ScienceShots: November 2007

• Last breath. If emperor penguins were cars, they'd frequently pull into gas stations with empty tanks. The Antarctic birds can plunge 500 meters deep, staying underwater for as long as 23 minutes. When they surface, they have almost no oxygen left in either their blood or lungs, according to a report in the 15 December issue of The Journal of Experimental Biology. Researchers discovered the low levels by equipping the birds with oxygen sensors and backpack recorders. In humans, such oxygen deprivation would damage tissue and lead to blackouts. But these swimmers are ready for another go. (Photo: K. Ponganis)
• Growing up fast. Astronomers think they've caught the first glimpse of a planet-making process occurring at lightning speeds. Using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, a team has spotted a gap in the dusty disk surrounding UX Tau A, about 450 light-years away in the constellation Taurus. The gap, which would stretch from Mercury to Saturn, is just the kind one or more planets would have created around the star, the team reports in the 1 December issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters. But what's most amazing is that the star is only about a million years old. Most researchers believe that it takes tens, or even hundreds, of millions of years for planets to form around a star--meaning that this baby will soon be surrounded by young'uns of its own. (Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle-SSC)
• Hot in the belt. One of the most beautiful constellations in the night sky is the site of some extreme violence. The famous Orion nebula, captured here by the European XMM-Newton spacecraft, contains a zone of ionized gas, or plasma, heated to more than 1 million degrees. The plasma (blue), which is so turbulent it produces x-rays, probably was created when powerful flares from a massive star smashed into the relatively calm dust that constitutes most of the nebula, researchers report online 29 November in Science. Nebulae such as Orion actually are quite common in our galaxy, so astronomers now think that many shock-heated gas clouds could populate the Milky Way. (Photo: Science)
• Take the tour. Antarctica is now just a mouse click away. Three U.S. agencies and the British Antarctic Survey have compiled a seamless, true-color mosaic of the continent as seen from the Landsat 7 satellite and put the whole thing on the Web. With 100 billion pixels, each covering the area of half a basketball court, the Landsat Image Mosaic of Antarctica has 10 times the detail of previous mosaics. Researchers will be able to follow the flow patterns of glacier ice more accurately and easily than ever before. Others simply may be interested in a scenic flyover or the ability to zoom in on any of 14,000 named locations--all from the coziness of their office chairs. (Photo: NASA)
• Mmm ... protein. This fly is about to meet its doom in a pool of deep, sticky goo. Unlike other carnivorous plants, Nepenthes rafflesiana doesn't trap its prey within waxy walls or vice-like leaves. Instead, it secretes thick mucous inside its pitcher, like rubber cement with an elastic snap. When a fly slips from the pitcher's moist rim, it lands in the pool. And the more the insect moves, the more it sticks, researchers report online 21 November in PLoS One. Slow movements offer the only hope of escape, but staying calm is hard when you're on the dinner menu. (Photo: Laurence Gaume and Yoel Forterre)
• Starting point. This atomic map could lead to new cancer drugs. It depicts part of an enzyme called telomerase, which helps prevent the loss of DNA when certain cells divide. The ends of chromosomes (telomeres) normally shorten with each division. Telomerase adds back DNA. In most normal adult cells, telomerase is turned off, limiting the number of times adult cells can divide before they die. In many cancers, however, telomerase switches back on and cells multiply indefinitely. Now, researchers report in the 13 November issue of Structure that they've determined the structure of the TRBD domain, a key region that helps the enzyme create the DNA it adds to chromosomes. Hopes are now high that the new structure will lead to drugs that block telomerase in cancer cells. (Image: Susan Rouda)
• What, no marshmallows? The discovery that would lead to one of life's sweetest pleasures seems to have been made half a millennium earlier than previously thought. Using chemical analyses of residues, anthropologists have found traces of cacao, the source of chocolate, inside pottery vessels such as this one in Honduras that date back to 1000 B.C.E. To brew beverages consumed by elites on special occasions, inhabitants of Central America fermented the sweet pulp surrounding cacao seeds--not the seeds themselves, as is done to make chocolate--the team reports online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (Photo: Instituto Hondureño de Antropología e Historia, Museo de San Pedro Sula, Honduras)
• Needling climate changes. Long a symbol of the wild west, the magnificent saguaro cactus (Carnegiea gigantea) has other tales to tell as well. The spines also keep a record of the climate, scientists have found. The proportions of certain hydrogen and oxygen isotopes in the spines are affected by the annual amount of rainfall. Because the spines live just a few months, they preserve a record of those ratios and, hence, the rainfall of that time. The needles near the bottom of the cactus are also older than the ones near the top. So by sampling spines from various heights, scientists can track desert climate change, the team reports in the second half of the November issue of Oecologia. The cacti can live 175 years or more, so they could provide key insights into climate change in desert areas, where past monitoring efforts have been spotty or nonexistent. (Photo: Nathan B. English)
• Maintain eye contact. Trying to woo someone? Look directly at them when you flash your pearly whites. According to new research, humans find smiling members of the opposite sex more attractive when that smile is coupled with eye contact than when the gaze is averted. The combination is attractive, researchers report online 6 November in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, because a person looking directly at you and smiling might be more likely to respond positively to advances than a person who is disgusted or happy to see someone else. (Photo: www.faceresearch.org)
• Lunar traffic jam. Move over, Mars, Earth's moon is back in the limelight. Japanese spacecraft Kaguya has returned the first high-definition video imaging of our rocky satellite, a harbinger of what promises to be a deluge of data in the coming months. Four days after this view of the moon's cratered northern polar region was snapped on 1 November, China's Chang'e 1 arrived in orbit, where it, too, will probe the lunar surface. India aims to launch its own lunar orbiter, Chandrayaan-I, next April. And all three could still be around to greet NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter on its arrival in fall 2008. Talk about paparazzi. (Photo: JAXA/NHK)
• Slowpokes. Whereas sand dunes on Earth can move a few meters in just a few weeks, dunes on Mars can take a thousand years to shift that far, physicists calculate in the October issue of Physical Review E. On Mars, sand weighs only one-third of what it does on Earth. But the martian atmosphere is only 1% as dense, so the wind pushes against the dunes with much less force. Over time, the sand does migrate, however, and researchers even have found dunes with ridges shaped like chevrons. That's extremely rare on Earth, where changes in wind direction can reorient dunes relatively quickly. (Photo: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)
• Got flakes? A dastardly demon that causes dandruff has just been decoded. Scientists have sequenced the genome of Malassezia globosa, one of the pesky fungi that feed on the scalp's fatty oils, irritating the skin and causing cells to flake off as an embarrassing white residue. The findings, reported online the week of 5 November in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could lead to new treatments for dandruff and more serious skin diseases. Before the genome was sequenced, for example, scientists knew of only one M. globosa enzyme that caused skin irritation. Now they know of 14. (Photo: P&G Beauty Science)
• Hey, over here! With a flick of its tail, the male Jacky dragon demands attention. Then it waves its forelimbs and pushes itself up and down, sending a clear message to other males: Don't mess with me. But wind can obscure this territorial display by blowing leaves and branches. And that means that Amphibolurus muricatus can have trouble communicating with rivals, as a study published online 30 October in Biology Letters confirms. So, like a person yelling to be heard over a crowd, the displaying lizard must adjust, spending more time flicking and pausing to ensure that it is noticed by male peers before beginning other antics. After all, why show off if no one is watching? (Photo: Richard Peters)
• Deadly dance. The two white dwarf stars in this artist's conception have just accomplished something astronomers had thought impossible: They've triggered a supernova. Teasing out data from an explosion detected last year, researchers found carbon in the remnant cloud, more than has ever been seen before. Further analysis showed that the supernova was caused by two stars, each about the size of the sun, spiraling in toward each other until they collided and exploded in a single powerful blast. It's the first time such an event has been observed, and it represents a whole new class of supernova, astronomers report in the 1 November Astrophysical Journal Letters. (Image: J.L. Prieto & M. Hicken/CfA)

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