The social behaviors of the Rattus norvegicus, commonly known as the Norway rat, are far more complex than previously thought, according to a team of researchers from ELTE Eötvös Loránd University.

Their pioneering study is published in the journal Scientific Reports. This discovery not only deepens our understanding of rat social structures but also implies important lessons for developing psychiatric medications.

The biological properties of rats show much greater similarities to human cells and organs than most people would expect. In simplified terms, nearly 90% of the genes in humans and rats share significant similarities.

The rats were color-coded so that the automated system could track them 24 hours a day for eight months. The researchers at ELTE observed varied patterns of dominance and coexistence, challenging preconceived notions about rats and potentially human social interactions.

In some instances, hierarchies stabilized only after numerous conflicts, while peaceful cohabitation was the norm in other scenarios. These dynamics were influenced significantly by the composition and reorganization of the rat groups, showcasing the profound impact of the social environment on behavior.

When rats from a hierarchical group were mixed with those from a non-hierarchical group, the outcome was sometimes a hierarchical group, and sometimes a peaceful one. Another unexpected result was that there was relatively little correlation between the “personality” traits defined in standard personality and social tests (commonly used in drug or behavioral research) and the actual behavior observed within the real groups.

This suggests that rats’ social lives, socialization, and relationship to their traits are far more complex than can be interpreted using any simple mechanism. One interesting aspect of this result is that when examining the effects of certain psychotropic drugs in animal experiments, researchers must be extremely cautious with their conclusions, as rat group behavior contains paradoxes.

The Department of Biological Physics at ELTE, in collaboration with Enikő Kubinyi at the Department of Ethology, conducted this gap-filling research.

The resulting publication is a unique work in its field, due to the enormous amount of data behind it, the design of the experiments, and the wide range of evaluation methods used. Máté Nagy played a key role in the design and execution, while Gábor Vásárhelyi developed highly innovative software solutions for processing visual data.

At the end of the experiment, the researchers made efforts to take care of the animals, and they were delighted that all of them found adoptive homes.

A pair of electrical engineers at Distance University of Madrid, working with a colleague from Mision Critica-Data Center, ZFB Technology Services, in Columbia, has developed a methodology for generating electricity from man-made wind sources using small turbines.

In their paper published in the journal Scientific Reports, Isabel Gil-García, Ana Fernández-Guillamón, and Álvaro Montes-Torres describe their methodology and outline how they used it to generate electricity from wasted wind generated by chilling machines at a data center in Columbia.

Prior research has suggested that there are many ways to capture some of the wind energy that is wasted by many technologies. Air moving across a ship or train, for example, or wind created by fans used on HVAC cooling systems. In this new study, the research team has developed a general methodology for capturing some of the energy typically lost by such technologies.

The new methodology starts with identifying a possible man-made resource, such as a ship, truck, train, or fan used for general cooling. The second step involves investigating how much of the resource is being wasted. In the case of wind applications, an anemometer can be used to test wind speeds, which can be used to determine the amount of wind being generated, and how much of it is available for use.

The next step is to estimate the amount of electrical energy that can likely be harvested from such a resource to ensure that it is worth the effort. The final step is selecting the technology that can be used to capture the wasted wind—typically a turbine. Once a plan is in place, an initial test can be conducted.

To demonstrate their methodology, the research team identified a possible source as wind emanating from cooling devices used to keep computers used in a data center in Columbia from overheating. The site featured three chillers, each with eight fans. The fans operated at 480 V and ran at 900 rpm.

The researchers chose to use Tesup V7 wind turbines to capture the wasted wind because of their small and lightweight features. They mounted six of them above the fans and were able to produce 513.82 MWh annually. After deducting the energy consumed by the fans, the researchers found that adding the turbines reduced net electricity by 467.6 MWh annually.

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Light pollution is more serious than expected: Moths not only lose their orientation directly under street lamps. Their flight behavior is also disturbed outside the cone of light.

The increasing use of artificial light at night is one of the most dramatic man-made changes on earth. Streetlights and illuminated buildings are significantly changing the environment for nocturnal animals.

Scientists have identified light pollution as one of the causes of the sharp decline in insects in recent years: many nocturnal insects fly to artificial light sources and circle around them incessantly. There they become easy prey for bats and other predators or eventually fall to the ground exhausted and die.

Moths are one group of nocturnal insects that are in significant decline. Their disappearance is also problematic because they play a key role in food webs and in the pollination of plants.

A new study now shows that the behavior of moths changes not only in the cone of light from street lamps, but also outside the illuminated area. The experiments were carried out by a group from Julius-Maximilians-Universität (JMU) Würzburg in Bavaria, Germany, in cooperation with researchers from Berlin and Providence (U.S.). The results have been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“Using radar tracking, we found that the orientation of moths is also disturbed outside the cone of light: the flight paths of the three species of hawkmoths and one species of lappet moths, for which we were even able to demonstrate a barrier effect from streetlights, were significantly more curvy than normal,” says Dr. Jacqueline Degen, head of a junior research group at the JMU Biocentre.

“Surprisingly, we had to reject our basic assumption that most individuals would fly to one of the streetlights,” explains the Würzburg researcher. This only applied to 4% of the individuals studied: “This suggests that the effects of light pollution are not limited to direct attraction to light sources, but are much more far-reaching and complex than previously assumed.”

Flight tracking using a radar system near Marburg

The experiments took place at a radar system in Großseelheim near Marburg in Germany. The harmonic radar is currently the only radar system that can track small insects over several hundred meters. The research group observed the flight behavior of a total of 95 moths up to 1 kilometer away from the release point, which was surrounded by a total of six street lamps at a distance of 85 meters.

In order to record the insects by radar, a transponder had to be attached to each individual moth. This small antenna is 10.5 milligrams light and 12 millimeters long. It does not change the flight behavior of the moths in any way—the researchers had previously clarified this in elaborate control experiments.

Interaction with the moon

What also emerged from the experiments is there is an interaction between the disorientation of the moths caused by artificial light and the moon. This depends on whether the moon is above or below the horizon.

“We don’t yet have a precise understanding of this interaction,” says Degen. But this is likely to change in the course of further research.