ScienceDaily: Strange Science News

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• Holographic diagnostics in medicine
• Salamanders help predict health of forest ecosystems, inform forest management
• 'Love hormone' oxytocin carries unexpected side effect
• Men forget most
• Guys: Get married for the sake of your bones, but wait until you're 25
• Engineers create light-activated 'curtains'
• E-whiskers: Highly sensitive tactile sensors developed for robotics and other applications
• Predatory organisms at ocean depths
• 66 children a day treated in U.S. EDs for shopping cart-related injuries
• Turkeys inspire smartphone-capable early warning system for toxins
• Source of Galapagos eruptions not where models place it
• Pathogenic plant virus jumps to honeybees, may explain bee population decline
• Dispersal patterns key to invasive species' success

Holographic diagnostics in medicine Posted: 22 Jan 2014 10:41 AM PST 'Smart' holograms, which are currently being tested to monitor diabetes, and could be used to monitor a wide range of medical and environmental conditions in future, have been developed by researchers.

Salamanders help predict health of forest ecosystems, inform forest management Posted: 22 Jan 2014 08:27 AM PST Researchers have determined that salamander population size reflects forest habitat quality and can predict how ecosystems recover from forest logging activity. They believe these findings can be translated to other species within forest ecosystems throughout the world.

'Love hormone' oxytocin carries unexpected side effect Posted: 22 Jan 2014 08:26 AM PST Some psychologists are keen to prescribe oxytocin off-label, in order to treat mild social unease in those who don't suffer from a diagnosed disorder. Not such a good idea, say researchers.

Men forget most Posted: 22 Jan 2014 08:26 AM PST Your suspicions have finally been confirmed. Men forget more than women do. Nine out of 10 men have problems with remembering names and dates, according to an analysis of a large Norwegian population-based health study.

Guys: Get married for the sake of your bones, but wait until you're 25 Posted: 22 Jan 2014 07:25 AM PST Men who married when they were younger than 25 had lower bone strength than men who married for the first time at a later age. Men in stable marriages or marriage-like relationships who had never previously divorced or separated had greater bone strength than men whose previous marriages had fractured.

Engineers create light-activated 'curtains' Posted: 21 Jan 2014 04:26 PM PST Forget remote-controlled curtains. A new development could lead to curtains and other materials that move in response to light, no batteries needed.

E-whiskers: Highly sensitive tactile sensors developed for robotics and other applications Posted: 21 Jan 2014 04:14 PM PST From the world of nanotechnology we've gotten electronic skin, or e-skin, and electronic eye implants or e-eyes. Now we're on the verge of electronic whiskers. Researchers have created tactile sensors from composite films of carbon nanotubes and silver nanoparticles similar to the highly sensitive whiskers of cats and rats. These new e-whiskers respond to pressure as slight as a single Pascal, about the pressure exerted on a table surface by a dollar bill. Among their many potential applications is giving robots new abilities to "see" and "feel" their surrounding environment.

Predatory organisms at ocean depths Posted: 21 Jan 2014 10:08 AM PST In deep, old and nutrient-poor ocean floor sediments there are up to 225 times more viruses than microbes. In such extreme habitats, viruses make up the largest fraction of living biomass and take over the role as predators in this bizarre ecosystem.

66 children a day treated in U.S. EDs for shopping cart-related injuries Posted: 21 Jan 2014 10:00 AM PST Although a voluntary shopping cart safety standard was implemented in the United States in 2004, the overall number and rate of injuries to children associated with shopping carts have not decreased. In fact, the number and rate of concussions/closed head injuries have continued to climb, according to a new study.

Turkeys inspire smartphone-capable early warning system for toxins Posted: 21 Jan 2014 08:34 AM PST Bioengineers looked to turkeys for inspiration when developing a new type of biosensor that changes color when exposed to chemical vapors. They mimicked the way turkey skin changes color to create easy-to-read sensors that can detect toxins or airborne pathogens.

Source of Galapagos eruptions not where models place it Posted: 21 Jan 2014 07:42 AM PST Images gathered by scientists using seismic waves penetrating to a depth of 300 kilometers have found an anomaly that likely is the volcanic mantle plume of the Galapagos Islands. It's not where geologists and computer modeling had assumed.

Pathogenic plant virus jumps to honeybees, may explain bee population decline Posted: 21 Jan 2014 06:30 AM PST A viral pathogen that typically infects plants has been found in honeybees and could help explain their decline. Researchers working in the U.S. and Beijing, China report their findings in a recently published article.

Dispersal patterns key to invasive species' success Posted: 20 Jan 2014 02:36 PM PST Using synthetic biology, engineers have tested the limits of the Allee effect, where a certain number of individuals are needed for a group to survive. While intuition suggests that the more places a species spreads, the more it will thrive, scattering a population too thin by forming too many new colonies could result in the ruin of them all. The results have implications for both ecologists dealing with invasive species and medical practitioners fighting infections.

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