Weird Science tunes in to the water bugs' penile chorus

Inching closer to smell-o-vision: Are you ready for random access aromas? Because an international team of researchers, backed by Samsung, has created "An X-Y Addressable Matrix Odor-Releasing System Using an On-Off Switchable Device." The device itself is pretty clever, with a set of addressable heating wires running through a polymer that encapsulates various aromas. Heat the right combination, and the scent of pizza gently wafts away from the device. But the accompanying press release makes it clear that Samsung was interested in the device so that it could match the olfactory environment to whatever is appearing on a screen, be it large (TV) or small (cell phone—seriously?).

Traumatic brain injuries in (fictitious) ancient Gaul: American readers may not be familiar with the Asterix comic books, which are set in Roman-occupied Gaul, but the Neurosurgery department of the Heinrich Heine University in Dusseldorf now knows all 34 of them well. That's because they scanned them for indications of traumatic brain injury, and came up with a whopping 704 instances, about 20 per book. Almost all of them resulted from assaults, primarily assaults by Gauls who targeted Romans. Most of the victims (70 percent) had been taking reasonable precautions (wearing a military helmet), but ended up losing their protective gear prior to the assault. The Gauls, notably, were engaged in doping prior to the assault, availing themselves of a banned substance called a "magic potion."

Size doesn't matter for sound-producing penis: Ah, where to start with the weirdness in this one? An author with the last name of "Windmill"? A title that starts off with "So small, so loud"? Or the fact that the loud noise is produced by an animal's penis? Apparently, the chirps the insect produces are, when scaled for body size, the loudest thing anyone's discovered, and can reach over 100 decibels, which should be audible to people walking past the places this water bug calls its home. And it makes them by rubbing one of its "genital appendages" across a ridge on its abdomen, with groups of males sometimes joining up to form a chorus.

(We thank Ed Yong for bringing this penile musician to our attention.)

When your gut lies to you about math: Modern humans have developed elaborate mathematical systems, but those are layered on top of a basic number estimating system that we share with other species, a system that gives us a gut feel of whether we're looking at dozens or hundreds of objects. Some researchers at Johns Hopkins have come up with an interesting hypothesis about what happens in cases of a mathematical learning disability called dyscalculia, suggesting it's the product of when our innate sense of numbers doesn't work well. And they've found that individuals with dyscalculia perform worse than those with low math achievement scores when asked to estimate numbers. This suggests that humanity's math skills have a foundation in a simpler system that we share with other mammals.

A scent of distinction: German Shepherds working in the Czech Republic police force are able to distinguish identical twins by their scent. This works even though the twins are under 10 years old and still living in the same house and eating the same food, and even when the dogs' handlers were blinded to the experimental protocol.

Time traveling sea monkeys show lethality of sex: This paper comes courtesy of another Discoverblogger, Carl Zimmer. He's found a paper in which researchers have tested sex throughout the ages, or at least the last several decades. Apparently, brine shrimp in Utah's Great Salt Lake can enter a spore-like state, surviving for years. The researchers revived males and females from as far as 23 years apart, and set them mating to test the impact of sexual competition.

In fruit flies, males pack sperm with chemicals and proteins that cut down on female fertility and life span, all in an effort to ensure that their own matings produce the most offspring. But the females evolve defenses to that, allowing them to survive longer. The same thing seems to happen in brine shrimp, and the sex across the ages shows that it's not a static competition. Females are best adapted to survive matings with males of their own time, and the further apart a male is in time, the less adapted they are to its ejaculate. As a result, the longer the gap in years between a mating pair, the shorter the female's life span after the mating.

source