News Scan Briefs: Eating with Tension, Cancerous Marriage, Milk and Diabetes [Scientific American Magazine]
Eating with TensionThe long, thin beaks of shorebirds called phalaropes are no good at sucking up water and any tasty crustaceans within. Instead they rely on the attractive force of liquid known as surface tension to ferry prey upward. The birds first swim in small, fast circles on the surface of the water, creating a vortex that pulls creatures up within their reach. They next peck at the water and then rapidly open and close their beaks. This scissoring motion both pulls and squeezes droplets, about two millimeters in size, and moves them from the tip of their beaks into their mouths. In experiments with mechanical beaks, scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the French National Center for Scientific Research find that the droplets do not move well if the water contains oil, detergents and other pollutants that alter water’s surface tension. Draw in the findings from the May 16 Science. [More]