An exoplanetary biosignature; diplomacy of body smell; Bee personalities

This week, curiosity Rover has found large carbon deposits on Mars, suggesting an old carbon cycle. Researchers exploring the domestication of cats think they may have originally driven from Tunisia. And researchers from Michigan report that when the Earth’s magnetic pole is laid 41,000 years ago, Homo Sapiens could have protected against harmful solar radiation with technologies, including clothing, shelter and prehistoric sunscreen.

In addition, a Cornell study revealed that personal smell was a strong predictor of the potential of friendship; Astronomers have reported the strongest evidence to date of an exoplanetary biosigrance; And a German study revealed that the behavior of the hives is more strongly motivated by individual personalities than we previously understood:

Scientists say friends feel good

In a study on heterosexual women, Cornell researchers found that two people judge in a few minutes if they have the potential to be friends, and that personal smell is a strong predictor to know if two people could engage with each other. During an orientation in person, the researchers took the photos of the participants; In addition, the participants received t-shirts to wear for 12 hours. Later, each participant engaged in an online session during which he made instant judgments on the friendly potential of the photos of the other participants.

During a second session in person, the participants sniffed the t-shirts and evaluated the smell for the potential of friendship. The subjects then attended an event “Speed ​​Friending” in person in which they each spoke with 10 people for four minutes each. This event was followed by another assessment session of t-shirt perfumes. The researchers found that the odor assessments were very similar to the evaluations in person, a demonstration of the power of what scientists call a “diplomatic smell”.

Jessica Gaby, one of the researchers, says: “It’s not just the perfume. Are your food choices. Are you a cat or a dog? You live in this smell space-does it correspond to the smell spaces with whom you interact?”

The extraterrestrials smell of dimethyle disulfide

The researchers led by the University of Cambridge report the strongest signs so far from a biosignature outside the solar system. Using data from the James Webb space telescope, they found the chemical signature of dimethyl sulfide and / or dimethyle disulfide in the atmosphere of the K2-18B exoplanet, which orbit in the so-called “habitable zone” of its host star.

There is only a probability of 0.3% that observations occurred by chance, that scientists call a level of statistical significance to three SIGMA. To be classified as a scientific discovery, astronomers must reach the level of five sigma, or less of a probability of 0.00006% that observations occurred by chance. The team says that more time with the JWST would allow them to respect this threshold.

This signal was first detected using the infrared imaging close to JWST and the spectrograph without listed and the instruments of spectrographs near infrared. The Cambridge team followed with the average JWST infrared instrument and easily found the same signature. Professor Nikku Madhusudhan, of the Cambridge Astronomy Institute, who led the project, said: “This is an independent line of evidence, using a different instrument from what we have done before and a different range of light wave light, where there is no ride with the previous observations. The signal came strong and clear.”

Bees have personality

Researchers in Germany report that the probability that a bee chooses to attack an intruder or hesitating depends on the individual personality. Due to the distribution of tasks in a hive, the researchers supposed that pollen collectors would be less likely to sting than the guards. The question they wanted to explore was how bees decide to sting or not.

They used a human approach to test the bees, which lose their dart and die after attacking; The bees were caused to attack a test model made from materials in which the stingers would not stick. Thus, they were able to test the same bees on several tests. The test conditions included the grouping of bees with conspecific to determine whether the conformism has contributed to the probability of tingling; Others tested if the concentration of alarm pheromones was a factor.

The neurobiologist Morgane Nouvian says: “In the end, it turned out that these factors have an influence, they did not have an impact on the predictability of an individual tingling behavior.” Researchers conclude that individual bees personalities have prevailed on factors such as conformism and group composition.

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