agnieszka biskup — writer & editor

Monarch butterflies are famous for their thousands-mile-long fall migration from eastern North America to central Mexico. But how do they know how to get there? Scientists knew that the butterflies used the sun to navigate, but they weren’t sure how the monarchs adjusted direction as the sun’s position in the sky changes. Researchers from the University of Massachusetts Medical School may have solved the mystery. In the May 23 Science, they show that monarch butterflies have internal “circadian” clocks that help keep them on their proper course. In the experiment, monarch butterflies were housed under various light conditions as they developed from caterpillars to butterflies: some were kept in normal light conditions, some in constant light, and some with the “day” set with light from 1 a.m. to 1 p.m. Then the butterflies were placed inside a specially designed flight simulator, where their flight direction could be measured. Those subjected to normal fall sunlight flew in the normal, southwest direction, toward Mexico. Those subjected to constant light always flew toward the sun. Those subjected to the earlier light cycle flew to the southeast. Light apparently sets the butterfly’s internal clock. Study author Steven Reppert stated in a press release that the new findings “will help tease apart the entire migratory process, a process that remains one of the great mysteries of biology.”

This news brief appeared in the Random Data column of the Boston Globe’s Health/Science section on 6/03/2003.

Those wasted hours, days, weeks playing Tomb Raider and Grand Theft Auto may not be wasted after all. Sure, video games may make you more sedentary and perhaps even more violent, but at least they’ve improved your visual skills. C. Shawn Green and Daphne Bavelier of the University of Rochester report in the May 29 Nature that people who played action-packed video games several times a week for at least six months beat nonplayers in lab vision tests. Continue reading →

Forget outer space: Let’s journey to the center of the Earth, where “fascinating scientific issues are waiting to be investigated,” says Cal Tech geophysicist David Stevenson. In the May 15 Nature, he proposes a radical scheme to blast a crack in the Earth’s surface and pour in tons of molten iron, along with a grapefruit-sized communications probe. Gravity would send the iron downward, carrying the probe with it. Stevenson estimates the wave of liquid iron would deliver the probe to the Earth’s core in about a week. To create the crack, Stevenson needs “the equivalent of a few megatons of TNT explosive, an earthquake of magnitude 7 on the Richter scale, or a nuclear device.” He also requires at least 110,000 tons of molten iron — about an hour’s worth of the world’s total iron-foundry production. Constructing a probe that could withstand the rigors of such a journey would also be a challenge. Stevenson writes: “This proposal is modest compared with the space program, and may seem unrealistic only because little effort has been devoted to it. The time has come for action.” Jules Verne would be proud.

This news brief appeared in the Random Data column of the Boston Globe’s Health/Science section on 5/27/2003.

Neptune may have seasons, say astronomers from the University of Wisconsin at Madison and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, after studying images of the icy, far-off planet taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. The images — taken over a six-year period — reveal an increase in the width and brightness of the banded cloud features in the planet’s southern hemisphere. The increased cloud cover is thought to be due to the sun warming the atmosphere. “This change seems to be a response to seasonal variations in sunlight, like the seasonal changes we see on Earth,” Lawrence Sromovsky of the University of Wisconsin’s Space Science and Engineering Center stated in a press release. One season on Neptune can last more than 40 years. (It takes Neptune almost 165 years to orbit the sun.) Since the sun is 900 times dimmer on Neptune than on Earth, what’s most remarkable, Sromovsky said, is that Neptune has seasons at all.

This news brief appeared in the Random Data column of the Boston Globe’s Health/Science section on 5/27/2003.

When times are tough, the strongest women bear more sons, reported British researchers in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society last week. University of London evolutionary anthropologists Mhairi Gibson and Ruth Mace studied mothers in a rural Ethiopian community undergoing serious food shortages. Overall, fewer boys than girls were born. It’s known that sons take more of a reproductive toll than daughters: boys grow faster and are bigger at birth. Malnourished baby boys also are more likely to die than malnourished baby girls. So, from an evolutionary standpoint, it makes sense that malnourished women would give birth to more daughters. But the researchers also found a strong link between a child’s gender and its mother’s muscle mass, a marker of how well-fed she is. Women who were in the upper 25th percentile of arm muscle mass were more than twice as likely to have had a son than those in the lowest 25th percentile. A well-nourished mother can most afford the physical cost of bearing a son. Gibson and Mace’s study suggests that mothers’ bodies can somehow manipulate the sex of their children in response to food availability. While this has been seen in wild animals, this is the first time it has been observed in humans.

This news brief appeared in the Random Data column of the Boston Globe’s Health/Science section on 5/27/2003.

Eminem may be more dangerous than you know. Songs with violent lyrics increase violent thoughts and feelings, according to a study published in this month’s issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. The findings contradict the notion that listening to angry music provides a positive, cathartic effect. Researchers from Iowa State University and the Texas Department of Human Services examined the effects of violent song lyrics from groups such as Tool and Cypress Hill on over 500 college students. Those exposed scored higher on aggression in psychological tests. For example, they were more likely to interpret words that have ambiguous meanings, such as animal and stick, as aggressive, and were also more likely to fill in word fragments, such as h–t, to make an aggressive word such as “hit” rather than a non-aggressive word such as “hat.” The researchers only studied precursors to aggression, not aggressive behavior itself, and as the study authors note, the hostile thought priming of violent songs may last only a fairly short time: “Presumably, if the next song heard is nonviolent . . . the short-term priming effects of violent lyrics will dissipate.” They do suggest, however, that repeated exposure to violent lyrics may contribute to a more aggressive personality.

This news brief appeared in the Random Data column of the Boston Globe’s Health/Science section on 5/20/2003.

Perhaps it’s not the fountain of youth just yet, but a team of neuroscientists has found a way to reverse an age-related change in really old monkeys. Visual function is known to decline with age: the elderly just don’t do as well as youngsters in discriminating shapes and orientation. However, in the May 2 Science, Audie Leventhal of the University of Utah School of Medicine and his colleagues report that they’ve been able to reverse that decline in vision. By applying tiny amounts of the neurotransmitter known as GABA to the brains of 30-year-old macaque monkeys (equivalent to 90-year-old humans), they were able to restore the monkeys’ ability to distinguish the orientation of lines and the direction of moving objects. Leventhal suggests that neurons in old monkeys lose their “pickiness” and fire indiscriminately due to an age-related decline in GABA, which appears to help neurons stay selective, allowing the brain to function at its peak. When Leventhal blocked GABA in the brains of young monkeys, the neurons lost their orientation and direction selectivity, in effect aging the animals 20 years.

This news brief appeared in the Random Data column of the Boston Globe’s Health/Science section on 5/20/2003.

It‘s said that if you give an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of typewriters and an infinite amount of time, they’ll eventually produce the works of Shakespeare. Six monkeys, one computer, and one month will give you rather less stellar results, according to British researchers. A team from Plymouth University’s media program left a computer in the monkey enclosure of a zoo, and then observed what happened. Defecating and urinating on the keyboard proved popular, but eventually, the Sulawesi crested macaques got down to business and produced five pages of text, composed mostly of the letter S, and the occasional A, J, L, and M. The project was funded by England’s Arts Council and was not intended as a serious scientific study.

This news brief appeared in the Random Data column of the Boston Globe’s Health/Science section on 5/20/2003.

A mysterious new species of jellyfish has been found in the cold, deep, dark water of the Pacific Ocean. Marine biologists at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California have discovered a jellyfish species they call granrojo (Spanish for “big red”) due to its large size — some are 3 feet wide — and its deep red color. Discovered in video images obtained by deep-diving remote-controlled subs, what makes this jellyfish interesting is that it has no tentacles: instead it sports four to seven fleshy arms. Though Big Reds, as they’re called, were first observed in 1993, only now have they been confirmed as a new species. Researchers still don’t what it eats, how it eats, who eats it, or how it reproduces.

This news brief appeared in the Random Data column of the Boston Globe’s Health/Science section on 5/13/2003.

How do babies get that super soft skin? According to researchers at the Skin Sciences Institute of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, it may be due to vernix, the greasy, white substance made of fats, proteins, and water that coats infants in the womb. It develops when the fetus is about 27 weeks old, and is usually wiped off at birth. The researchers studied full-term infants, half of whom had vernix wiped off, and half of whom had not. They found the substance is a natural moisturizer, wound-healer, antioxidant and anti-infective, and that it helped keep the baby’s skin more hydrated and less scaly. The study’s main author, Marty Visscher, executive director of the institute, said in a press release, “These beneficial effects of vernix suggest that it should be left intact at birth.” The researchers, who are collaborating with pharmaceutical companies, hope to come up with a synthetic version that could be used in a variety of ways, including for premature babies born without vernix and as a dressing, cream or lotion.

This news brief appeared in the Random Data column of the Boston Globe’s Health/Science section on 5/13/2003.