ScienceDaily: Strange Science News

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• Try, try again? Study says no: Trying harder makes it more difficult to learn some aspects of language, neuroscientists find
• Parents rank their obese children as 'very healthy'
• New research links bad diet to loss of smell
• Seals forage at offshore wind farms
• Science and art bring back to life 300-million-year-old specimens of a primitive reptile-like vertebrate
• Mysterious dance of dwarf galaxies may force a cosmic rethink
• Children as young as three recognize 'cuteness' in faces of people, animals
• Fecal transplants let packrats eat poison
• Healing the heart with fat? 18-HEPE might help, study suggests
• Fair cake cutting gets its own algorithm

Try, try again? Study says no: Trying harder makes it more difficult to learn some aspects of language, neuroscientists find Posted: 21 Jul 2014 11:22 AM PDT Neuroscientists find that trying harder makes it more difficult to learn some aspects of language. When it comes to learning languages, adults and children have different strengths. Adults excel at absorbing the vocabulary needed to navigate a grocery store or order food in a restaurant, but children have an uncanny ability to pick up on subtle nuances of language, sometimes speaking a second language like a native speaker within months. Brain structure plays an important role in this "sensitive period" for learning language, which is believed to end around adolescence.

Parents rank their obese children as 'very healthy' Posted: 21 Jul 2014 11:21 AM PDT Parents of obese children often do not recognize the potentially serious health consequences of childhood weight gain or the importance of daily physical activity in helping their child reach a healthy weight, a study shows. "Parents have a hard time changing their child's dietary and physical activity behaviors," said the study's lead author. "Our study tells us what factors may be associated with a parent's motivation to help their child become more healthy."

New research links bad diet to loss of smell Posted: 21 Jul 2014 09:39 AM PDT Could stuffing yourself full of high-fat foods cause you to lose your sense of smell? A new study by neuroscientists says so, and it has researchers taking a closer look at how our diets could impact a whole range of human functions that were not traditionally considered when examining the impact of obesity.

Seals forage at offshore wind farms Posted: 21 Jul 2014 09:38 AM PDT By using sophisticated GPS tracking to monitor seals' every movement, researchers have shown for the first time that some individual seals are repeatedly drawn to offshore wind farms and pipelines. Those human-made structures probably serve as artificial reefs and attractive hunting grounds, according to a study.

Science and art bring back to life 300-million-year-old specimens of a primitive reptile-like vertebrate Posted: 21 Jul 2014 09:37 AM PDT Paleontologists have recreated the cranial structure of a 308-million-year-old lizard-like vertebrate that could be the earliest example of a reptile and explain the origin of all vertebrates that belong to reptiles, birds and mammals.

Mysterious dance of dwarf galaxies may force a cosmic rethink Posted: 21 Jul 2014 07:04 AM PDT The discovery that many small galaxies throughout the universe do not 'swarm' around larger ones like bees do but 'dance' in orderly disc-shaped orbits is a challenge to our understanding of how the universe formed and evolved. The researchers believe the answer may be hidden in some currently unknown physical process that governs how gas flows in the universe, although, as yet, there is no obvious mechanism that can guide dwarf galaxies into narrow planes.

Children as young as three recognize 'cuteness' in faces of people, animals Posted: 21 Jul 2014 07:01 AM PDT Children as young as three are able to recognize the same 'cute' infantile facial features in humans and animals which encourage caregiving behavior in adults, new research has shown. A study investigating whether youngsters can identify baby-like characteristics – a set of traits known as the 'baby schema' – across different species has revealed for the first time that even pre-school children rate puppies, kittens and babies as cuter than their adult counterparts.

Fecal transplants let packrats eat poison Posted: 21 Jul 2014 07:00 AM PDT Woodrats lost their ability to eat toxic creosote bushes after antibiotics killed their gut microbes. Woodrats that never ate the plants were able to do so after receiving fecal transplants with microbes from creosote-eaters, biologists found.

Healing the heart with fat? 18-HEPE might help, study suggests Posted: 21 Jul 2014 06:59 AM PDT Too much dietary fat is bad for the heart, but the right kind of fat keeps the heart healthy, according to a new paper. Scientists in Japan have shown that mice engineered to produce their own EPA are protected against heart disease and have improved cardiac function. One particular EPA metabolite, called 18-hydroxyeicosapentaenoic acid (18-HEPE), was required for this protection.

Fair cake cutting gets its own algorithm Posted: 16 Jul 2014 01:58 PM PDT A mathematician and a political scientist have announced an algorithm by which they show how to optimally share cake between two people efficiently, in equal pieces and in such a way that no one feels robbed.

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