the-BA : Science News Digest

In the news this week, having more older brothers can affect your sexual orientation and being watched can make you more honest. Plus, emotionally aware computers, invisibility, recording smells and a giant asteroid.

In the same week as London hosted EuroPride 2006, research reported in the Guardian is likely to fuel the debate over ‘nature vs. nurture’ in relation to sexuality. A Canadian study on the ‘fraternal birth effect’, a phenomenon where on average a higher number of older brothers correlates with a higher chance of a man being gay, has revealed that a man’s sexual orientation may be influenced by the environmental conditions in his mother’s womb when he was a foetus. The author of the study, psychologist Anthony Bogaert of Brock University in Ontario, is unable to explain the biological mechanism for the effect, but suggests that it is probably the result of a “maternal memory” in the womb for male births.

A watchful gaze makes us more honest… even if it’s just a picture of one, reported the Guardian. Researchers at Newcastle University conducted a secret experiment on their colleagues; placing a poster above an honesty box to collect payments for hot drinks, they alternated the picture between images of eyes and flowers, on a weekly basis. The payment per drink went up by a striking amount when the eyes were used.
“Even at a subconscious level it seems people respond to eyes,” said Dr Bateson, the behavioural biologist leading the study, “It raises interesting questions about how we might improve systems to reduce antisocial behaviour… Signs that say ‘CCTV cameras in operation’ should, perhaps, be accompanied by a pair of eyes instead of a picture of a camera. We’ve not evolved to pay much attention to cameras.”

The Telegraph reported on the cunning of Toxoplasma gondii, a parasite which infects the brains of 1 in 4 of us. Whilst most of us show no symptoms, it can be fatal for people weakened by disease, surgery or age, and poses a risk to pregnant woman as it can affect the eyesight or hearing of the foetus.
Toxoplasma must infect a cat’s gut to complete the sexual part of its life-cycle and this is where it truly displays cunning: it changes the behaviour of infected mice and rats to make them easier prey. The poor rodents no longer fear their feline foe, and instead of running away, march toward their doom. Ouch.

If you are planning to attend this week’s Royal Society summer science exhibition, you will be able to help teach “emotionally aware” computers how to read confusion, mirth and other expressions, reports the Telegraph. Designed to mind-read by analysing facial expressions, it is hoped such computers will be able to help people with autism recognise emotions and the technology may one day be used in smart adverts to detect your mood and sell you something appropriate (imagine the number of holiday ads flashing up on a Monday morning). A prototype has been developed at the University of Cambridge and will be unveiled at the exhibition in London.

Also featured at the Royal Society exhibition, “quantum conjurers” Dr. Mark Frogley and Professor Chris Phillips of Imperial College London, will be showcasing a specialised beam of light for making solid objects disappear. Although the beam (a powerful infra-red laser) is currently only capable of making a microscopic area of a special substance invisible for one ten thousandth of a millionth of a second, its potential applications are staggering, reports Telegraph Science Editor, Roger Highfield. Peeping-toms aside, the beam could be used by rescuers to look through rubble after an earthquake or by doctors to look inside a patient’s body without cutting them open.

The bane of hot weather, the dastardly cockroach may soon have had its chips, thanks to a device developed at the social ecology laboratory at Universite Libre de Bruxelles, reported the Guardian. The InsBot is a mini-robot painted with a cocktail of pheromones and molecules to smell like a cockroach. Experiments showed that cockroaches are highly sociable creatures and the InsBot is able to trick them into congregating. Denebourg, the director of the laboratory, believes it will soon be possible to develop an “intelligent roach nest”, using the robots to lure cockroaches to a spot where they are more easily exterminated.

Smellyvision is one step closer to becoming reality, reported the Guardian. Pambuk Somboon, who is leading the development of a smell-recording device at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, has produced a gadget that has successfully recorded and reproduced the smells of various fruit in tests so far. “In video, you just need to record shades of red, green and blue,” says Somboon, “but humans have 347 olfactory sensors, so we need a lot of source chemicals.” Rather than using pre-prepared smells, which has been a limiting factor in previously produced aroma generators, Somboon’s system uses 15 chemical-sensing electric noses that can detect a wide range of smells and then re-creates the aroma from a tailor-made ingredient list of 96 chemicals in the machine. I just hope any smelly telly has an odour “mute” button…

An international team of archaeologists, palaeontologists, and sedimentologists have made a rare find in Mauritius: the partial skeleton of a dodo, the large, flightless and famously extinct bird that is thought to have died out over 300 years ago. As BBC News Online reports, Dr Julian Hume, a research associate with London’s Natural History Museum and a member of the Mauritian team, described the find as “wonderful” since it is the first discovery of fully preserved bones and could give scientists clues as to how the mysterious bird lived.

The British government has promised to cut the nation’s contribution to global warming by reducing carbon emissions from big business by 12.5% on last year’s levels by the year 2010, reports the BBC. The statistics, revealed on Thursday by UK Environment Secretary David Milliband mean that the UK will achieve almost double its targets under the Kyoto Protocol and will surpass the relatively lax targets recently set by France and Germany. However the announcement means that the Labour government will break its election manifesto promise to cut CO2 emissions by a total of 20% in the two decades to 2010 (it will instead be only 16.2%). The environment group WWF criticised the policy as a missed opportunity.

In other environment news, the UN scientific and cultural organisation UNESCO has announced that, 18 months after the tsunami of December 2004 claimed over 200,000 lives, a new warning system to receive and distribute alerts on the devastating tidal waves is now “up and running” in the Indian Ocean. The new system is the latest addition to a global network of information centres and deep-ocean sensors being developed by UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission. UNESCO Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura stated that the system will be ineffective unless it is supported by international co-operation and adequate emergency responses. "The open and free exchange of data and the full interoperability of national systems is absolutely crucial for success," he said.

And finally…
BBC News Online reports that a mountain-sized asteroid capable of destroying an area the size of a small country and classed as “potentially hazardous” by scientists has made a close approach to the Earth. At its closest position, at around 5am GMT on Monday, asteroid 2004 XP14 passed about 268,873 miles (432,709km) above the west coast of North America, only 1.1 times the planet's distance from the Moon. Phew, definitely a close shave by astronomical standards.

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