Collision risk

NASA scientists have warned that a space rock capable of sub-continent scale devastation has about a one in 1,000 risk of colliding with earth early next century. The rock, 2004 vd17, is about 500 metres long and has a mass of nearly a billion tonnes, which ? if it were to impact ? would deliver 10,000 megatonnes of energy, equivalent to all the world’s nuclear weapons, the scientists have said.

Colour vision

Primates may have evolved colour vision to detect if a potential partner is having a rush of emotion in anticipation of mating, say researchers at the California Institute of Technology. The research, reported in the journal Biology Letters, explains that the three-colour vision system seems adapted especially to find the colours prevalent in primate skins, notably changes due to how much oxygenated haemoglobin is in the blood.

Quake rethink

US scientists have discovered that regions previously thought to be immune to natural disasters, like the 2004 earthquake that triggered the giant tsunami, may actually be at high risk of experiencing them. Their findings, reported in the journal Nature, were based on the study of underwater subduction zones (huge ruptures on the earth’s crust).

Maths disability

Intraparietal sulcus (an area of the brain), widely thought to be involved in processing numerical information generally, is linked to dyscalculia, a maths learning disability, a team of scientists at University College London have written in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.