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Wiggling bird genitals give good vibrations
In brief– Smell the coffee... then wake up
TILL MELCHIOR/PLAINPICTURE
DRINKING a cup of coffee can wake you up, but perhaps just a whiff of Java is enough to reverse the effects of sleep deprivation on the brain. A team led by Yoshinori Masuo at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Tsukuba, Japan, deprived rats of sleep for a day. When they examined their brains they found reduced levels of mRNA – messenger molecules that indicate when a gene is being expressed – for 11 genes important to brain function. When the rats were exposed to the aroma of coffee, the mRNA for nine of the genes was restored to near normal levels, and pushed to above normal levels for two – GIR, involved in neuro-endocrine control, and NFGR, thought to control oxidative stress (Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, DOI: 10.1021/jf8001137). We don’t know if the same genes are suppressed in sleep-deprived humans, nor whether we would feel tired if they were, but many of these genes do have human equivalents. So the team says gene suppression may help explain why people feel bad when they haven’t had enough sleep – and that gene reactivation could explain why people love the smell of coffee. Next the team hopes to identify the molecules in coffee aroma that affect gene expression. They suggest pumping them into factories to help revive tired workers who can’t sip coffee while operating machinery.
16 | NewScientist | 14 June 2008
Roadside crater should have made more of an impact HOW could evidence of a major asteroid impact have been missed when it was in plain sight all along? The telltale signs of a huge impact site were sitting alongside a busy road 8 kilometres north-east of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Unusual cracks radiating from the tips of cone-shaped structures in rocks along the Santa Fe National Forest Scenic Byway were first spotted by independent geologist Tim McElvain. He called in experts, who identified the projections as shatter cones, distinctive structures that form
when shock waves from a highspeed impact fracture the underlying rock. The shatter cones are the biggest ever found, says Christian Koeberl at the University of Vienna in Austria. “To see 2-metre-high shatter cones on the side of the road took my breath away,” he told New Scientist. “Who knows how many hundreds of thousands of people had driven by there without recognising them.” Koeberl, McElvain and colleagues went on to find additional shatter cones and other
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Wiggling bird bits please the ladies SOME male birds possess a wiggling tongue-like knob on their genitals, probably to titillate their mates. In typical bird copulation, males and females momentarily press together their cloacas – genital openings – in what biologists call a cloacal kiss. A muscled tongue-like projection called a cloacal tip, spotted for the first time in males of several species of Australian wrens, means this might be more like a French kiss. Melissah Rowe of the University of Chicago and colleagues studied eight species of wrens. Based on the alignment of the muscles, the cloacal tips seem able to wiggle from side to side. Though Rowe hasn’t seen a tip in action, she says it would be odd to find a structure made of muscle that didn’t move (Journal of Avian Biology, DOI: 10.1111/ j.2008.0908-8857.04305.x). The team also found that the tips were proportionally larger in wren species where females mate with many partners, suggesting that its function might be to stimulate females and encourage them to take up and retain the males’ sperm, says Rowe.
evidence of an impact over an area of 5 square kilometres, though the impact crater itself has long been obliterated by weathering and tectonic activity. They estimate the total area affected by the impact was 6 to 13 kilometres across, and that the asteroid responsible struck between 300 million and 1.2 billion years ago (Earth and Planetary Science Letters, DOI: 10.1016/j.epsl.2008.03.033). The discovery suggests that many undiscovered impact sites are “still hiding right next to us”, says Koeberl.
W
Placed in a pool with a planetarium dome overhead, seals learned to swim towards a particular star (orange spot) in an image of the northern hemisphere. Orange dots indicate the actual directions the seals took and how often they swam in these directions
Navigating seals perform a star turn SEALS in the open ocean may be able to navigate by the stars. Whales, sea lions and seals exhibit a behaviour called spyhopping, where they stick their heads out of the water, apparently surveying their surroundings. This led some biologists to suspect that these mammals might use the stars for navigation. Björn Mauck of the University of Southern Denmark in Odense and colleagues used a specially built pool planetarium to test two harbour seals on their ability to recognise and orient themselves by the stars. The 5-metre round pool was covered by
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S
a dome onto which was projected a simulation of the northern sky, with about 6000 stars. The team highlighted a particular star with a laser pointer, rewarding the seals for swimming towards it. They found that even when the whole sky was rotated at random, the seals could still home in on the star with very high accuracy (Animal Cognition, DOI: 10.1007/s10071-008-0156-1). “Seals and many other animals are exposed to the starry sky every clear night, and thus certainly have sufficient opportunities to learn the patterns of stars,” says Mauck. The seals’ technique appears to be similar to that of Polynesian sailors, who traditionally linked stars to spots on the horizon where they rise.
www.newscientist.com
TILL MELCHIOR/PLAINPICTURE
DRINKING a cup of coffee can wake you up, but perhaps just a whiff of Java is enough to reverse the effects of sleep deprivation on the brain. A team led by Yoshinori Masuo at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Tsukuba, Japan, deprived rats of sleep for a day. When they examined their brains they found reduced levels of mRNA – messenger molecules that indicate when a gene is being expressed – for 11 genes important to brain function. When the rats were exposed to the aroma of coffee, the mRNA for nine of the genes was restored to near normal levels, and pushed to above normal levels for two – GIR, involved in neuro-endocrine control, and NFGR, thought to control oxidative stress (Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, DOI: 10.1021/jf8001137). We don’t know if the same genes are suppressed in sleep-deprived humans, nor whether we would feel tired if they were, but many of these genes do have human equivalents. So the team says gene suppression may help explain why people feel bad when they haven’t had enough sleep – and that gene reactivation could explain why people love the smell of coffee. Next the team hopes to identify the molecules in coffee aroma that affect gene expression. They suggest pumping them into factories to help revive tired workers who can’t sip coffee while operating machinery.
16 | NewScientist | 14 June 2008
Roadside crater should have made more of an impact HOW could evidence of a major asteroid impact have been missed when it was in plain sight all along? The telltale signs of a huge impact site were sitting alongside a busy road 8 kilometres north-east of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Unusual cracks radiating from the tips of cone-shaped structures in rocks along the Santa Fe National Forest Scenic Byway were first spotted by independent geologist Tim McElvain. He called in experts, who identified the projections as shatter cones, distinctive structures that form
when shock waves from a highspeed impact fracture the underlying rock. The shatter cones are the biggest ever found, says Christian Koeberl at the University of Vienna in Austria. “To see 2-metre-high shatter cones on the side of the road took my breath away,” he told New Scientist. “Who knows how many hundreds of thousands of people had driven by there without recognising them.” Koeberl, McElvain and colleagues went on to find additional shatter cones and other
N
Wiggling bird bits please the ladies SOME male birds possess a wiggling tongue-like knob on their genitals, probably to titillate their mates. In typical bird copulation, males and females momentarily press together their cloacas – genital openings – in what biologists call a cloacal kiss. A muscled tongue-like projection called a cloacal tip, spotted for the first time in males of several species of Australian wrens, means this might be more like a French kiss. Melissah Rowe of the University of Chicago and colleagues studied eight species of wrens. Based on the alignment of the muscles, the cloacal tips seem able to wiggle from side to side. Though Rowe hasn’t seen a tip in action, she says it would be odd to find a structure made of muscle that didn’t move (Journal of Avian Biology, DOI: 10.1111/ j.2008.0908-8857.04305.x). The team also found that the tips were proportionally larger in wren species where females mate with many partners, suggesting that its function might be to stimulate females and encourage them to take up and retain the males’ sperm, says Rowe.
evidence of an impact over an area of 5 square kilometres, though the impact crater itself has long been obliterated by weathering and tectonic activity. They estimate the total area affected by the impact was 6 to 13 kilometres across, and that the asteroid responsible struck between 300 million and 1.2 billion years ago (Earth and Planetary Science Letters, DOI: 10.1016/j.epsl.2008.03.033). The discovery suggests that many undiscovered impact sites are “still hiding right next to us”, says Koeberl.
W
Placed in a pool with a planetarium dome overhead, seals learned to swim towards a particular star (orange spot) in an image of the northern hemisphere. Orange dots indicate the actual directions the seals took and how often they swam in these directions
Navigating seals perform a star turn SEALS in the open ocean may be able to navigate by the stars. Whales, sea lions and seals exhibit a behaviour called spyhopping, where they stick their heads out of the water, apparently surveying their surroundings. This led some biologists to suspect that these mammals might use the stars for navigation. Björn Mauck of the University of Southern Denmark in Odense and colleagues used a specially built pool planetarium to test two harbour seals on their ability to recognise and orient themselves by the stars. The 5-metre round pool was covered by
E
S
a dome onto which was projected a simulation of the northern sky, with about 6000 stars. The team highlighted a particular star with a laser pointer, rewarding the seals for swimming towards it. They found that even when the whole sky was rotated at random, the seals could still home in on the star with very high accuracy (Animal Cognition, DOI: 10.1007/s10071-008-0156-1). “Seals and many other animals are exposed to the starry sky every clear night, and thus certainly have sufficient opportunities to learn the patterns of stars,” says Mauck. The seals’ technique appears to be similar to that of Polynesian sailors, who traditionally linked stars to spots on the horizon where they rise.
www.newscientist.com