Plastic waters
There may be 2.5 times more plastic floating around in the ocean than anybody realised. Previous measurements only skimmed the surface waters, but water-mixing created by winds pushes much of the rubbish deeper underwater (Geophysical Research Letters, DOI: 10.1029/2012GL051116).
Dopamine’s no dope
Dopamine triggers different effects depending on where in the brain it acts. Volunteers chose to complete an easy or difficult task while their brains were scanned. Dopamine acted in a brain area involved in attention control during the “easy” task, but for the “difficult” task the chemical operated in the brain’s reward centres instead (Journal of Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1523/jneurosci.6459-11.2012).
Safe gene therapy
Forty-three people with HIV who received a pioneering gene therapy 11 years ago have developed no side effects from the treatment. The finding provides reassurance that the therapy does not trigger cancers (Science Translational Medicine, DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.3003761).
Prehistoric premiere
Did cavemen invent movies? Marc Azéma at the University of Toulouse in France and his colleague Florent Rivère recreated a 10,000-year-old coin-like bone artefact. It is carved on either side with similar pictures of a chamois – one is standing, the other lying – and pierced in the middle. By spinning it on a cord, they found that the picture became animated, like a flip-book (Antiquity, vol 86, p 316).
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Python-hunting dogs
In the battle to save wildlife of the Florida Everglades from invasive pythons, combatants have been drafted in: dogs. “Eco-dogs” that were formerly sniffing out explosives are being retrained to sniff out the snakes, which can then be trapped.
