the-BA : Science News Digest

In the science news this Valentine’s week: The secret to finding the perfect partner, how shape matters just as much as size (to barnacles) and gorillas found mating in the missionary position. Plus, new ocean map charting the path of human destruction.

Two researchers at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, have been looking at hundreds of videos of people speed dating to try to understand how we go about choosing a new partner.

Using a range of new and controversial techniques, Eli Finkel and Paul Eastwick have recently published a paper which they say could help to reveal some of the mysteries behind the unique and complicated human emotion that is love.

The two first had the idea of using speed dating for research purposes in 2004 while Eastwick was studying in Finkel’s postgraduate course on how relationships develop.

There was already a reasonable understanding of what made long-term relationships work but few studies had looked at initial attraction; they hoped that studying speed dating would give them an idea of whether ‘gut reactions’ can predict how a relationship will evolve.

Finkel and Eastwick tried speed dating themselves and were fascinated by the fast dynamics of the dates. “It was amazing how quickly we were making judgements about the people we were meeting,” they commented, “we immediately recognised the scientific potential”. Find out more in Nature.

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Due to their sedentary lifestyle and changing tides barnacles have evolved penises up to eight times as long as their bodies, the longest penis relative to body size of any animal.

New research now shows that the creatures can also adapt the shape of their reproductive organs to suit their environments reported the National Geographic this week.

While barnacles living in gentle waters have long, thin penises allowing them optimum length for reach, animals living in rough waters have smaller, thicker penises that are able to stand up to strong waves.

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Nature reported this week that up until now western gorillas (Gorilla gorilla) in the wild have only been observed facing the same way as each other while copulating. In a forest clearing in Nouabale-Ndoki National Park in the Republic of Congo, a female Gorilla, Leah has been photographed mating with the dominant male silverback, George, in the face-to-face position.

This behaviour has only been seen once before, briefly and was not photographed, in mountain gorillas (G. beringei).

Thomas Breuer from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, postulated that the swampy clearing where the gorillas were at the time may have been the reason – the swamp acting like a water-bed, prompting the gorillas to act in unusual ways, such as walking upright rather than on all fours.

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Britain is set to make a decision in little more than a year about whether to send an astronaut to the Moon, or possibly Mars, reported the Times.

A document published yesterday – UK Civil Space Strategy: 2008-2012 and beyond – emphasises the equal importance of satellites that make observations of Earth (especially those researching climate change) and spacecraft built to explore the solar system.

Ian Pearson, the Science and Innovation Minister, said of the £7 billion industry: “Space technology is a vital part of our everyday life and satellite communications and space technology provide strong business opportunities for the future.”

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The Telegraph reported on research by scientists claiming that people behave just like sheep in crowds, generally tending to follow one or two leaders who seem to know where they are going.

Professor Jens Krause of Leeds University who is leading the research says that the findings could have important implications in the management of disasters. Notably, for example, on how to prevent people from being left stranded in burning buildings.

Results showed that it takes a minority of only 5 per cent of “informed individuals” to influence crowds of as many as 200 people, the rest blindly following without question.

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A new study of HIV patients in the United States, published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases, suggests that we may never be able to find a cure to eradicate the virus from the body once someone becomes infected.

According to the new research, even after years of treatment and aggressive drug regimes the virus has been found hiding in significant reservoirs, especially tissues in the lining of the gut. A part of the immune system known as ‘gut-associated lymphoid tissue’ can remain infected even while the patient is leading an apparently healthy life.

Current drugs that prevent HIV from turning into full-blown AIDS, however, suggest that it should now be categorised as a chronic illness necessitating lifelong management in the same way as diabetes or chronic hypertension. “It’s not a death sentence” says Deenan Pillay of University College London. Read more in Nature.

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And, finally: A revolutionary map has recently been released showing the state of the world’s oceans, the message seeming to be that human activity has now affected every square kilometre of sea, jeopardising ecosystems in more than 40% of waters.

The map was officially presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and published in the journal Science and combines 17 anthropogenic stressors, such as coastal runoff and pollution, increases in water temperature due to climate change induced by humans, oil rigs that are detrimental to the sea floor and five kinds of fishing.

“The takeaway message of the paper is that one needs to take into account the cumulative effects of different threats to the ocean,” commented Larry Crowder, a marine ecologist at Duke University, Durham, USA. While it is far from comprehensive it will now be possible for the broader science community to update the various data sets that form the map. Read more in Science.

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