Can a slick video help secure the arrest of a Ugandan warlord? Joseph Kony, leads the Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army, a group known to kidnap children, training boys as child soldiers and sexually abusing girls. Earlier this week, a US-based nonprofit organization, Invisible Children, launched a 30 minuite doco, “KONY 2012” which aims to make [...]
Author Archive
Feb
20
Beetles have smelly sex tricks
Talk about a dirty trick. Rove beetle males squirt an anti-aphrodisiac into their partners to make them unattractive. Along with their sperm, males of the polyandrous rove beetle (Aleochara curtula) deposit a strange pheromone into their partners. To find out what it did, Jerry Schlechter-Helas and colleagues at the University of Freiburg, Germany spiced 14 [...]
Feb
11
Sharks like hanging out with buddies
A murder of crows, a pride of lions and now meet the posse of sharks. Traditionally considered to be solitary predators, it turns out that sharks like hanging with friends. Johann Mourier and colleagues at the University of Perpignan in France have evidence suggesting that sharks swim in groups for social reasons. The team tracked blacktip [...]
Feb
10
How did the zebra get its stripes?
Why did the zebra evolve to have stripes? The question has puzzled evolutionary biologists for centuries – and even Charles Darwin couldn’t explain the enigma. New Scientist reports The zebra is completely black as an early embryo, and white stripes only appear in a later embryonic stage, when the production of dark pigmentation is blocked. [...]
Feb
5
Supergiant caught in the deep sea
A giant ‘cockroach’ of the deep sea has been unearthed off the coast of New Zealand. The beast, a ‘supergiant’ amphipod, was caught in waters seven kilometres deep in the Kermadec Trench, north of New Zealand. Amphipods are crustaceans commonly found in the deep sea. They are typically between 2 to 3 centimetres long, but [...]
Feb
1
Why is the Ref always wrong?
Don’t blame the ref. You think your team is performing the best, because your brain is wired to be biased. New Scientist reports Pascal Molenberghs at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, divided 24 volunteers into two teams and had them judge the speed of hand actions performed by two people, one from each [...]
Jan
16
Carbon Dioxide makes Clownfish act like clowns
Carbon dioxide in the ocean acts like alcohol on fish, leaving them less able to judge risks and prone to losing their senses. New Scientists reports Around 2.3 billion tonnes of human-caused CO2 emissions dissolve into the world’s oceans every year, turning the water more acidic. Philip Munday and colleagues at James Cook University in [...]
Dec
20
Obese dads leave their mark on sperm
The sins of the father are indeed passed onto the children. High fat diets cause tiny changes in sperm that may lead to metabolic disorders in pups. The discovery brings us closer to understanding how lifestyle choices affect the health of future generations. New Scientist reports Maria Ohlsson Teague and Michelle Lane at the University [...]