In the June 22 SN: New approaches in Lyme disease diagnostics, seafood shells get a second life, illegal emissions traced to China, Pluto’s icy volcano, how to walk like a sauropod, a World War II uranium cube mystery and more.
FREAKY FUNGUS The cicada-infecting Massospora cicadina fungus makes an amphetamine called cathinone, which spurs cicadas to mate and spread fungal spores. Other species of the fungus produce psilocybin, more often found in hallucinogenic mushrooms.
M. Kasson
GETTING ATTACHED A tick that is attached to the skin for about two days can spread Lyme disease, the most common tickborne infection in the United States. The disease is hard to detect, but scientists are investigating new diagnostic approaches.
Volker Steger/Science Source
GRIPPING PAST A Brazilian excavation indicates that capuchin monkeys have used stones as pounding tools for 3,000 years, with variations along the way in tool size and weight.
Tiago Falótico/Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
LOOK TO THE STARS This giant planet orbiting the star 51 Pegasi (illustrated) was the first confirmed exoplanet around a sunlike star. A new algorithm hopes to find hundreds of similar worlds by looking at stars’ chemical elements.
JPL-Caltech/NASA
