ScienceShots: June 2006

• Cacophony of canines. Dogs come in more than 400 breeds, many wildly different in appearance. A Swedish team thinks it knows why. When it compared the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences of 14 dogs, 6 wolves, and 3 coyotes, the dogs showed much more genetic variation than their two cousins. That's because--once domesticated--dogs had to deal with far fewer natural selection pressures than their wild counterparts, allowing more mtDNA diversity. In the 29 June online edition of Genome Research, the authors suggest that this diversity provided the "raw material" with which dog breeders could work. (Photo: Getty Images)
• Pimp my Volks. The robotic car that won the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA's) 2005 Grand Challenge will soon be parked next to First Ladies and the Muppets. Starting 28 June, the modified Volkswagon Touareg, which placed first in a complex 211 kilometer race in the Mojave desert under complete autonomous control, will be on display at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. Computer scientists say the feat lays the groundwork for autonomous military robots and civilian cars. (Photo: Stanford Racing Team)
• Self service. What's a flower to do if there are no animals or insects, not even gusts of wind, to help pollinate it? The orchid Holcoglossum amesianum, which grows on tree trunks at altitudes over 1200 meters in China's Yunnan Province, has found the answer: It does the work itself. The male sex organ, called the anther, rises up and then tucks back under itself to insert pollen into the female stigma cavity. Chinese researchers observed 1911 flowers doing this, they report in the 22 June issue of Nature. (Photo: LaiQiang Huang; Tsinghua University Graduate School at Shenzhen)
• Grin and bare it. When male collared lizards (Crotaphytus collaris) square off, they make sure their rival knows what they're packing. And it’s not just teeth on display. Each opens his jaws wide enough to reveal his chomping machinery: Jaw muscles that reflect ultraviolet light hint at just how hard the lizard can bite. This dramatic display of "weapon quality," reported in the July issue of The American Naturalist, may help an adversary avoid a crushing loss. (Photo: A. K. Lappin)
• Wheezing wrinkles. Now there is more bad news for smokers. The crow's feet and facial furrows caused by puffing away seem to indicate unhealthy lungs, researchers report 14 June in the journal Thorax. Scrutinizing the faces of 149 current and ex-smokers, the team found that those with the worst wrinkles were five times more likely to have chronic lung disease, including bronchitis and emphysema, than their smooth-skinned counterparts--even when age and smoking habits were accounted for. Facial wrinkles could potentially be used to predict lung disease, the researchers suggest. (Photo: Keith Brofsky/Photodisc Green)
• Cosmic fireball. A 100-million-degree cloud of super-heated gas rips its way through distant galaxy cluster Abell 3266 in this X-ray image snapped by the XMM-Newton telescope. Astronomers think the monster, which weighs more than a billion suns, is shedding about a sun's worth of mass an hour as nearby galaxies rip off hunks of gas. Eventually this gas is compressed into a new generation of stars. (Photo: University of Maryland)
• Lost and found. Seventeen distinctive tracks in eastern Congo's Virunga National Park have heralded the reemergence of the shy okapi, a kissing cousin of the giraffe that hasn't been seen in the park in nearly 50 years. The rare species, which has an elongated neck and the striped legs of zebra, has gone unnoticed because rough terrain and civil war have made the area hard to patrol, according to World Wildlife Fund conservationists, who announced the find on 9 June 2006. To ensure the okapi's long-term protection, conservationists advocate environmental education and more clearly marking the park's boundaries. (Photo: Peter J. Stephenson/WWF-Canon/Reuters)

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