Did you miss? Fossils, poles & buttons

Highlights from OU science in the news this week:

Fossils exert a special fascination: as evidenced by the story of migrating Cambrian arthropods continuing to have (many) legs in National Geographic and The Great Beyond after last week's excellent Times article.

It's that sense of glimpsing a 525-million-year-old snapshot of animal behaviour that's particularly appealing: in this case shrimp-like animals forming chains for migration or reproduction.

Even though, as Oxford's Derek Siveter explains, the legs in such fossils are rarely preserved the interlocked carapaces that do survive make for a particularly attractive and strangely moving photographic subject. This isn't just about what such ancient animals looked like, it's about how they lived.

Elsewhere The Herald focused on the weather: balmy temperatures of -93C had been recorded. But this wasn't freakishly cold weather in Scotland, it was freakishly balmy weather in the atmosphere above the Martian South pole.

Oxford's Fred Taylor, corresponding author of the Nature Geoscience report, told The Herald: 'Winter at the Martian south pole is severe even by the standards of our Antarctic. The pole is shrouded in total darkness for many months and the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere freezes, creating blizzards and causing a thick layer of carbon dioxide ice to form across the surface.'

So how come, 30km above the surface, the Martian atmopshere was 20 degrees warmer than expected?

According to Fred a vigorous circulation of the atmosphere is compressing it and causing the heating effect. 'It's the same effect that warms the cylinder of a bicycle pump, or the pistons of a car engine, when you compress the gas inside,' he explained.

Finally, could catheter bags be a thing of the past? 

Scientists at Oxford and Oxford Brookes hope so. As reported in the Daily Mail they've invented a bladder 'button' - an implant that acts like a porthole - enabling people to empty their bladders when it is convenient rather than have it uncomfortably and unhygienically constantly collecting in bag.

At the moment the operation of the device requires the patient to remember to use it regularly but eventually OU urologist John Reynard and colleagues hope to incorporate an automated reminder for those who have lost all bladder sensation.

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