BOWERS/ALAMY
IN BRIEF Cancer’s one-way ticket to the brain
Prairie dogs issue warnings in glorious technicolour PRAIRIE dogs talk some pretty colourful talk. Not only do their alarm calls tell others about the type and size of approaching predators, but it seems they can also warn of the hue of an imminent threat. Gunnison’s prairie dogs are burrowing rodents that live in the grasslands of North America. Con Slobodchikoff of Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff and his colleagues had previously shown that they produce different alarm calls in response to humans, coyotes, domestic dogs and red-tailed hawks. For humans, the calls even vary according to the person’s size. They react
differently towards each call, all hiding if approached by humans, whereas only nearby animals hide if it is a hawk. In the latest study, the team recorded the alarm calls as three similar-sized women wearing blue, yellow or green T-shirts walked past the prairie dogs 99 times. They found that the calls were similar for green and yellow T-shirts, but significantly different for blue (Animal Cognition, DOI: 10.1007/s10071-008-0203-y). Prairie dogs have dichromatic vision, a form of colour blindness where only two of the three primary colours can be discerned. As they are sensitive to blue and yellow, this explains why they cannot distinguish green. Still, the fact that they can “talk” colour “probably makes this the most sophisticated animal communication system that has been decoded so far,” says Slobodchikoff.
Morning sickness may indicate high IQ SICK of morning sickness? Take heart: it may be a sign that your child is developing a high IQ. Irena Nulman and colleagues at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Canada, contacted 120 women who years earlier had called a morning sickness hotline. Thirty did not have morning sickness, but the researchers asked the rest to recall the severity of their sickness, and gave the 14 | NewScientist | 9 May 2009
children of all the women, now aged between 3 and 7, a standard intelligence test. Those whose mothers had nausea and vomiting during pregnancy were more likely to get high scores than those whose mothers did not (The Journal of Pediatrics, DOI: 10.1016/j.jpeds.2009.02.005). The reported severity of the vomiting also correlated with the IQ scores. Morning sickness, which affects
most pregnant women, is thought to be a reaction to the hormones human chorionic gonadotropin and thyroxine, which are secreted at unusually high levels during pregnancy to maintain a healthy placenta. Now Nulman speculates that these hormones, which are higher in women who experience morning sickness, may protect the fetus’s developing brain. Her team found that taking the morning sickness drug Diclectin had no effect on the IQ scores.
HOW do cancer cells get into the brain? A “ticket” made of three genes seems to grant them access in mice. The discovery could one day lead to drugs that cancel out a similar ticket in people. Around 10 per cent of people whose cancer has metastasised, or spread beyond the original site, develop brain tumours. But it’s a mystery how cancer cells get past the “blood-brain barrier”, which prevents the passage of most cells. To investigate, Joan Massagué and his colleagues at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York city injected human breast cancer cells into the arteries of mice. Three key genes were expressed in those cells that infiltrated the brain: one that helped cancer cells “stick” to blood vessels in the brain, another that is known to make capillaries leaky, and a third that makes cancer cells mobile (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature08021).
Mercury’s ‘wrinkle ridges’ are unique A SPOKE-LIKE pattern of troughs and ridges on Mercury is like no known feature in the solar system. NASA’s Messenger probe found the features in the Rembrandt impact basin, the second-largest crater on Mercury. Troughs and ridges radiate from the centre of the basin, etched into volcanic material that bled to the surface after the impact (Science, vol 324, p 618). So-called “wrinkle ridges” happen when the crust is compressed, while troughs form as it stretches. “What’s so bizarre is these features are sitting beside each other. We’ve never seen anything like that,” says team member Thomas Watters of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC.
IN BRIEF Cancer’s one-way ticket to the brain
Prairie dogs issue warnings in glorious technicolour PRAIRIE dogs talk some pretty colourful talk. Not only do their alarm calls tell others about the type and size of approaching predators, but it seems they can also warn of the hue of an imminent threat. Gunnison’s prairie dogs are burrowing rodents that live in the grasslands of North America. Con Slobodchikoff of Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff and his colleagues had previously shown that they produce different alarm calls in response to humans, coyotes, domestic dogs and red-tailed hawks. For humans, the calls even vary according to the person’s size. They react
differently towards each call, all hiding if approached by humans, whereas only nearby animals hide if it is a hawk. In the latest study, the team recorded the alarm calls as three similar-sized women wearing blue, yellow or green T-shirts walked past the prairie dogs 99 times. They found that the calls were similar for green and yellow T-shirts, but significantly different for blue (Animal Cognition, DOI: 10.1007/s10071-008-0203-y). Prairie dogs have dichromatic vision, a form of colour blindness where only two of the three primary colours can be discerned. As they are sensitive to blue and yellow, this explains why they cannot distinguish green. Still, the fact that they can “talk” colour “probably makes this the most sophisticated animal communication system that has been decoded so far,” says Slobodchikoff.
Morning sickness may indicate high IQ SICK of morning sickness? Take heart: it may be a sign that your child is developing a high IQ. Irena Nulman and colleagues at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Canada, contacted 120 women who years earlier had called a morning sickness hotline. Thirty did not have morning sickness, but the researchers asked the rest to recall the severity of their sickness, and gave the 14 | NewScientist | 9 May 2009
children of all the women, now aged between 3 and 7, a standard intelligence test. Those whose mothers had nausea and vomiting during pregnancy were more likely to get high scores than those whose mothers did not (The Journal of Pediatrics, DOI: 10.1016/j.jpeds.2009.02.005). The reported severity of the vomiting also correlated with the IQ scores. Morning sickness, which affects
most pregnant women, is thought to be a reaction to the hormones human chorionic gonadotropin and thyroxine, which are secreted at unusually high levels during pregnancy to maintain a healthy placenta. Now Nulman speculates that these hormones, which are higher in women who experience morning sickness, may protect the fetus’s developing brain. Her team found that taking the morning sickness drug Diclectin had no effect on the IQ scores.
HOW do cancer cells get into the brain? A “ticket” made of three genes seems to grant them access in mice. The discovery could one day lead to drugs that cancel out a similar ticket in people. Around 10 per cent of people whose cancer has metastasised, or spread beyond the original site, develop brain tumours. But it’s a mystery how cancer cells get past the “blood-brain barrier”, which prevents the passage of most cells. To investigate, Joan Massagué and his colleagues at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York city injected human breast cancer cells into the arteries of mice. Three key genes were expressed in those cells that infiltrated the brain: one that helped cancer cells “stick” to blood vessels in the brain, another that is known to make capillaries leaky, and a third that makes cancer cells mobile (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature08021).
Mercury’s ‘wrinkle ridges’ are unique A SPOKE-LIKE pattern of troughs and ridges on Mercury is like no known feature in the solar system. NASA’s Messenger probe found the features in the Rembrandt impact basin, the second-largest crater on Mercury. Troughs and ridges radiate from the centre of the basin, etched into volcanic material that bled to the surface after the impact (Science, vol 324, p 618). So-called “wrinkle ridges” happen when the crust is compressed, while troughs form as it stretches. “What’s so bizarre is these features are sitting beside each other. We’ve never seen anything like that,” says team member Thomas Watters of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC.