Week In Science

For readers interested in brief accounts of recent scientific discoveries here are three items and their links.

The first one is entitled 'Elephants' jumbo mirror ability' and tells of a discovery that adds elephants to the company of humans, apes and dolphins with respect to a common ability to recognize their own mirror reflection and by doing so show a capacity for self-awareness.

The second item notes the recent discovery that Enceladus, one of Saturn's moons, is geologically active. This puts Enceladus within a small group that includes two other geologically active moons of our solar system namely, Jupiter's Io and Neptune's Triton. Of course earth is a geologically active planet.

A third article entitled 'Genome Buzz: Honeybee DNA raises social questions' reports that the genome of the western honeybee has been sequenced.

Of interest was the discovery that the royal jelly, for which the honeybee is famous and which is involved in bee developmental differentiation, is made possible by nine genes involved in coding for a set of related proteins.