Science News Digest - 12 October 2009
In the science news this week we take a look at chatty bats, Saturn's newest ring, unnatural selection and finally... nuclear batteries!
A Familiar Ring to it.
A new discovery by NASA’s Spitzer Telescope reported in New Scientist has helped to shed some light on the dark side of one of Saturn’s moons, Iapetus.
A new ring around the planet, said to be the largest in the solar system, spans between 128 and 207 times the radius of Saturn and is 2.4 million kilometers thick.
The telescope managed to detect an infrared glow supposedly coming from dust warmed by the Sun. The ring has gone undetected until now, as it is so diffuse and therefore difficult to see using visible light.
The newly discovered ring spans from 128 to 207 times the radius of Saturn – or farther – and is 2.4 million kilometres thick. It was found using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, which revealed an infrared glow thought to come from sun-warmed dust in a tenuous ring.
The ring is thought to be made up of material from Saturn's far-flung moon Phoebe. “When Phoebe is hit by wayward space rocks, the impacts could generate debris that fills the rings.” Says New Scientist.
As the ring is so far away from Saturn, it feels a lower gravitational pull and therefore relatively weak sunlight can push particles into a direct collision with Iapetus, coating the face of the moon with the dark material ‘like bugs on a windshield’.
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Bat Chat
A researcher from the University of Ulm in Germany has discovered that baby bats imitate the songs made by their dads.
Previous research revealed that certain species of bats made ‘babbling’ sounds similar to human infants, but this new discovery shows that the sounds they are making in fact mirror those made by the adult males in their colony.
According to SCIENCENow, “the discovery should open a new window on the evolution of speech and language” as vocal imitation has never been found in nonhuman primates before.
However, these findings have not come as a total shock to the science community as researchers have already anticipated such abilities in bats due to their ability to use complex vocal activity for things like echolocation.
Mirjam Knörnschild from the University of Ulm studied the sac-winged bats from Costa Rica and recorded the sounds made by 17 bat pups at different stages in their development. While the adult males are defending their territory, they sing multi-syllabic songs. During the bouts of ‘babbling’ the pups managed to sing almost complete renditions of the territorial songs, demonstrating that they were mimicking the adults.
Further evidence comes from the fact that pups were copying the songs of males who were in the same territory, but weren’t necessarily genetically related, showing that the skill is not simply a directly inherited ability.
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Brit wins Nobel Prize
The UK has cause to celebrate this week as a British man has won half of the Nobel Prize in physics.
Charles Kuen Kao who graduated from Woolwich Polytechnic in London has been credited for laying the foundations in modern communications. His research allowed information to be sent at distances of over 100km through beams of light that pass along glass fibres.
The £818,000 prize was split with half going to Kao and a quarter each going to American George Smith and Canadian-American Willard Boyle for their work on miniature digital cameras.
At the prestigious awards ceremony at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, the Nobel assembly credited Kao for "groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibres for optical communication".
The glass fibres developed by Kao have paved the way for global broadband communications such as the internet allowing text, music, images and video to be transferred around the globe in a split second.
Read more in The Guardian.
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May the best boy win.
Researchers from the University of Sheffield believe that the widely used contraceptive pill could be responsible for a form of ‘unnatural selection’.
Most of the world is baffled by sex symbol status of Zac Efron, but new findings on the effect the pill has on the female menstrual cycle may shed some light on the rising popularity of ‘boyish’ men.
The findings reported in The Telegraph and published in the Journal Cell build on the already established fact that women’s perceptions of attractiveness fluctuate depending on where they are in their menstrual cycle.
In the period immediately prior to ovulation, women are more attractive to men and also they find more masculine men desirable, but with the pill eliminating the cycle, women prefer the same men throughout the month.
The knock on effect of this is that women are going for ‘more feminine and homely men – men that are closer to them genetically.’ and could lead to a reduction in overall genetic compatibility.
Furthermore, the research suggests that starting to take the pill when you are already in a relationship could harm the long term success of the union, because women could suddenly find that they are less attracted to their partner.
Dr Alexandra Alvergne, from the Department of Animal and Plant Sciences at the University of Sheffield, said: "Altogether the use of the pill might have important consequences for the formation of couples, and subsequent marital relationship and reproduction, and thus have an effect over large population."
--------------------------
Nuclear is in Charge
A penny sized ‘nuclear battery’ has been unveiled by the University of Missouri in the USA that has one million times more charge than a standard battery. The batteries produce energy from the decay of radioisotopes, because during the decay the isotopes give out charged particles that can be used to generate an electrical current.
Nuclear batteries are extremely desirable as the power that they provide can last for an extremely long amount of time, in some cases more than a century. The impact of this now means that the technology previously used for long haul space exploration can now be utilised at a viable commercial level on Earth.
One of the key limitations with previous nuclear batteries has been that due to the high level of energy gives off by the radioisotopes, the semiconductors have degraded too quickly. However, the Missouri team, led by Jae Wan Kwon, have developed a liquid semiconductor to capture and utilise the decay particles.
Now that liquid semiconductors are successfully in use, the team are working to further miniaturise the technology.
"People hear the word 'nuclear' and think of something very dangerous," Dr Jae of the University of Missouri said.
"However, nuclear power sources have already been safely powering a variety of devices, such as pacemakers, space satellites and underwater systems."
Find out more at the BBC
A Familiar Ring to it.
A new discovery by NASA’s Spitzer Telescope reported in New Scientist has helped to shed some light on the dark side of one of Saturn’s moons, Iapetus.
A new ring around the planet, said to be the largest in the solar system, spans between 128 and 207 times the radius of Saturn and is 2.4 million kilometers thick.
The telescope managed to detect an infrared glow supposedly coming from dust warmed by the Sun. The ring has gone undetected until now, as it is so diffuse and therefore difficult to see using visible light.
The newly discovered ring spans from 128 to 207 times the radius of Saturn – or farther – and is 2.4 million kilometres thick. It was found using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, which revealed an infrared glow thought to come from sun-warmed dust in a tenuous ring.
The ring is thought to be made up of material from Saturn's far-flung moon Phoebe. “When Phoebe is hit by wayward space rocks, the impacts could generate debris that fills the rings.” Says New Scientist.
As the ring is so far away from Saturn, it feels a lower gravitational pull and therefore relatively weak sunlight can push particles into a direct collision with Iapetus, coating the face of the moon with the dark material ‘like bugs on a windshield’.
-------------------------------
Bat Chat
A researcher from the University of Ulm in Germany has discovered that baby bats imitate the songs made by their dads.
Previous research revealed that certain species of bats made ‘babbling’ sounds similar to human infants, but this new discovery shows that the sounds they are making in fact mirror those made by the adult males in their colony.
According to SCIENCENow, “the discovery should open a new window on the evolution of speech and language” as vocal imitation has never been found in nonhuman primates before.
However, these findings have not come as a total shock to the science community as researchers have already anticipated such abilities in bats due to their ability to use complex vocal activity for things like echolocation.
Mirjam Knörnschild from the University of Ulm studied the sac-winged bats from Costa Rica and recorded the sounds made by 17 bat pups at different stages in their development. While the adult males are defending their territory, they sing multi-syllabic songs. During the bouts of ‘babbling’ the pups managed to sing almost complete renditions of the territorial songs, demonstrating that they were mimicking the adults.
Further evidence comes from the fact that pups were copying the songs of males who were in the same territory, but weren’t necessarily genetically related, showing that the skill is not simply a directly inherited ability.
--------------------------
Brit wins Nobel Prize
The UK has cause to celebrate this week as a British man has won half of the Nobel Prize in physics.
Charles Kuen Kao who graduated from Woolwich Polytechnic in London has been credited for laying the foundations in modern communications. His research allowed information to be sent at distances of over 100km through beams of light that pass along glass fibres.
The £818,000 prize was split with half going to Kao and a quarter each going to American George Smith and Canadian-American Willard Boyle for their work on miniature digital cameras.
At the prestigious awards ceremony at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, the Nobel assembly credited Kao for "groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibres for optical communication".
The glass fibres developed by Kao have paved the way for global broadband communications such as the internet allowing text, music, images and video to be transferred around the globe in a split second.
Read more in The Guardian.
--------------------------
May the best boy win.
Researchers from the University of Sheffield believe that the widely used contraceptive pill could be responsible for a form of ‘unnatural selection’.
Most of the world is baffled by sex symbol status of Zac Efron, but new findings on the effect the pill has on the female menstrual cycle may shed some light on the rising popularity of ‘boyish’ men.
The findings reported in The Telegraph and published in the Journal Cell build on the already established fact that women’s perceptions of attractiveness fluctuate depending on where they are in their menstrual cycle.
In the period immediately prior to ovulation, women are more attractive to men and also they find more masculine men desirable, but with the pill eliminating the cycle, women prefer the same men throughout the month.
The knock on effect of this is that women are going for ‘more feminine and homely men – men that are closer to them genetically.’ and could lead to a reduction in overall genetic compatibility.
Furthermore, the research suggests that starting to take the pill when you are already in a relationship could harm the long term success of the union, because women could suddenly find that they are less attracted to their partner.
Dr Alexandra Alvergne, from the Department of Animal and Plant Sciences at the University of Sheffield, said: "Altogether the use of the pill might have important consequences for the formation of couples, and subsequent marital relationship and reproduction, and thus have an effect over large population."
--------------------------
Nuclear is in Charge
A penny sized ‘nuclear battery’ has been unveiled by the University of Missouri in the USA that has one million times more charge than a standard battery. The batteries produce energy from the decay of radioisotopes, because during the decay the isotopes give out charged particles that can be used to generate an electrical current.
Nuclear batteries are extremely desirable as the power that they provide can last for an extremely long amount of time, in some cases more than a century. The impact of this now means that the technology previously used for long haul space exploration can now be utilised at a viable commercial level on Earth.
One of the key limitations with previous nuclear batteries has been that due to the high level of energy gives off by the radioisotopes, the semiconductors have degraded too quickly. However, the Missouri team, led by Jae Wan Kwon, have developed a liquid semiconductor to capture and utilise the decay particles.
Now that liquid semiconductors are successfully in use, the team are working to further miniaturise the technology.
"People hear the word 'nuclear' and think of something very dangerous," Dr Jae of the University of Missouri said.
"However, nuclear power sources have already been safely powering a variety of devices, such as pacemakers, space satellites and underwater systems."
Find out more at the BBC
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