ScienceDaily: Strange Science News

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• Your friends have more friends than you do
• What big eyes you have! Spider adaptation widened dietary net
• New horned dinosaur species with 'spiked shield'
• Stellar cannibalism transforms star into brown dwarf
• Photonics advances allow us to be seen across the universe, with major implications for search for extraterrestrial intelligence
• Robots get creative to cut through clutter
• Cuckoo mafia: Host birds only tolerate parasitic eggs in their nests when they fear retaliation

Your friends have more friends than you do Posted: 18 May 2016 02:04 PM PDT No matter how smart and funny you think you are, those you follow on Twitter really do have a larger following than you. And the same holds true for Facebook. But there is no reason to feel badly about any of this, according to researchers who say that it is all due to the inherently hierarchical nature of social media networks, where, in the social hierarchy of connections, people mostly either follow up or across; they rarely follow down.

What big eyes you have! Spider adaptation widened dietary net Posted: 18 May 2016 01:52 PM PDT The net-casting spider -- which throws a silk net over its prey -- evolved two massive secondary eyes to help it catch prey that walks, a biologist has concluded.

New horned dinosaur species with 'spiked shield' Posted: 18 May 2016 12:29 PM PDT A chance fossil discovery in Montana a decade ago has led to the identification of an audacious new species of horned dinosaur. What sets Spiclypeus shipporum apart from other horned dinosaurs such as the well-known Triceratops is the orientation of the horns over the eyes, which stick out sideways from the skull. There is also a unique arrangement to the bony 'spikes' that emanate from the margin of the frill -- some of the spikes curl forward while others project outward.

Stellar cannibalism transforms star into brown dwarf Posted: 18 May 2016 10:38 AM PDT Astronomers have detected a sub-stellar object that used to be a star, after being consumed by its white dwarf companion.

Photonics advances allow us to be seen across the universe, with major implications for search for extraterrestrial intelligence Posted: 18 May 2016 09:55 AM PDT Looking up at the night sky -- expansive and seemingly endless, stars and constellations blinking and glimmering like jewels just out of reach -- it's impossible not to wonder: Are we alone? For many of us, the notion of intelligent life on other planets is as captivating as ideas come. Maybe in some other star system, maybe a billion light years away, there's a civilization like ours asking the exact same question. Imagine if we sent up a visible signal that could eventually be seen across the entire universe. Imagine if another civilization did the same.

Robots get creative to cut through clutter Posted: 18 May 2016 09:04 AM PDT Clutter is a special challenge for robots, but new software is helping robots cope, whether they're beating a path across the Moon or grabbing a milk jug from the back of the refrigerator. The software not only helped a robot deal efficiently with clutter, it surprisingly revealed the robot's creativity in solving problems.

Cuckoo mafia: Host birds only tolerate parasitic eggs in their nests when they fear retaliation Posted: 18 May 2016 06:47 AM PDT The brown-headed cowbird is nothing short of a nightmare for its hosts: If they eject the brood parasite's eggs from the nest, it punishes them by destroying their entire clutch. Researchers have designed a mathematical model for analyzing the interaction between avian brood parasites and their hosts. The model calculations show that birds only accept a brood parasite's eggs in their nests if they are forced to do so by threat of retaliation on the part of the invader.

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