Space rice, punctual bees, and the evolutionary history of dumplings

Hello, friends!

And welcome to this particularly carb-heavy edition of Science, Please. Read up, and be ready to run a marathon.*

Coming up:

🐝 why bees don’t need a dinner bell

♭ why furry animals go 2D in the heat

🍭 the scientist who was the first to turn on, tune in, and drop out

Let’s go!

*maybe

read all about it

The Italian Space Agency is working with researchers to develop rice fit for space travel: “The key to perfecting space rice is meeting a trifecta of conditions: the rice needs to be small, productive, and nutritious,” explains writer Jack Knudson. However, dwarf varieties of rice tend not to be as productive. How are researchers striking a balance? (Discover)

How mitochondria, “powerhouses of the cell”, may be used to rejuvenate damaged organs: “The pig’s heart was graying rapidly, so [heart damage researcher James] McCully… loaded a syringe with the extracted mitochondria and injected them directly into the heart. Before his eyes, it began beating normally, returning to its rosy hue.” (Knowable)

This teenager 3D-printed a beehive for his bedroom: “The hexagonal hives are modular in design, meaning Oliver can theoretically continue expanding their size… Around 30,000 to 40,000 bees currently nestle together in his hives. And yes, they are producing honey.” (Popular Science)

📷 Happy birthday, Moo Deng! Take a look at the baby pygmy hippo tucking into her first birthday banquet (NPR)

🎥 Look at this ridiculously skinny car (it’s 19.7 inches wide!) – scroll down for video (Popular Science)

that time when…

…we flew bees from Paris to New York to test their internal clocks (16 July, 1955)

“Parisian bees trained to feed at a regular hour in their Paris home showed up right on schedule for their sugar water meal in New York,” reads the report in Science News Letter.

Dr Max Renner, of the University of Munich, had been feeding the bees in Paris between 8.15pm and 10.15pm. Upon their arrival in an identical lab in New York, they would fly to the table for sugar water between 3.15pm and 5.15pm New York time – they were still on Paris time, according to a 1976 article in the British Bee Journal.

The bees kept to their 24-hour feeding cycle, despite New York being five hours behind Paris, the Science News Letter report continues, suggesting that the bees have an internal “clock”, rather than being influenced by external factors like the position of the sun.

what’s happening this week?

Your agenda for Monday 14 July – Sunday 20 July.

All times are BST, and all sky views are from London.

look around you

🔭 in a sky near you: Seek out the summer triangle. Look for the three-pointed asterism that is the summer triangle, made up of the blue-white stars Deneb (in Cygnus, the swan), Vega (in Lyra, the lyre), and Altair (in Aquila, the eagle).

At about half 10, look east for a bright, twinkling star – that’s Vega. You’ll find Deneb a handspan to the southwest of Vega. Altair is the bright star about halfway between Vega and the horizon.

👀 closer to Earth: Celebrate splooting season. Yet another day where the temperature threatens to hit the thirties, and you’ve taken yourself outside for a walk in the park, when yonder, you see it, a furry pancake just off to the side of the path.

It’s a squirrel taking a little rest, belly to the ground, all four legs spread, in a position that’s come to be known as “splooting”.

There are very few mentions of the word “splooting” in the scientific literature, but it’s thought that furry animals such as squirrels, and some breeds of dogs, sploot to cool down. While it’s this hot out, see if you can spot some splooting squirrels.

online talks and events

In conversation with ESA astronaut John McFall, hybrid event by Jodrell Bank, Tuesday 15 July, 19.30, £8

Stellar: A voyage across the Universe with Nobel laureates and astronauts, online event by CERN, Saturday 19 July, 15.00, free

we finally know…

…the evolutionary history of stuffed pasta.

“Based on the proposed evolutionary hypothesis, the Italian pasta are divided into two main clades: a ravioli clade mainly characterised by a more or less flat shape, and a tortellini clade mainly characterised by a three-dimensional shape,” the paper says.

Source: Nazari, V., Pasqualone, A., Pieroni, A. et al. Evolution of the Italian pasta ripiena: the first steps toward a scientific classification. Discov Food 4, 57 (2024).

we need answers

Last week I asked:

The answer is… the psychedelic effects of lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD. Hoffmann had first created the chemical in 1938, but it was only on that day in 1943, after accidentally absorbing it through his skin, that he discovered that whooooooa…

Three days later, he tried taking a larger dose before riding his bicycle home, in an event recognised as the first ever acid trip, and commemorated every year on Bicycle Day.

until next week…

This week, I’ve pulled from a series I wrote years ago where there are two ways to the answer: one is a question I’ve written, and the other is a cryptic clue from the first ever Times crossword puzzle, published in 1930. Have a crack:

• Original clue: Sounds like a curious song (6)

• Question: A 1969 song soundtracked the first ever music video shot in space. What is the second word in its title?

Answer comes next week. See you then! x