Cockroaches get some good publicity for a change

No insect is in greater need of a public relations boost than the cockroach, and Dr. Mathieu Lihoreau of Rennes, France, provided it in a recent issue of the journal Insectes Sociaux. Roaches are highly social, suffer when isolated, recognize members of their own families and appear to make “collective decisions for the greater good” of their community, according to a review of the research in May by BBC Nature. They act in “emergent forms of cooperation,” “swarm intelligence.” Functioning mostly through chemical cues, they advise their homeboys where to find food and water, where the good crawl-into cracks are for sleeping and how to stay attached to their social networks. 

Challenging business models

Dr. Jason Burke rolled out his Hangover Heaven medical bus fleet in Las Vegas in April, offering revelers a faster, clinically proper recovery from their night of excess drinking for a $90 to $150 fee. After giving their medical history, patients receive intravenous saline, with B and C vitamins and whatever prescription or over-the-counter drugs are appropriate, said Burke (a licensed anesthesiologist). No drunks are served; the patient must be in the hangover stage. One M.D., who hosts a radio show, told CBS News, “I think many doctors are kicking themselves because they didn’t think of this first.”

Science on the cutting edge

Researchers need to believe: Surely the world’s longest-running science experiment is the 85-year-old continuing project to visually ascertain whether pitch (a tar) is liquid. Begun at England’s Cambridge University, the project is now housed at the University of Queensland in Australia, where the custodian believes the next drop (the ninth ever) will fall in 2013. The previous teardrop-shaped bead descended in 2000.

Leading economic indicators

Only about 16 percent of stock market transactions consist of what most people think of as buying or selling of company or mutual fund shares (real investors, interacting with actual brokers). The rest, according to analysis by Morgan Stanley’s Quantitative and Derivative Strategies group and covering October to December 2011, were performed by computers acting automatically, at staggeringly high frequency, using software algorithms, buying or selling mindlessly, based on what trading firms needed to fill out their portfolios’ profitably on a second-by-second basis.

Pet mania

The expense of caring for a pet, at least among the affluent, appears to be recession-resistant, amounting to about $50 billion in the U.S. for 2011, according to a trade association. Much of that spending is on advanced medical services such as bone marrow transplants at North Carolina State University (65 already performed) and stent procedures to open clogged bladders or kidneys (630 last year) at the Animal Medical Center in New York City. Said one man, who had paid about $25,000 to treat his 10-year-old dog’s lymphoma: “I wondered if I was doing this for selfish reasons. I asked myself, ‘If I were a 10-year-old dog, would I want to go through this?’ ” (Unfortunately, considering dogs’ short life spans, cancer remissions are almost always short-lived.)

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