Common Paradox Tech Blog

What you’re looking at is not only the winner of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council photo competition, it’s also the moment when humans became fearful of the mighty weightlifting ant race.

As your eyes have clocked from the words “500mg” written on the weight, it’s lifting approximately 100 times its own body weight. Also visible in the photo (apart from the ant’s cruel fate flashing before its eyes, as it envisions a future taking on human civilization, only to be crushed with a single lazy spray of Rentokil) is the tiny little wet pads on each foot that helps lift heavy weights. I could do with some of those for the gym. [PopSci]

Ant passes along a Wall Street Journal report on research that turned up a new explanation for the lifelong challenges experienced by winter babies. “Children born in the winter months already have a few strikes against them. Study after study has shown that they test poorly, don’t get as far in school, earn less, are less healthy, and don’t live as long as children born at other times of year. Researchers have spent years documenting the effect and trying to understand it… A key assumption of much of that research is that the backgrounds of children born in the winter are the same as the backgrounds of children born at other times of the year. … [Economist] Mr. Hungerman was doing research on sibling behavior when he noticed that children in the same families tend to be born at the same time of year. Meanwhile, Ms. Buckles was examining the economic factors that lead to multiple births, and coming across what looked like a relationship between mothers’ education levels and when children were born.” Here’s a chart in which the effect — small but significant — jumps out unmistakeably.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Help Net Security: “In the never-ending battle to protect computer networks from intruders, security experts are deploying a new defense modeled after one of nature’s hardiest creatures — the ant. Unlike traditional security devices, which are static, these ‘digital ants’ wander through computer networks looking for threats … When a digital ant detects a threat, it doesn’t take long for an army of ants to converge at that location, drawing the attention of human operators who step in to investigate. ‘Our idea is to deploy 3,000 different types of digital ants, each looking for evidence of a threat,’ [says Wake Forest Professor of Computer Science Errin Fulp.] ‘As they move about the network, they leave digital trails modeled after the scent trails ants in nature use to guide other ants. Each time a digital ant identifies some evidence, it is programmed to leave behind a stronger scent. Stronger scent trails attract more ants, producing the swarm that marks a potential computer infection.’”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.