Contents
Nature and Nurture
Invisible Sharks
Visible Shark
The editor was really intrigued by the following item that she trawled (sorry!) from the internet. However, she has to admit that she doesn’t really understand how the science bit works. Anyway, here goes: Discovery News recently revealed the finding that about 10% of the world’s sharks are luminous. The ability for a shark to glow in the dark creates a visual illusion that helps it to become invisible to predators and prey. Researchers in Norway focused on the velvet belly lantern shark (or tried to focus on it at least, as it’s obviously rather difficult to focus on an invisible shark) which has been nicknamed the ‘phantom hunter of the fjords’ (now why is it that at this point Monty Python springs to mind?). Captive sharks were placed in tanks under conditions designed to simulate the sharks’ natural environment. It was found that sharks produced ‘long-lasting luminescence’ and could regulate the amount of light they emitted to some degree, mimicking the amount of light present in the surrounding waters. This trick of the light not only enables the sharks to grab prey such as krill and pearlfish, but is also possibly a turn on to sharks of the opposite sex - ‘rather like a woman wearing lipstick’ the article said. Just as lipstick makes a woman’s lips stand out, glowing in the dark may make some shark parts appear more prominent (confused? You and me both!).
Men Tell More Lies than Women
I can hear the howls of protest even as I type, but we got this from the BBC website, so it must be true (heh, heh)! According to a study carried out by a team based at the Science Museum in London men tell on average 1,092 lies a year - which equates to three per day - whereas women only tell 728 lies per year (or two a day). As you might predict, the types of lies told by men and women vary, too. Number one in the ‘Top Ten’ list of lies told by men is the completely pointless utterance (in terms of believability) ‘I didn’t have that much to drink’. However on the women’s list the top fib is ‘Nothing’s wrong, I’m fine’ - which initially may seem to be as pointless as ‘I didn’t have that much to drink’, on the grounds that when a woman says this it is often quite clear that something is wrong, but there is a subtle difference with this one. When said by a woman to a man, it is frequently an indication that he is in the doghouse once more, the subtext being that he should know what he has done wrong without having to ask. This then leaves the male squirming uncomfortably and racking his brains to try and think of what he could have done or forgotten to do (hint, putting anniversary and birthday dates as reminders in your cell phone may save a lot of grief in the long run). Time to move on, I feel. Lie number three on the men’s list is ‘I had no signal’ (a more modern version of ‘I lost your number?’) whereas for women it is ‘It wasn’t that expensive’ (we are saying nothing about gender stereotypes, here!). Who men and women tell lies to also varies, with men being more likely to lie to their mothers than women. A cynic might argue that this is because men are more likely to get away with lying to their mothers than women. What we really want to know, though, is how the Science Museum team could tell whether or not the participants were telling the truth about the lies they told!
What’s in a Name?
One of these cars might be a Renault
Well, quite a lot if you are called Zoe and live in France it would seem. Zoe Renault - a 23 year old Parisian - is less than impressed with the car firm Renault’s choice of Zoe as a name for a new model. Despite her name, Zoe Renault has no family connection with the car makers, and she, along with several other women named Zoe has hired a team of lawyers in an attempt to get Renault to ‘scrap’ the name. Zoe Renault says that she could not bear to be associated with a car for the rest of her life and to be the butt of the inevitable jokes and sarcastic comments that would result - for example ‘Zoe’s broken down’ or ‘We need to get Zoe overhauled’ (you’d think that with her surname she’d have got used to the silly comments, but still). Renault argue that naming cars after women is nothing new (but it’s hardly flattering either, and who can forget the somewhat nauseating and faintly disturbing ‘Papa and Nicole’ commercials for the Renault Clio?). The name Zoe - which as many of readers will already know means ‘life’ in Greek, was chosen by the firm to reflect the car’s ‘environmental’ credentials (we’re trying to stifle a few giggles here). So if you buy a Renault Zoe it will grow organic tomatoes, alfalfa sprouts and weed the garden? Perhaps not.
