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Weird object hints at Saturn's moon-making skill
Fritz Polking/FLPA
IN BRIEF Only sick livestock to get antibiotics
Traffic jams give penguins a case of happy feet FOR most, the start-stop motion of a traffic jam is infuriating, but if you are a group of emperor penguins, it’s just what you need to stay together. Emperor penguins huddle together in large groups to survive the Antarctic winter. Researchers interested in how these groups remain closely knit have attached temperature and light sensors to individual birds, but no one had looked at the dynamics of a huddle as a whole. To see what was going on, Daniel Zitterbart and his team at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, Germany, filmed the
huddles and analysed each penguin’s movements. They found that when one bird steps, it triggers the coordinated movement of its neighbours in a wave-like motion, similar to the way cars inch forward in a jam. To find out what triggers these waves, the team applied a mathematical model often used to study road congestion. It showed that rather than simply being caused by cold penguins pushing in, waves can originate from birds at many different spots in the huddle, as long as their steps exceed a 2-centimetre threshold distance, about twice the thickness of their feather layer. Waves that started in two different groups can merge, helping smaller huddles grow into large throngs that can withstand temperatures as low as -50 °C (New Journal of Physics, DOI: 10.1088/1367-2630/15/12/125022).
Duck-billed dino had flashy cock’s comb TRUE to its name, Edmontosaurus regalis had headgear fit for royalty. The flamboyant crest of the megaherbivore, which lived in herds across North America 72 million years ago, was uncovered quite by chance. “It was a lucky strike,” says Federico Fanti of the University of Bologna in Italy. E. regalis fossils normally show no sign of any kind of crest. He and his colleagues
found the skeleton in the characteristic death pose, neck arched back toward its spine. While removing the fossil, Fanti’s colleague Phil Bell of the University of England in Australia put his chisel between the top of the head and the rest of the body, expecting to find only dirt. “Lo and behold, there were bits of skin underneath which never should have been there,” he says.
The fleshy mound is 20 centimetres high (Current Biology, doi.org/qgg). Together with the rest of the animal’s skin, it was preserved in a quick burial, which didn’t allow scavengers or bacteria to do much damage before it fossilised. Fanti likens it to a rooster’s red comb. The fossil offers no indication of colour, but Bell says there’s every reason to suspect that it was brightly coloured, and part of social or sexual signalling.
IN AN attempt to slow antibiotic resistance, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is phasing out the use of antibiotics for fattening up livestock. Antibiotic-resistant microbes are thought to kill 23,000 people in the US each year. Resistance develops when microbes are repeatedly exposed to antibiotics so giving them to healthy animals exacerbates the problem. The FDA has told drug manufacturers they have three years to voluntarily change labels, ensuring they state that animal antibiotics can only be given for medical reasons. Europe banned the use of antibiotics as growth promoters in 2006. Campaigners for a ban are critical of the voluntary measures. “The FDA’s policy is an early holiday gift to the industry,” says Avinash Kar of the Natural Resources Defense Council pressure group in Washington DC.
Did Saturn’s rings just mint a moon? SATURN might have just made a small moon. A disturbance along the edge of the planet’s rings is probably being caused by an unseen object, dubbed Peggy, stirring things up. Carl Murray of Queen Mary, University of London and his colleagues found the distortion in images taken between June 2012 and April 2013 by NASA’s Cassini probe. Similar patterns deeper in the rings are thought to be wakes left by moons too small to detect. Speaking at a geophysics meeting in San Francisco last week, Murray says he hasn’t found the bright distortion in more recent images. It is possible the clump was destroyed in a collision, or it became a tiny moon that has since migrated out from the rings. 21/28 December 2013 | NewScientist | 15
IN BRIEF Only sick livestock to get antibiotics
Traffic jams give penguins a case of happy feet FOR most, the start-stop motion of a traffic jam is infuriating, but if you are a group of emperor penguins, it’s just what you need to stay together. Emperor penguins huddle together in large groups to survive the Antarctic winter. Researchers interested in how these groups remain closely knit have attached temperature and light sensors to individual birds, but no one had looked at the dynamics of a huddle as a whole. To see what was going on, Daniel Zitterbart and his team at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, Germany, filmed the
huddles and analysed each penguin’s movements. They found that when one bird steps, it triggers the coordinated movement of its neighbours in a wave-like motion, similar to the way cars inch forward in a jam. To find out what triggers these waves, the team applied a mathematical model often used to study road congestion. It showed that rather than simply being caused by cold penguins pushing in, waves can originate from birds at many different spots in the huddle, as long as their steps exceed a 2-centimetre threshold distance, about twice the thickness of their feather layer. Waves that started in two different groups can merge, helping smaller huddles grow into large throngs that can withstand temperatures as low as -50 °C (New Journal of Physics, DOI: 10.1088/1367-2630/15/12/125022).
Duck-billed dino had flashy cock’s comb TRUE to its name, Edmontosaurus regalis had headgear fit for royalty. The flamboyant crest of the megaherbivore, which lived in herds across North America 72 million years ago, was uncovered quite by chance. “It was a lucky strike,” says Federico Fanti of the University of Bologna in Italy. E. regalis fossils normally show no sign of any kind of crest. He and his colleagues
found the skeleton in the characteristic death pose, neck arched back toward its spine. While removing the fossil, Fanti’s colleague Phil Bell of the University of England in Australia put his chisel between the top of the head and the rest of the body, expecting to find only dirt. “Lo and behold, there were bits of skin underneath which never should have been there,” he says.
The fleshy mound is 20 centimetres high (Current Biology, doi.org/qgg). Together with the rest of the animal’s skin, it was preserved in a quick burial, which didn’t allow scavengers or bacteria to do much damage before it fossilised. Fanti likens it to a rooster’s red comb. The fossil offers no indication of colour, but Bell says there’s every reason to suspect that it was brightly coloured, and part of social or sexual signalling.
IN AN attempt to slow antibiotic resistance, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is phasing out the use of antibiotics for fattening up livestock. Antibiotic-resistant microbes are thought to kill 23,000 people in the US each year. Resistance develops when microbes are repeatedly exposed to antibiotics so giving them to healthy animals exacerbates the problem. The FDA has told drug manufacturers they have three years to voluntarily change labels, ensuring they state that animal antibiotics can only be given for medical reasons. Europe banned the use of antibiotics as growth promoters in 2006. Campaigners for a ban are critical of the voluntary measures. “The FDA’s policy is an early holiday gift to the industry,” says Avinash Kar of the Natural Resources Defense Council pressure group in Washington DC.
Did Saturn’s rings just mint a moon? SATURN might have just made a small moon. A disturbance along the edge of the planet’s rings is probably being caused by an unseen object, dubbed Peggy, stirring things up. Carl Murray of Queen Mary, University of London and his colleagues found the distortion in images taken between June 2012 and April 2013 by NASA’s Cassini probe. Similar patterns deeper in the rings are thought to be wakes left by moons too small to detect. Speaking at a geophysics meeting in San Francisco last week, Murray says he hasn’t found the bright distortion in more recent images. It is possible the clump was destroyed in a collision, or it became a tiny moon that has since migrated out from the rings. 21/28 December 2013 | NewScientist | 15