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Credit: Alvin Wu
Photographer Alvin Wu used a fisheye perspective to capture this surreal snap of a field of flowers framing the Milky Way over Twizel, New Zealand. The shot was one of 25 selected images in the ninth Milky Way Photographer of the Year competition.
See more of the month’s sharpest science shots, selected by Nature’s photo team.
Bumble bees (Bombus terrestris) can suss out how to use a tool to complete a set task without explicit training. Bees were shown a ceiling-mounted artificial flower, which contained a tasty sucrose treat, and then separately, a styrofoam ball. Then, the insects were put into an environment with both. The bees worked out that they could roll the ball under the flower for a leg-up to their reward. The insects were never explicitly shown that they could use the ball for this purpose, which suggests they have the cognitive capacity to problem-solve.
Infographic of the week
Source: Ref. 1
Research with both civilian and military or security applications — known as ‘dual-use’ research — is cited more than research that has strictly civilian applications, according to an analysis of bibliometric databases and US patent records. The findings could be an overestimate, because the team used a broad definition of dual-use research, says biosecurity policy researcher Michael Imperiale. (Nature | 5 min read) (Reference: Science paper)
Features & opinion
“Anyone working in astrophysics is someone who wants to do astrophysics, not someone who wants to learn the answers,” argued David Hogg in a recent preprint. “When we measure the age of the Universe, no-one on the team actually cares what the specific value is, even though each of them might have spent many hard years of their life figuring [it] out.” Hogg was exploring an issue that has been increasingly debated behind closed doors: if AI tools can do much of the data science and mathematics that make up the bread-and-butter of astrophysical discovery, where does that leave one of science’s most fundamental and philosophical fields?
Reference: arXiv preprint (not peer reviewed)
A noble machine learns the weight of its power in the latest short story for Nature’s Futures series.
Researchers have developed a system that passively measures your resting heart rate during everyday use of your smartphone, avoiding the need for a visit to a clinic, or an expensive wearable monitor. “Every time your heart beats, it generates this pulse wave that propagates through the blood vessels… including the vessels that are underneath the skin of your face,” study co-author Ming-Zher Poh tells the Nature Podcast. “These are the subtle colour changes that the front-facing smartphone camera is analyzing.”
Nature Podcast | 18 min listen
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Last week, I spent my holiday iceberg-hunting in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. By coincidence, in this edition of our Images of the Month feature, Nature’s photo team selected a stunning shot of a mass of Greenland ice floating down ‘iceberg alley’ — which barely does justice to the majesty of the real thing.
Leif Penguinson was also keeping cool during the European heatwave by enjoying the rushing waters of Chilla Gorge, in the Sierra de Gredos mountain range in Spain. Can you find the penguin?
The answer will be in Monday’s e-mail, all thanks to Briefing photo editor and penguin wrangler Tom Houghton.
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