This week’s biggest stories
Hello. Are you sitting comfortably? And are you paying attention? If so, what are you pay attention to? If you happen to be a dad, and have young children, a US study suggests fathers are more likely to be more attentive to their female toddler than a son, 60% more in fact, spending time talking about feelings, singing and whistling, while interaction with boys is more likely to be rough-and-tumble play and used more “achievement-related” language, including words such as “proud”, “win” or “best”. What effect that can have later in life? That is unknown, but is that why people use the phrase “daddy’s girl”? Perhaps we need to be brainier to understand these gender influences. Fortunately, science might help, with the identification of 40 genes that shed new light on the biology of intelligence. The genes provide instructions for the building of healthy neurons, the paths they take through the 3lb lump of tissue, and the construction of hundreds of trillions of synapses that connect them. That doesn’t make you a genius though, but if you want a healthy mind, a healthy body can certainly help. However, if you do regular exercise and want to measure how many calories you burn, don’t rely on fitness trackers, which are revealed to show a wide margin of error on calories consumed, but are far more accurate when monitoring heartbeat. Finally, fitness fanatics aren’t the only things on the move. Scientists say an extra layer of tectonic plates have been discovered within Earth’s mantle, which could explain a mysterious series of earthquakes in the Pacific. An finally another big and moving story from below the oceans, explaining why some species of whales, such as the blue whale, became so large. Research suggests that it was driven by changes in the distribution of their food in the ocean rather than falling water temperatures.
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Big, hungry mammal of the week
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Straight from the lab – top picks from our experts on the blog network
Honey, I love you: our 40,000-year relationship with the humble bee | The Past and the Curious
Humans have intricately intertwined their existence with bees for millennia. Interestingly, bee keeping and honey hunting have been largely ignored in the archaeological or ethnographic records, and we have to be satisfied with minor glimpses into such activities. One of the earliest recorded instances of humans interacting with bee products comes from a modest spear point found in a Spanish cave, which was attached to its shaft with the aid of bee’s wax 40,000 years ago. Ancient rock art from such diverse places as southern Africa, Turkey, Bhutan, and Australia depict various aspects of bee hive life cycles, often with human figures attempting to access the hives. Most of this was created by nomadic or semi-nomadic peoples who hunted wild honey sources. Some of these depictions, such as red and white paintings from Zimbabwe, depict not only honey and comb, but also depict brood, the reproductive portions of the hive where the queen lays the eggs and the larval bees grow to maturity each in their own cells. Understanding brood and when hives are the most (re)productive would have aided hunter-gatherers in collecting wild honey. Such cultures also ate the brood, which is rich in fat and protein.
Negativity bias: why conservatives are more swayed by threats than liberals | Head Quarters
In recent years there has been increasing interest in whether there are measurable differences in values and personality between liberal and conservative voters. For instance, I have written before about the research showing that while conservatives and liberals hold the same moral ideals, they prioritise them differently. Liberals tend to value fairness while conservatives prioritise tradition and authority. These are heterogenous groups, but the averages seem to differ reliably. Liberals and conservatives also score differently on personality tests. While liberals are, on average, more open-minded and novelty-seeking, conservatives are more conventional and well-organised
What do the Tour de France and fossils have in common? | Lost Worlds Revisited
As you would expect from such a well-studied group, we have learnt a great deal about their behaviour from fossils. Last year, Błażej Błażejowski and colleagues described queueing trilobites from the Late Devonian of Poland, preserved on three layers of a 25m thick shale. 78 lines, or queues, with up to 19 individuals in each, were found, with all the trilobites pointing in the same direction, and touching head to tail. These were interpreted as mass migration events, as seen today in the single-file migrations of spiny lobsters. The trilobite species, Trimerocephalus chopini, was eyeless, so water-borne chemicals are thought to have been the means of co-ordinating this behaviour. A new study by Hugh Trenchard and colleagues interpreted this migration behaviour further. They looked at the same trilobite queues and compared them to a peloton, the close pack of riders in a bicycle race. Riders in a peloton can reduce drag, and so save energy, by riding in the wake of a leading rider, slipstreaming them. Energy efficiency is so improved that it allows weaker riders to keep up with riders that they could not otherwise match for speed. In the modern marine environment, versions of this behaviour and their corresponding energy savings have been studied in species of fish and shrimp.
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Alex Bellos’s Monday puzzle
This week Alex got readers running in circles and placing numbers over another viral problem for Singapore five-year-olds that has been ‘stumping’ the web. Did you find the solution to this special anniversary edition?
Visit Alex Bellos’s Adventures in Numberland blog for more marvellous maths
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Science Weekly podcast
In this week’s edition, Nicola Davis investigates what makes graphene the ‘wonder material’ and whether it can bring commercial success to the UK.
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Eye on science – this week’s top images
This week Nasa’s Juno probe captured dramatic first close-up images of Jupiter, including giant, chaotic weather systems plus new measurements that will help build unprecedented map of planet’s interior. See more here. Beautiful, and otherworldly.
