ScienceDaily: Strange Science News

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• Inspiration linked to bipolar disorder risk
• Hubble sees Mars-bound comet sprout multiple jets
• Dying cells in fruit fly alert neighboring cells to protect themselves: As a result, neighbors become harder to kill
• Caffeinated fruit flies help identify potential genes affecting insecticide resistance
• Record quantum entanglement of multiple dimensions: Two Schrödinger cats which could be alive, dead, or in 101 other states simultaneously
• Computing with slime: Logical circuits built using living slime molds
• Fundamentals of facial recognition: Specialized brain mechanisms for recognizing faces?
• Moving public assistance payments from cash to plastic cuts crime, research shows

Inspiration linked to bipolar disorder risk Posted: 27 Mar 2014 09:33 AM PDT Inspiration has been linked with people at risk of developing bipolar disorder for the first time in a study. For generations, artists, musicians, poets and writers have described personal experiences of mania and depression, highlighting the unique association between creativity and bipolar disorder -- experiences which are backed up by recent research. But, until now, the specific links between inspiration -- the generation of ideas that form the basis of creative work -- and bipolar disorder has received little attention.

Hubble sees Mars-bound comet sprout multiple jets Posted: 27 Mar 2014 08:15 AM PDT A new image of a comet at 353 million miles from Earth shows two jets of dust coming off the comet's nucleus in opposite directions.

Dying cells in fruit fly alert neighboring cells to protect themselves: As a result, neighbors become harder to kill Posted: 27 Mar 2014 08:12 AM PDT Cells usually self-destruct when irreparable glitches occur in their DNA. Programmed cell death, or apoptosis, helps insure that cells with damaged DNA do not grow and replicate to produce more mutated cells. Apoptosis thereby helps protect and insure the survival of the organism. Scientists now report that a dying Drosophila melanogaster larvae cell alerts neighboring cells that they are in danger of suffering a similar fate.

Caffeinated fruit flies help identify potential genes affecting insecticide resistance Posted: 27 Mar 2014 07:14 AM PDT To understand genetic mechanisms underlying insecticide resistance, scientists employed fruit flies and caffeine, a stimulant surrogate for xenobiotics in lab studies on resistance. Crop pests are capable of outwitting the chemical compounds known as xenobiotics that are devised to kill them. This development of resistance to insecticides is a serious problem because it threatens crop production and thereby can influence the availability and costs of many foods as well as the economy.

Record quantum entanglement of multiple dimensions: Two Schrödinger cats which could be alive, dead, or in 101 other states simultaneously Posted: 27 Mar 2014 07:06 AM PDT Scienitists have managed to create an entanglement of 103 dimensions with only two photons. The record had been established at 11 dimensions. The discovery could represent a great advance toward the construction of quantum computers with much higher processing speeds than current ones, and toward a better encryption of information.

Computing with slime: Logical circuits built using living slime molds Posted: 27 Mar 2014 07:03 AM PDT A future computer might be a lot slimier than the solid silicon devices we have today. Researchers have revealed details of logic units built using living slime molds, which might act as the building blocks for computing devices and sensors.

Fundamentals of facial recognition: Specialized brain mechanisms for recognizing faces? Posted: 24 Mar 2014 12:40 PM PDT Scientists showed that participants suffering from face blindness performed as well as the average person in training measuring their ability to learn a set of computer-generated objects called greebles. The findings undermine the leading alternative to the idea that prosopagnosia is the result of damage to brain mechanisms specifically devoted to processing faces, and thus indicate that people recognize faces using face-specific brain mechanisms.

Moving public assistance payments from cash to plastic cuts crime, research shows Posted: 24 Mar 2014 11:54 AM PDT Counties that change their delivery of public assistance benefits from paper checks to an electronic benefit transfer system -- using debit cards -- see their street crimes drop significantly, according to a study. The study is the first to empirically examine whether the introduction of an EBT system, which reduces the amount of cash circulated on the streets, will disrupt criminal activities that rely on the ease and relative anonymity of cash transactions.

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