YESTERDAY鈥橲 SPUDS
Eating last night鈥檚 leftovers could save you from bowel cancer, researchers told the BA Annual Festival of Science in Leicester last week. Cold potatoes, baked beans and porridge are better at reducing the risks than high-fibre cereals such as bran flakes or muesli.
SLEEPING GIANTS
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Satellite tracking of basking sharks has blown a 50-year-old assumption out of the water. They do not hibernate after all, but instead travel vast distances all year round in search of zooplankton, their favourite food.
ANTARCTIC WIPEOUT
Tens of thousands of exotic marine animals in the lakes and coastal waters of Antarctica could vanish as global warming raises water temperatures. 鈥淚t is probably the most fragile group of organisms on the planet in the face of changing temperatures,鈥� says Lloyd Peck from the British Antarctic Survey.
CARBON SUNK
The greenhouse gas carbon dioxide can be safely stored underwater, raising hopes that such carbon sinks could alleviate global warming. Since 1996, over 5 million tonnes of CO2 have been stashed below Sleipner Field in the North Sea. Seismic imaging carried out by the British Geological Survey found it has not seeped back into the seabed and remains as a 1700-metre-wide bubble.
OLDEST SWINGER IN TOWN
A 100-million-year-old crustacean fossil has just claimed a novel record: it鈥檚 the bearer of the oldest penis in the world. Dug up in Brazil, the small bivalve won the record with style. I t doesn鈥檛 have just one sexual organ, but two.
BIRDBRAINS
The chicken may not be the birdbrain of the avian world after all. It was found that simply by watching other birds, fowl could learn to perform tasks such as pecking buttons to reach food. However, hens decided they had nothing to learn from cockerels, and ignored them.