ScienceDaily: Strange Science News

---

• Pinwheel 'living' crystals and the origin of life
• Marine algae can sense the rainbow
• New ideas change your brain cells, research shows
• Did you hear the one about the doctor? Using Facebook to eavesdrop on the collective conversation of current societal issues
• In the eye of a chicken, a new state of matter comes into view
• Toxic injection with elastic band: Discovering how bacteria get toxins into cells
• Biomedical bleeding affects horseshoe crab behavior
• Sugarcane converted to cold-tolerant, oil-producing crop
• Researchers 'design for failure' with model material
• Equal and equal is unequal: Choosing marriage partner contributes to income inequality, study finds
• Creating animated characters outdoors
• Stimulation glove for stroke patients helps improve tactile perception, motor function

Pinwheel 'living' crystals and the origin of life Posted: 24 Feb 2014 02:17 PM PST Simply making nanoparticles spin coaxes them to arrange themselves into what researchers call 'living rotating crystals' that could serve as a nanopump. They may also, incidentally, shed light on the origin of life itself. The researchers refer to the crystals as 'living' because they, in a sense, take on a life of their own from very simple rules.

Marine algae can sense the rainbow Posted: 24 Feb 2014 02:14 PM PST Several types of aquatic algae can detect orange, green and blue light, according to new research. Land plants have receptors to detect light on the red and far red of the spectrum, which are the common wavelengths in the air. These plants sense the light to move and grow as their environment changes, for example when another plant shades them from the sun. But in the ocean, the water absorbs red wavelengths, instead reflecting colors such as blue and green. Scientists have now sequenced about 20 different marine algae and found they were capable of detecting not only red light, but also many other colors.

New ideas change your brain cells, research shows Posted: 24 Feb 2014 10:31 AM PST An important molecular change has been discovered that occurs in the brain when we learn and remember. The research shows that learning stimulates our brain cells in a manner that causes a small fatty acid to attach to delta-catenin, a protein in the brain. This biochemical modification is essential in producing the changes in brain cell connectivity associated with learning, the study finds. Findings may provide an explanation for some mental disabilities, the researchers say.

Did you hear the one about the doctor? Using Facebook to eavesdrop on the collective conversation of current societal issues Posted: 24 Feb 2014 09:42 AM PST Researchers studied jokes made about doctors posted on Facebook in a new review that demonstrates the potential of using social networking sites for research on health and medicine. "Social networking sites, such as Facebook, have become immensely popular in recent years and present a unique opportunity for researchers to eavesdrop on the collective conversation of current societal issues," said the lead author. Results showed that jokes in which the doctor (or the healthcare system) was the butt of the joke tended to be more successful, although the association was not statistically significant. Interestingly, the joke in the study that received the greatest number of Facebook likes was a "doctor, lawyer, priest joke" in which the lawyer was the butt of the joke.

In the eye of a chicken, a new state of matter comes into view Posted: 24 Feb 2014 09:42 AM PST Along with eggs, soup and rubber toys, the list of the chicken's most lasting legacies may eventually include advanced materials, according to scientists. The researchers report that the unusual arrangement of cells in a chicken's eye constitutes the first known biological occurrence of a potentially new state of matter known as 'disordered hyperuniformity,' which has been shown to have unique physical properties.

Toxic injection with elastic band: Discovering how bacteria get toxins into cells Posted: 24 Feb 2014 09:42 AM PST Bacteria have developed many different ways of smuggling their toxic cargo into cells. A new study has helped scientists discover how Tc toxins inject bacterial toxins. The discovery has wide-reaching potential impact, from health solutions to farming and other industry.

Biomedical bleeding affects horseshoe crab behavior Posted: 24 Feb 2014 09:38 AM PST Collecting and bleeding horseshoe crabs for biomedical purposes causes short-term changes in their behavior and physiology that could exacerbate the crabs' population decline in parts of the East Coast. Authors of a new report examined this issue as well as possible solutions to its problems. Each year, the U.S. biomedical industry harvests the blue blood from almost half a million living horseshoe crabs for use in pharmaceuticals -- most notably, a product called Limulus amebocyte lysate (LAL), used to ensure vaccines and medical equipment are free of bacterial contamination. This lifesaving product can only be made from horseshoe crab blood.

Sugarcane converted to cold-tolerant, oil-producing crop Posted: 24 Feb 2014 08:02 AM PST A multi-institutional team reports that it can increase sugarcane's geographic range, boost its photosynthetic rate by 30 percent and turn it into an oil-producing crop for biodiesel production.

Researchers 'design for failure' with model material Posted: 24 Feb 2014 08:01 AM PST Researchers have devised a method to study stress at the macro and micro scales at the same time, using a model system in which microscopic particles stand in for molecules. This method has allowed the researchers to demonstrate an unusual hybrid behavior in their model material: a reversible rearrangement of its particles that nevertheless has the characteristics of plastic deformation on the macroscale.

Equal and equal is unequal: Choosing marriage partner contributes to income inequality, study finds Posted: 24 Feb 2014 05:11 AM PST Changes in society in choosing a marriage partner contribute to income inequality across households, according to a new study. Researchers analyzed the interaction of marriage partner choices and the distribution of income across households. Positive assortative mating, or in other words, the tendency of choosing a partner with the same level of education or income, has increased so significantly over the past five decades in the U.S., that it has a considerable effect on the national income distribution.

Creating animated characters outdoors Posted: 24 Feb 2014 05:11 AM PST So far, film studios have had to put in huge amounts of effort to set monsters, superheroes, fairies or other virtual characters into real feature film scenes. Within the so-called motion capturing process, real actors wear skintight suits with markers on them. These suits reflect infrared light that is emitted and captured by special cameras. Subsequent to this, the movements of the actors are rendered with the aid of software into animated characters. Now, researchers in Germany have developed a method that works without markers. It immediately transfers actors' movements to the virtual characters in near real-time.

Stimulation glove for stroke patients helps improve tactile perception, motor function Posted: 24 Feb 2014 05:10 AM PST A glove that uses weak electrical pulses to stimulate the nerve fibers that connect the hands with the brain has been developed and been used to help recovery of patients who have suffered a stroke by using passive stimulation that improves sense of touch and motor skills. If applied regularly, this passive stimulation results in an improvement of both tactile perception and motor function.

You are subscribed to email updates from Strange & Offbeat News -- ScienceDaily To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610