ScienceDaily: Strange Science News |
- Wealth and power may have played a stronger role than 'survival of the fittest'
- On pi day, how scientists use this number
- Second natural quasicrystal ever found in ancient meteorite
- Baboon friends swap gut germs
- DNA is packaged like a yoyo, scientists find
- Colorful life-form catalog will help discern if we're alone
- A new method for making perovskite solar cells
- Cyborg beetle research allows free-flight study of insects
- No reason to believe yeti legends to be inspired by an unknown type of bear
- New images of the brain show the forgetful side effect of frequent recall
- A second minor planet may possess Saturn-like rings: Features around Chiron may signal rings, jets, or a shell of dust
- Nano piano's lullaby could mean storage breakthrough
- New remote control for molecular motors
- Oceanic microbes behave in a synchrony across ocean basins
- New clues from the dawn of the solar system
- Scientists fly kites on Earth to study Mars
- Scientists discover gecko secret: How geckos stay clean even in dusty deserts
- No limit to life in sediment of ocean's deadest region
| Wealth and power may have played a stronger role than 'survival of the fittest' Posted: 16 Mar 2015 03:55 PM PDT Researchers have discovered a dramatic decline in genetic diversity in male lineages four to eight thousand years ago -- likely the result of the accumulation of material wealth, while in contrast, female genetic diversity was on the rise. This male-specific decline occurred during the mid- to late-Neolithic period.  |
| On pi day, how scientists use this number Posted: 12 Mar 2015 08:11 AM PDT If you like numbers, you will love March 14, 2015. When written as a numerical date, it's 3/14/15, corresponding to the first five digits of pi (3.1415) -- a once-in-a-century coincidence! Pi Day, which would have been the 136th birthday of Albert Einstein, is a great excuse to eat pie, and to appreciate how important the number pi is to math and science.  |
| Second natural quasicrystal ever found in ancient meteorite Posted: 16 Mar 2015 01:07 PM PDT Scientists have discovered a quasicrystal -- so named because of its unorthodox arrangement of atoms -- in a 4.5-billion-year-old meteorite from a remote region of northeastern Russia, bringing to two the number of natural quasicrystals ever discovered.  |
| Posted: 16 Mar 2015 01:07 PM PDT The warm soft folds of the intestines are teeming with thousands of species of bacteria that help break down food, synthesize vitamins, regulate weight and resist infection. If they're so key to health, what factors shape an individual's gut microbial makeup? Previous studies have pointed to the food we eat, the drugs we take, genetics, even house dust. Now, a new study in baboons suggests that relationships may play a role, too.  |
| DNA is packaged like a yoyo, scientists find Posted: 16 Mar 2015 01:07 PM PDT DNA uncoils from the nucleosome asymmetrically (uncoiling from one end much more easily) scientists have discovered. The DNA is packaged into chromosomes, which resemble beaded bracelets. The string of DNA is coiled around beads, called histones, to create nucleosomes. These nucleosomes are braided together into beaded strings that are intricately woven into chromosomes, they report.  |
| Colorful life-form catalog will help discern if we're alone Posted: 16 Mar 2015 01:06 PM PDT While looking for life on planets beyond our own solar system, a group of international scientists has created a colorful catalog containing reflection signatures of Earth life forms that might be found on planet surfaces throughout the cosmic hinterlands. The new database and research gives humans a better chance to learn if we are not alone.  |
| A new method for making perovskite solar cells Posted: 16 Mar 2015 10:56 AM PDT Researchers have come up with a new way of making thin perovskite films for solar cells. The method forms perovskite crystals at room temperature, which could be helpful in mass production settings. The technique is especially well suited to make ultra-thin, semitransparent films, which could be used in photovoltaic windows.  |
| Cyborg beetle research allows free-flight study of insects Posted: 16 Mar 2015 10:51 AM PDT Cyborg insect research is enabling new revelations about a muscle used by beetles for finely graded turns. The remote-controlled beetles equipped with radio backpacks are showcasing the potential of miniature electronics in biological research.  |
| No reason to believe yeti legends to be inspired by an unknown type of bear Posted: 16 Mar 2015 10:51 AM PDT A Venezuelan evolutionary biologist and a US zoologist state that they have refuted, through mitochondrial DNA sequencing, a recent claim, also based on such sequencing, that an unknown type of bear exists in the Himalayas and that it may be, at least in part, the source of yeti legends.  |
| New images of the brain show the forgetful side effect of frequent recall Posted: 16 Mar 2015 10:51 AM PDT A new study has shown how intentional recall is beyond a simple reawakening of a memory; and actually leads us to forget other competing experiences that interfere with retrieval. Quite simply, the very act of remembering may be one of the major reasons why we forget.  |
| Posted: 16 Mar 2015 09:27 AM PDT There are only five bodies in our solar system that are known to bear rings. The most obvious is the planet Saturn; to a lesser extent, rings of gas and dust also encircle Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune. The fifth member of this haloed group is Chariklo, one of a class of minor planets called centaurs: small, rocky bodies that possess qualities of both asteroids and comets. Scientists only recently detected Chariklo's ring system -- a surprising finding, as it had been thought that centaurs are relatively dormant. Now scientists have detected a possible ring system around a second centaur, Chiron.  |
| Nano piano's lullaby could mean storage breakthrough Posted: 16 Mar 2015 09:27 AM PDT Researchers have demonstrated the first-ever recording of optically encoded audio onto a non-magnetic plasmonic nanostructure, opening the door to multiple uses in informational processing and archival storage.  |
| New remote control for molecular motors Posted: 16 Mar 2015 09:25 AM PDT Magnetic molecules can be considered as nanoscale magnets. Remotely controlling the direction in which they rotate may intuitively be difficult to achieve. However, physicists have just demonstrated that it is theoretically possible to do so. They have shown that a change of direction in the circular polarization of an external magnetic field leads to a change in the direction of the mechanical rotation of the molecule.  |
| Oceanic microbes behave in a synchrony across ocean basins Posted: 16 Mar 2015 07:21 AM PDT Researchers have found that microbial communities in different regions of the Pacific Ocean displayed strikingly similar daily rhythms in their metabolism despite inhabiting extremely different habitats -- the nutrient-rich waters off California and the nutrient-poor waters north of Hawai'i. Furthermore, in each location, the dominant photoautotrophs appear to initiate a cascade effect wherein the other major groups of microbes perform their metabolic activities in a coordinated and predictable way.  |
| New clues from the dawn of the solar system Posted: 16 Mar 2015 07:21 AM PDT Sulfide chondrules, a new type of building blocks discovered in meteorites left over from the solar system's infancy, provide evidence for a previously unknown region in the protoplanetary disk that gave rise to the planets including Earth.  |
| Scientists fly kites on Earth to study Mars Posted: 16 Mar 2015 06:30 AM PDT An unconventional research method allow planetary scientists to develop digital terrain models -- think Google Earth on steroids -- of geologic features on Earth, revealing that some of the things we see on Mars and other planets may not be what they seem.  |
| Scientists discover gecko secret: How geckos stay clean even in dusty deserts Posted: 16 Mar 2015 06:29 AM PDT In a world first, scientists have discovered how geckos manage to stay clean, even in dusty deserts.  |
| No limit to life in sediment of ocean's deadest region Posted: 16 Mar 2015 06:28 AM PDT Scientists have found oxygen and oxygen-breathing microbes all the way through the sediment from the seafloor to the igneous basement at seven sites in the South Pacific gyre, considered the "deadest" location in the ocean.  |
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