This week’s biggest stories
Many people are afraid of mice, but these ones really take the (cheese) biscuit: a study designed to examine the predatory instinct in mice successfully used optogenetics to switch their killer instincts off and on at will. In a slightly more romantic(? maybe not) vein, a male snow monkey was observed attempting to mate with female sika deer in Japan. This is only the second recorded example of sexual relations between two distantly related species, and could be down to “mate deprivation”, say researchers. In more heartwarming news, scientists have studied the impact of babytalk on dogs, concluding that that puppies respond well to it, but older dogs are unmoved. It might also shed light on the way humans communicate with actual babies. And if animals aren’t your thing, don’t despair: there’s some exciting knot news as well! Chemists have broken a world record, creating tightest knot ever made – a microscopic circular triple helix built from a strand of atoms, which could make a whole new world of materials possible. And if even that’s knot (aha!) enough to banish the January blues, perhaps the possibility of rare thundersnow might interest you. This video explains it all AND contains one of the most excitable reactions to weather I’ve ever witnessed. In more serious news, medical and legal specialists have warned that recent breakthroughs in fertility procedures could lead to “embryo farming” on a massive scale and drive parents to have only “ideal” future children – and that we must start to plan for the potential impact on society now.
More news from Guardian Science | Sign up to Lab notes
___
The Friday feature
M Night Shyamalan’s new movie, Split, stars James McAvoy as a character with 23 different personalities. And, like most screen portrayals of the disorder, it is seen as dangerous and violent. But what’s the truth behind the stigma?
__
Straight from the lab – top picks from our experts on the blog network
Poisoned, shot and beaten: why cyanide alone may have failed to kill Rasputin | Notes & Theories
The whole account sounds fanciful from start to finish, but remarkable things do happen. Human beings have achieved incredible physical feats in spite of horrible injuries. During a duel in the sixteenth century one man received a stab wound directly to the heart but still managed to run 230 yards to chase down his opponent before collapsing. Maybe Rasputin really was still alive after the first shot and capable of a fight. But what about the poison? Surely no one could eat so much cyanide with so little effect?
Why do people persist in beliefs that are wrong – and even harmful? | Occam’s corner
Even more powerfully, there are strong evolutionary reasons why these beliefs persist even in the face of overwhelmingly contrary evidence. Apparent irrationality, argue the Gormans, can be a survival mechanism. Our species has got this far by making quick inferences based on scarce information, inferring causality where there may be none, and avoiding actions that have an infinitesimal risk of a nonetheless deadly outcome. We cannot easily escape our evolutionary chains.
Palaeontologists reveal 350m-year-old tropical Scotland bursting with life | Lost Worlds Revisited
Tiny is a rare fossil indeed. She comes from a time in the rock record that has traditionally yielded very few fossils. This time was named Romer’s Gap, after the scientist who identified the paucity, and it has achieved palaeontological notoriety both as an intriguing enigma, and because this enigma obscures the development of the first animals to live on land. What caused the gap? Mass extinction? Low oxygen? Or is there no gap at all, are we just not looking hard enough? Recent finds from Southern Scotland (including Tiny) suggest the latter may be true, yielding exciting new fossils of the earliest land-living vertebrates.
Visit the Science blog network
___
Monday Mind Games
Celebrity items tend to be relatively common artefacts, yet attract phenomenal sums of money Britney Spears’ chewing gum being a case in point). Why? This week’s Mind Game explores the ‘magic’ of celebrity memorabilia.
Visit the Head quarters blog, home of Mind Games
___
Science Weekly podcast
In the 1960s, world-renowned MIT linguist Professor Noam Chomsky declared his theory of Universal Grammar (UG). Often defined as “a system of categories, mechanisms and constraints, shared by all human languages and considered to be innate”, Chomsky’s idea that children are somehow born with access to rules of language is, to this day, vehemently refuted. But what’s the evidence for and against UG? And what are some of the alternatives? Join the Science weekly podcast team for all this and more.
___
Eye on science – this week’s top video
Scientists from the US Geological Survey (USGS) attached a camera to a female polar’s neck to study behaviour, hunting and feeding rates. Yes, yes, yes there’s science involved, but I find it fascinating purely for the incredible sensation of seeing what the bears see.