This week on radio, Tim Thwaites is talking about shock absorbing woodpeckers; polluted perfume; off-the-shelf blood vessels; telling lies; and more
The temple of malarial doom—Troops exchanging fire over an 11th century temple on the Thailand-Cambodia border are putting at risk a World Health Organisation campaign to block the spread of a particularly nasty, drug-resistant strain of malaria. —New Scientist
A New Scientist story on this topic can be found at http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20101-temple-conflict-could-spell-malarial-doom.html
Options for off-the-shelf blood vessels expand—Ready-made blood vessels that surgeons could take off the shelf and implant into patients are getting closer. An American team has reported a novel way of generating blood vessels from human cells that can function with being rejected. And they could be stored for up to 12 months.—Science Translational Medicine
A Science story on this topic can be found at http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/02/off-the-shelf-blood-vessels.html?ref=hp
Polluted perfume could put pollinators off the scent—The right smell attracts pollinators so strongly, US researchers have found, that the use of chemicals that change the scent of plants, such as pesticides, could cause the insects to starve. The result would not only be a decline in pollinators, but also in food crops.—New Scientist
A New Scientist story on this topic can be found at http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20092-polluted-perfume-could-put-pollinators-off-the-scent.html
The more you lie, the easier it gets—Our brains are naturally better at telling the truth than lying. But repeated lying can overcome this, and make subsequent lying much easier, Belgian researchers have found.—Consciousness and Cognition
A New Scientist story on this topic can be found at http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20085-the-more-you-lie-the-easier-it-gets.html
Why some penguins wear a blue suit—The Little Penguins which populate the beaches of the Bay and Phillip Island wouldn’t be seen dead in an ordinary black and white penguin suit. The blue colour they sport is due to especially fine fibres in their wing feathers, biologists using high-powered microscopes have found. These nanofibres also occur in emus.—Biology Letters
A Science story on this topic can be found at http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/02/scienceshot-why-some-penguins.html?ref=hp
Woodpecker’s head inspire shock absorbers—Black box flight recorders of the future may well depend on technology derived from the golden-fronted woodpecker to survive air crashes intact. US researchers have taken several mechanisms that the bird uses to absorb the mechanical shock of pecking, and built them into a shock absorbing system that can protect microelectronics.—Bioinspriation and Biomimetics
A New Scientist story on this topic can be found at http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20088-woodpeckers-head-inspires-shock-absorbers.html