Brief Points, March 2005

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▪Wet sand or soft clay is how the Huygens spacecraft portrayed Titan's surface when it successfully landed on the Saturnian moon on January 14.

Cassini-Huygens homepage: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm

▪Retinal recordings explain why swordfish have a heating organ in the muscle to keep their eyes 10 to 15 degrees warmer than ambient temperatures: the warmth enables the fish to process visual information 10 times faster, improving the ability to spot prey.

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Current Biology, January 11

▪Regenerating hair cells of the inner ear, and thus restoring hearing, could be possible: hair cells proliferated in mice engineered to lack the Rb1 gene, which helps to regulate cell division.

Science Express Online, January 14

▪Rats can distinguish spoken Dutch from Japanese. This ability, however, probably is a by-product of general perceptual facilities rather than an indication of linguistic capacity.

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, January

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