ScienceShots from science online
Shine a light. Galactic centers are usually hidden by so much dust and gas that they're difficult to probe. But a powerful x-ray burst, represented in orange in this artist's rendering, should provide new insights. The flare erupted after a supermassive black hole bit into an errant star that moved too close for comfort, and the burst in turn heated up and illuminated nearby galactic material (purple). That gave astronomers a rare look at the structure and chemical composition of the galaxy's heart, they report in the 1 May issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters, a view that may shed literal light on how galaxies evolve. (Image: MPE/ESA)
Bat breath. Does alcohol cloud bats' judgment? When given the choice between an ethanol-based nectar containing sucrose and one containing fructose, the animals preferred the former. That may not be the wisest decision, as fructose helps them metabolize alcohol faster, say researchers, who report the results of a bat breathalyzer test online 18 April in the Journal of Experimental Biology. Because ripe fruits contain ethanol and a variety of different sugars, such cloudy judgment could affect which fruits bats eat--and hence which seeds they disperse--in the wild
Two for tea. A rose with any other gene ... would not smell as sweet. Tea roses emit an earthy, spicy fragrance composed mainly of the compound 3,5-dimethoxytoluene (DMT). Two enzymes are needed to make DMT, and tea roses and their hybrid descendants are the only roses that have the genes for both. Reporting online 15 April in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers say the gene for the second enzyme in tea roses probably started out as a duplication of the first. Eventually, simple mutations in the extra copy gave the plant the ability to make DMT and sweeten many a bouquet.
Ultimate ancestor. This innocuous-looking comb jelly might just be the direct progeny of the first animal on Earth. A massive analysis of the evolutionary biology of animals suggests that the earliest member of the kingdom that includes insects, fish, reptiles, birds, mammals, and humans--plus a host of others--was related to the comb jelly. That's a major surprise, a team reports in the 10 April issue of Nature, because the jelly possesses distinct tissues and a nervous system, whereas the previous candidate for the planet's first true animal, the sponge, lacks both. The discovery is a blow to the mindset that evolution automatically means increasing complexity, say the researchers. (Photo: Casey Dunn)
Tiny tempest. Physicists have replicated Jupiter's stormy weather in soap bubbles. There's even a miniature equivalent of the Great Red Spot. The trick has to do with a process known as thermal convection, or the transfer of heat within fluid systems. The researchers report in the 7 April issue of Physical Review Letters that when they heated the bubbles at their equators and cooled them at their poles, the resulting dynamics closely resembled convection patterns on Jupiter's surface. The stormy bubbles could shed light on similar dynamics in Earth's atmosphere and deep beneath its surface. They're also just neat to watch.
Breathless. Scientists have identified the first known lungless frog in the Indonesian region of Borneo. The amphibian, commonly known as the Bornean Flat-headed frog (Barbourula kalimantanensis), was first discovered in the 1970s, but scientists didn't know it was lungless until they autopsied it in the field. The frog draws air through its skin, and the absence of lungs may allow it to sink to the bottom of the frigid, fast-flowing waters in which it lives. Although there are several other lungless amphibians, including some salamanders, lunglessness is a rare evolutionary trait that has probably occurred only three times, the team reports online 17 April in Current Biology.
Paddle on. Many species of aquatic snakes propel themselves with flat, paddlelike tails. How did such tails evolve? Researchers recently devised a novel method to find out: They attached various sizes of fake paddles to tiger snakes, which are mostly terrestrial. The larger paddles didn't work so well, but the smaller paddles allowed the snakes to swim 25% faster than usual--although the paddles slowed the snakes’ slithering on land by 17%. That kind of advantage might have been enough to encourage the snakes, bit by bit, to commit to the water, the authors suggest in April's issue of Functional Ecology.
Common gold. Nearly all of the gold artifacts found by archaeologists in the Americas have come from the treasure troves of ancient kings. But not this necklace of gold and turquoise. The necklace apparently was fashioned from gold deposits near Lake Titicaca, Peru, by hunter-gatherers who were settling down to subsistence farming. The necklace was found with the bones of its wearer, which lacked royal accoutrements, so the researchers suspect that he was a local big shot but probably not a king. Made an estimated 3700 to 4000 years ago, it's the oldest gold object ever found in the Western Hemisphere, researchers report online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Crunchy calamari. The Humboldt squid (Dosidicus gigas) should have a big problem at mealtime. It dispatches its prey with a sharp beak that resembles a parrot's bill, yet unlike a parrot, the squid has no skeleton to anchor its bite. So why doesn't the ultra-hard beak tear into the squid's soft flesh as it eats? The answer, researchers report in the 28 March issue of Science, is that the base of the beak is 100 times more pliable than the pointy tip. The gradient is governed by protein and water concentrations in the beak--a trick engineers hope they can someday mimic to ease boundaries between hard and soft materials such as those in prosthetics. (Image: © 2008 Science)
Showoffs. Amazon River dolphins toss and thrash clumps of leaves, sticks, and even rocks. They're not just playing: Researchers say it's the first example of an aquatic mammal using props for sexual display. In more than 6000 dolphin sightings, observers spied 221 instances of prop-carrying, mostly by adult males. The behavior was most common near adult females and was especially frequent in July, 14 months before most females bear their young, the team reports online 25 March in Biology Letters. (No one knows exactly how long Amazon dolphins gestate their young, but other dolphins and small whales take 11 to 15 months
Blinding light. This innocuous-looking fireball is the brightest object ever spied from Earth. What you're seeing is the afterglow of a gamma-ray burst, the most powerful type of explosion in the universe, captured by NASA's Swift satellite on 19 March. Billions of years before our planet formed, a giant star exploded--or two black holes collided--in the direction of the constellation Boötes, releasing titanic amounts of energy. How bright was it? Astronomers estimate the object was 2.5 million times more luminous than the brightest supernova recorded so far--and billions of times brighter than our sun. That made it radiant enough to been seen with the naked eye despite its vast distance of some 7.5 billion light-years. Zap! Call it supercharged static electricity. This image, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in ultraviolet light, shows auroras encircling Jupiter's north pole. On Earth, auroras, or Northern Lights, occur when the planet's magnetic field traps particles in the solar wind, causing them to fluoresce. Something different happens on Jupiter. Its close-orbiting moon Io boasts its own magnetic field, which blocks the flow of electrically charged solar particles whipping through Jupiter's magnetosphere. Every so often, enough charge builds up to send waves of glowing plasma blasting 400,000 kilometers or more back into Jupiter's upper atmosphere, researchers report 15 March in Geophysical Research Letters. Cue the light show. (Photo: LPAL/ Université de Liège)
Trinket. Cheapskates take note: Researchers have fashioned the smallest ever diamond ring. Australian physicists used a laser to carve the gem--a simple band 5 millionths of a meter wide and 300 billionths of a meter thick--from a much larger, artificial diamond. As they reported this week at the annual meeting of the American Physical Society in New Orleans, Louisiana, the researchers designed the ring to capture and process individual photons as part of a device called a quantum computer, which would operate thousands of times faster than today's best microprocessors.