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Thirsty? Grab a drink of sperm
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IN BRIEF Thirsty? Grab a drink of sperm
One quake begets another… and it could be far away CAN one shake trigger another? Big earthquakes cause others in distant places at least 9 per cent of the time, according to a new statistical analysis. Tom Parsons of the US Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California, surveyed seismic activity going back to 1979 on every continent except Antarctica. Over the period, there were 260 earthquakes of magnitude 7 or greater. Twenty-four were followed by small quakes on separate fault systems. “It’s a small hazard, but there is a risk,” he says. Parsons was keen to see if any tremors of magnitude
5 or larger – which can cause serious damage – could be triggered by quakes far away. He found seven events that might qualify, but all happened at least 9 hours after seismic waves from the possible trigger quake had passed through. “We still can’t say whether they’re linked,” he says. The mechanism by which one quake might trigger another after such a long delay is something geologists can only speculate about. The planet’s plumbing could play a role: there is evidence that seismic waves can affect the water table at remote locations, and changes in water pressure can trigger quakes. Parsons’s results were presented last week at the Seismological Society of America annual meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Bacteria churn out fuel identical to petrol UNLEADED, diesel or biofuel? This could become the choice at the pump now we can make biofuels that are identical to the petrol we put in our cars, planes and trucks. Until now, biofuels have been made up of hydrocarbon chains of the wrong size and shape to be truly compatible with most modern engines – they’ll work, but only inefficiently, and over time they will corrode the engine. 18 | NewScientist | 27 April 2013
So, to be used as a mainstream alternative to fossil fuels – desirable because biofuels are carbon-neutral over their lifetime – engines would have to be redesigned, or an extra processing step employed to convert the fuel into a more usable form. To try to bypass that, John Love from the University of Exeter in the UK and colleagues took genes from the camphor tree, soil
bacteria and blue-green algae and spliced them into the DNA of Escherichia coli bacteria. Enzymes in the modified E. coli converted fatty acids into hydrocarbons that are chemically and structurally identical to those found in commercial fuel (PNAS, DOI:10.1073/pnas.1215966110). “We are biologically producing the fuel that the oil industry makes and sells,” says Love. The team now needs to work out how to scale up the method.
SOME animals will do anything for a drink, including devouring their partner’s sperm. Juan Rull of the Institute of Ecology in Xalapa, Mexico, monitored 74 pairs of the picturewinged fly, found on the dry plains of the altiplano. He found that after mating, every single female expelled at least some ejaculate, which many went on to eat. To find out why, he restricted the females’ diet and monitored the effect of eating ejaculate. Only females deprived of both food and water benefited from chowing down on sperm, living longer than those without access to it. The sperm drink had no effect on well-nourished flies – suggesting it is the fluid in it that is beneficial (Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, doi.org/k9v). Rull says this strategy could help females survive the dry winter: “perhaps they do so by ‘milking’ the males”.
A little light work clears the way BLOCKED blood vessels could be cleared with light. Optical tweezers use a laser to grab tiny objects, holding them with weak forces arising from their interaction with the light. Yin-Mei Li and her team at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei moved blood cells around inside a capillary in the ear of a mouse with the tweezers, unpicking a blockage cell by cell (Nature Communications, DOI: 10.1038/ ncomms2786). Kishan Dholakia at the University of St Andrews, UK, thinks the technique could also hold cells in place while they were examined under a microscope, making it easier to study some diseases.
IN BRIEF Thirsty? Grab a drink of sperm
One quake begets another… and it could be far away CAN one shake trigger another? Big earthquakes cause others in distant places at least 9 per cent of the time, according to a new statistical analysis. Tom Parsons of the US Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California, surveyed seismic activity going back to 1979 on every continent except Antarctica. Over the period, there were 260 earthquakes of magnitude 7 or greater. Twenty-four were followed by small quakes on separate fault systems. “It’s a small hazard, but there is a risk,” he says. Parsons was keen to see if any tremors of magnitude
5 or larger – which can cause serious damage – could be triggered by quakes far away. He found seven events that might qualify, but all happened at least 9 hours after seismic waves from the possible trigger quake had passed through. “We still can’t say whether they’re linked,” he says. The mechanism by which one quake might trigger another after such a long delay is something geologists can only speculate about. The planet’s plumbing could play a role: there is evidence that seismic waves can affect the water table at remote locations, and changes in water pressure can trigger quakes. Parsons’s results were presented last week at the Seismological Society of America annual meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Bacteria churn out fuel identical to petrol UNLEADED, diesel or biofuel? This could become the choice at the pump now we can make biofuels that are identical to the petrol we put in our cars, planes and trucks. Until now, biofuels have been made up of hydrocarbon chains of the wrong size and shape to be truly compatible with most modern engines – they’ll work, but only inefficiently, and over time they will corrode the engine. 18 | NewScientist | 27 April 2013
So, to be used as a mainstream alternative to fossil fuels – desirable because biofuels are carbon-neutral over their lifetime – engines would have to be redesigned, or an extra processing step employed to convert the fuel into a more usable form. To try to bypass that, John Love from the University of Exeter in the UK and colleagues took genes from the camphor tree, soil
bacteria and blue-green algae and spliced them into the DNA of Escherichia coli bacteria. Enzymes in the modified E. coli converted fatty acids into hydrocarbons that are chemically and structurally identical to those found in commercial fuel (PNAS, DOI:10.1073/pnas.1215966110). “We are biologically producing the fuel that the oil industry makes and sells,” says Love. The team now needs to work out how to scale up the method.
SOME animals will do anything for a drink, including devouring their partner’s sperm. Juan Rull of the Institute of Ecology in Xalapa, Mexico, monitored 74 pairs of the picturewinged fly, found on the dry plains of the altiplano. He found that after mating, every single female expelled at least some ejaculate, which many went on to eat. To find out why, he restricted the females’ diet and monitored the effect of eating ejaculate. Only females deprived of both food and water benefited from chowing down on sperm, living longer than those without access to it. The sperm drink had no effect on well-nourished flies – suggesting it is the fluid in it that is beneficial (Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, doi.org/k9v). Rull says this strategy could help females survive the dry winter: “perhaps they do so by ‘milking’ the males”.
A little light work clears the way BLOCKED blood vessels could be cleared with light. Optical tweezers use a laser to grab tiny objects, holding them with weak forces arising from their interaction with the light. Yin-Mei Li and her team at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei moved blood cells around inside a capillary in the ear of a mouse with the tweezers, unpicking a blockage cell by cell (Nature Communications, DOI: 10.1038/ ncomms2786). Kishan Dholakia at the University of St Andrews, UK, thinks the technique could also hold cells in place while they were examined under a microscope, making it easier to study some diseases.