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An octopus twitches and its colours shift while in active sleep.Sylvia S L Madeiros
Do octopuses dream of eight-legged sheep?
New videos show that octopuses sleep in two stages — one quiet and one active — like us. When researchers filmed captive Octopus insularis octopuses sleeping in their tanks, they recorded alternating phases of “quiet sleep”, in which the creatures were pale and still, followed by short spurts of “active sleep”, in which their skin turned darker and stiffened, they moved their eyes, and muscular twitches contracted their suckers. In mammals, birds and perhaps in reptiles, this two-stage sleep pattern is thought to help consolidate memories and clear waste from the brain. Because our last common ancestor with octopuses lived more than 500 million years ago, it seems that the molluscs evolved this sleeping pattern separately, so its function remains unclear.
Gene transfer from plant to insect
A pernicious agricultural pest owes some of its success to a gene pilfered from its plant host millions of years ago. The finding is the first known example of a natural gene transfer from a plant to an insect. It also explains one reason why the whitefly Bemisia tabaci is so adept at munching on crops: the gene that it swiped from plants enables it to neutralize a toxin that some plants produce to defend against insects. Early work suggests that inhibiting this gene can render the whiteflies vulnerable to the toxin, providing a potential route to combating the pest. “This exposes a mechanism through which we can tip the scales back in the plant’s favour,” says evolutionary-genomics researcher Andrew Gloss.
Features & opinion
The physics of the stuck Suez ship
High winds combined with ship–bank interaction effects might have sent the huge container ship Ever Given into a spin in the shallow waters of the Suez Canal, suggests hydrodynamicist Evert Lataire. The boat has been wedged fast in the essential shipping route since Tuesday. Bank effects occur in restricted navigation areas, where water displaced by a ship has nowhere to go. As a ship passes close to the side of a shallow channel, the water in the gap must speed up, causing the stern to pull into the bank and the bow to be pushed away. In the case of the Ever Given, the effect could have caused the ship to veer into the opposite bank, as shown in this VesselFinder video.
The Financial Times | 8 min read
Futures: Weird dreams and magpies
The modern world’s bottomless hunger for our personal data begins to invade a scientist’s dreams in ‘My dreams have been weird since the magpies arrived’, the latest short story in Nature’s Futures series.
Five best science books this week
Andrew Robinson’s pick of the top five science books to read this week includes what Newton did next, the power of self-deception, and how the new normal becomes normal.
Podcast: World’s most accurate clocks
Optical atomic clocks have the potential to reach new levels of accuracy and redefine how scientists measure time. However, this would require a worldwide system of connected clocks. Now, researchers have shown that a network of three optical clocks is possible — and they confirm high levels of accuracy.
Nature Podcast | 28 min listen
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Where I work
Dorothy Okello is an electrical engineer and dean of the college of engineering, design, art and technology at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda.Credit: Esther Ruth Mbabazi for Nature
Electrical engineer Dorothy Okello, dean of the college of engineering, design, art and technology at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, focuses much of her work on advocating on behalf of those who face barriers to benefiting from technology. Here, she stands with students in a computer-networking class run in partnership with a charity that supports people who have been forcibly displaced to Uganda, which hosts one of the largest refugee populations in Africa. When she’s not teaching, Okello researches ways to improve network connectivity, especially in rural communities. She also promotes initiatives that will boost female inclusion in science and technology. “Inclusion is a revolution that is yet to be accomplished,” says Okello. (Nature | 3 min read)
