Cool Science
Landing on Mars, building sandcastles and a clickable Internet Map top our choices of cool science this week. See what else we found.
11. Proof of Loch Ness Monster?
George Edwards, a Scottish skipper who spent decades searching for the beast said to inhabit Loch Ness, claims to have finally spotted his elusive quarry and gotten what he calls photographic proof of the monster.
On Nov. 2, 2011, Edwards photographed what appears to be a single hump in the water from the deck of his boat, "Nessie Hunter." Edwards said that "It was slowly moving up the loch towards Urquhart Castle and it was a dark grey colour.
10. Eyes Reveal Sexual Orientation
Whether straight or somewhere else on the spectrum, the truth of who attracts you could be in your eyes.
Pupil dilation is an accurate indicator of sexual orientation, a new study finds. When people look at erotic images and become aroused, their pupils open up in an unconscious reaction that could be used to study orientation and arousal without invasive genital measurements.
9. Historical Cycles of Violence Discovered
Circa 1870, the North fought the South in the Civil War. Half a century later, around 1920, worker unrest, racial tensions and anti-Communist sentiment caused another nationwide upsurge of violence. Then, 50 years later, the Vietnam War and Civil Rights Movement triggered a third peak in violent political, social and racial conflict. Fifty years after that will be 2020. If history continues to repeat itself, we can expect a violent upheaval in the United States in a few years.
8. Mars Rover Landing Soon
NASA's next Mars rover is due to land in just a few days, and the huge robot's handlers can hardly wait.
The 1-ton Curiosity rover, the heart of NASA's $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission, is slated to touch down inside the Red Planet's Gale Crater on Sunday night (Aug. 5). Excitement about the big event is building among the MSL team, many of whom have been working on the mission for five years or more.
7. Deep-Sea Squid Ditches Arms to Escape Predators
Much like lizards that ditch their tails in a tussle, some deep-sea squid can sacrifice their glowing arms to distract enemies and swim to safety. Scientists observed this defense mechanism first-hand in the foot-long octopus squid (Octopoteuthis deletron) off the coast of California.
Setting out to answer why many octopus squid have arms of different lengths, Bush and her team deployed a camera-equipped remotely controlled vehicle in the undersea Monterey Canyon and prodded a squid with a bottle brush.
6. Secret to Perfect Sandcastles Revealed
Scientists have cracked the code for building the tallest possible sandcastle: Use very little water.
Research has shown that water holds sand together by forming "liquid bridges" between the contact points of the grains. But too much or too little water will make the castle crumble.
5. How a Female Spider Says 'No' to Sex
When a male orb-web spider has sex, he is known to cut off his genitals to "plug" his partner, preventing other males from fertilizing her. But scientists recently discovered that females sometimes make their own mating plugs to keep undesirable suitors at bay.
A group of researchers noticed that females of the orb-web spider Nephila pilipes often have a solid, reddish plug covering their genitals. This sex-stopper is distinct from the plug produced from the male's detachable palp, the arachnid equivalent of a penis.
4. Secret to Rabies Immunity? Bat Bites
Rabies has been thought of as virtually 100-percent fatal unless treated immediately, but new research shows that a small number of isolated Peruvians have natural immunity from the animal-transmitted disease.
Researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that one in 15 people living in the remote Amazonian region in Peru were protected without medical intervention against the virus that kills more than 55,000 people globally every year.
Their trick: Vampire bats exposed the remote Peruvians to enough of the rabies virus to confer resistance, but not enough to kill them.
3. Meth Kills By Anorexia
Much like humans, fruit flies hooked on meth increase their physical activity and drastically cut down on eating, according to a new study that shows how meth use gravely upsets metabolism and can lead to death by anorexia.
Meth, or methamphetamine, is a strong stimulant that triggers a surge of dopamine in the brain, leading to the typical euphoria described by users. But meth also kills brain cells, loads the body with toxins and weakens the heart, muscles and bones. The drug has similar toxicological effects in fruit flies, which make them good models for studying meth's impact on humans.
2. Twisted Physics of 5 Olympic Sports
With the 2012 Summer Olympics well under way in London, the eyes of the world are watching the extreme athleticism exhibited by the competitors. But in addition to sports skills, the Olympians competing this year can be considered practical physicists, as well.
After all, to win a swim race by fractions of a second, or spin around four times after bouncing off a vault, the ability to harness physics principles such as angular momentum and hydrodynamics is as important as muscle memory and strength.
1. Clickable Internet Map
In the map of a place, addresses that are physically close to each other in life get placed physically near each other in the map. But in a map of the internet, how would you define closeness? Russian programmer Ruslan Enikeev decided to use the same measure that Google uses for relevancy, and which bloggers have called the currency of the internet - or even the soul of the internet. In Enikeev's Internet Map, the more often visitors go from one site to another, the closer they appear. He mapped more than 350,000 websites from 196 countries that way.
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