Science Briefs: Stink bugs love ripe fruit, smartphone pregnancy test, celebrate New Horizons reaching Pluto
Stink bugs have strong taste for ripe fruit
Every summer, the brown marmorated stink bug attacks crops and invades homes, causing both sizable economic losses and a messy, smelly nuisance – especially in the eastern United States. A new study by entomologists at the University of Maryland shows that stink bugs have a strong preference for ripe fruit. Also: Stink bugs track their favorite fruits throughout the growing season in an effort to maximize their access to food.
In the study, published in the Journal of Pest Science, researchers found that trees with ripe fruit attracted more than twice as many adult stink bugs compared with trees bearing immature fruit. Moreover, when the researchers removed all fruit from more than 30 trees, stink bugs lost interest and almost totally disappeared from those trees. umd.edu
Sensor for smartphones could provide pregnancy tests
Researchers at Germany’s University of Hanover have developed a self-contained fiber optic sensor for smartphones with potential use in a wide variety of biomolecular tests – including those for detecting pregnancy or monitoring diabetes. The readings of the sensor can run through an application on a smartphone that provides real-time results.
When properly installed, the smartphone user has the ability to monitor many types of body fluids, including blood, urine, saliva, sweat or breath. In case of medical applications, the sensor readings can be combined with the GPS signal of a smartphone and users can then be guided to the next drug store, hospital or the ambulance.
“We have the potential to develop small and robust lab-on-a-chip devices for smartphones,” said inventor Kort Bremer, who co-authored the description of the sensor in the journal Optics Express. osa.org
Area planetarium marks Pluto fly-by on July 14
The Museum of York County, in Rock Hill, will host “Pluto-Palooza!” July 14 to celebrate NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft’s fly-by of distant dwarf planet Pluto. From 8 to 9:15 p.m, the museum’s Settlemyre Planetarium will present the live NASA TV broadcast of the ‘phone-home’ signal planet to Earth after its historic 3-billion mile journey. The Settlemyre, the only full-dome digital planetarium in the Charlotte area, will feature bonus shows at 6:30 and 7:30 p.m. Details, including admission fees: www.chmuseums.org/myco. Staff reports
Pluto time at Museum of Natural Sciences on July 14
From 5 to 9:30 p.m. July 14, the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences, in downtown Raleigh, will celebrate NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft’s fly-by of distant dwarf planet Pluto. At 8 p.m., the Nature Research Center’s SECU Daily Planet Theater will present the live NASA TV broadcast of the ‘phone-home’ signal planet to Earth after its historic 3-billion mile journey. Starting at 5:30 p.m., speakers will offer talks on Pluto and New Horizons. Admission: free. Details: www.naturalsciences.org.
This story was originally published July 4, 2015 at 11:09 PM with the headline "Science Briefs: Stink bugs love ripe fruit, smartphone pregnancy test, celebrate New Horizons reaching Pluto."