What the scientists are savins...

Money eases the pain

If you have a potentially painful experience coming up - a visit to the dentist, say - try spending a few minutes beforehand handling large-denomination bank notes, suggests The Daily Telegraph. According to research conducted at Minnesota University, the cash could make the discomfort easier to bear. Scientists asked a group of volunteers to count out 80 $100 bills, while another group

counted out 80 slips of paper. Both groups were told that the experiment was designed to test their dexterity. When the volunteers were subsequently persuaded to plunge their hands into bowls of very hot water, those in the first group reported feeling less pain than those in the second. The results, published in the journal Psychological Science, support other studies that have shown the experience of pain can be lessened by "feel-good" exercises. For instance, scientists at Los Angeles University discovered that merely looking at a photograph of a loved one provides a powerful form of pain relief.


Unidentified astronomical object

in .1 galaxy far, far away, something is emitting radio waves. And astrophysicists can't work out what it is, says the New Scientist. The mysterious thing was first detected last year, when researchers from the Jodrell Hank Centre for Astrophysics were monitoring a stellar explosion in a galaxy known as M82, 10 million light years away. Since then, it has behaved in a manner unlike any known astronomical phenomenon. If the waves had come from a supernova, for instance, they would have grown brighter over a period of

weeks, then faded. But these grew strong in just a few days and have remained constant since. Nor, it seems, is the unidentified object likely to be a supermassive black hole, as that would be nearer the centre of its galaxy. It has "left us scratching our heads", confessed researcher Tom Muxlow.


The origin of our human species?

Two million years ago, a pair of humanlike creatures fell into an underground cave near what is now Johannesburg, and were unable to climb out. Silt at the bottom of a pool preserved their bones and they remained where they fell until 2008, when they were found by palaeontologists. And now, says The Times, these scientists believe the fossilised remains could prove "a Rosetta Stone" that unlocks our evolutionary past. What's striking about the creatures - a female aged 20-30 and a male aged about ten - is that in some ways they resemble Australopiths (an ape-like, tree-dwelling species), and in others they're like Homo sapiens. For instance, their pelvises were adapted to walking upright, but their brains were tiny, about a third of the size of those of modern humans. And they had long arms - used, perhaps, for swinging in

the trees. Research leader Lee Berger of Witwatersrand University has assigned them to a new species he has named Australopithecus sediba. "Sediba" means "well-spring" in the local Sotho language, implying the creatures represent the origin of our species. But critics have disputed this, countering that the fossil remains are "way too primitive" to be our direct ancestor. Berger now plans to


carry out further tests, including ex- tracting and decoding the creatures' DNA.


A large, shy, yellow-spotted lizard

A new species of giant lizard has been discovered in the Philippines. Up to two metres long, and covered in yellow spots, the Northern Sierra Madre Forest monitor lizard - so-named because that's the only place where it's known to live - poses no threat to humans (its diet consists mainly of the fruit of the pandanus tree). However, the reverse is not true: locals consider the creature's flesh a delicacy. The species - identified from specimens long overlooked in museums - has avoided the notice of scientists until now partly because it is naturally shy, rarely crossing open country. "It is an incredible animal," Dr Rafe Brown, who reported the discovery, told BBC Online.




Lawns under threat

Gardeners should brace themselves for an influx of cockchafer beetles - bugs that feast on the roots of grass, devastating lawns. Naturalists have warned that owing to a combination of warm weather and a reduction in the use of pesticides, "everything is in place" for a surge in the population of the beetle this summer.