ScienceDaily: Strange Science News

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• Lethal wounds on skull may indicate 430,000 year-old murder
• Diagnosing cancer with lumninescent bacteria: Engineered probiotics detect tumors in liver
• New algorithm lets autonomous robots divvy up assembly tasks on the fly
• Scientists one step closer to mimicking gamma-ray bursts
• Robots can automatically recover from damage in minutes
• Spiraling laser pulses could change the nature of graphene
• Shock Collision Inside Black Hole Jet
• Hallucinations and delusions more common than thought
• DNA: Expanding code of life with new 'letters'
• Perfume researchers lend their noses to design less odorous latrines
• Theory of everything? How spacetime is built by quantum entanglement
• Physicists solve quantum tunneling mystery
• Experiment confirms quantum theory weirdness
• Physicists simulate charged Majorana particles, which are not supposed to exist
• Clever snail? Animals, like humans, excel at some tasks but not others
• Homely men who misbehave can't win for losing: Attractiveness influences online daters, jurors
• Similarities between aurorae on Mars and Earth
• Toddler temperament could be influenced by different types of gut bacteria

Lethal wounds on skull may indicate 430,000 year-old murder Posted: 27 May 2015 12:09 PM PDT Research into lethal wounds found on a human skull may indicate one of the first cases of murder in human history--some 430,000 years ago--and offers evidence of the earliest funerary practices in the archaeological record.

Diagnosing cancer with lumninescent bacteria: Engineered probiotics detect tumors in liver Posted: 27 May 2015 12:09 PM PDT Engineers have devised a new way to detect cancer that has spread to the liver, by enlisting help from probiotics -- beneficial bacteria similar to those found in yogurt. Using a harmless strain of E. coli that colonizes the liver, the researchers programmed the bacteria to produce a luminescent signal that can be detected with a simple urine test.

New algorithm lets autonomous robots divvy up assembly tasks on the fly Posted: 27 May 2015 11:21 AM PDT Today's industrial robots are remarkably efficient -- as long as they're in a controlled environment where everything is exactly where they expect it to be.

Scientists one step closer to mimicking gamma-ray bursts Posted: 27 May 2015 10:40 AM PDT Using ever more energetic lasers, researchers have produced a record high number of electron-positron pairs, opening exciting opportunities to study extreme astrophysical processes, such as black holes and gamma-ray bursts.

Robots can automatically recover from damage in minutes Posted: 27 May 2015 10:40 AM PDT Robots will one day provide tremendous benefits to society, such as in search and rescue missions and putting out forest fires -- but not until they can learn to keep working if they become damaged. A new article shows how to make robots automatically recover from injury in less than two minutes.

Spiraling laser pulses could change the nature of graphene Posted: 27 May 2015 10:39 AM PDT A new study predicts that researchers could use spiraling pulses of laser light to change the nature of graphene, turning it from a metal into an insulator and giving it other peculiar properties that might be used to encode information.

Shock Collision Inside Black Hole Jet Posted: 27 May 2015 10:39 AM PDT Astronomers have discovered for the first time a rear-end collision between two high-speed knots of ejected matter from a supermassive black hole. This discovery was made while piecing together a time-lapse movie of a plasma jet blasted from a supermassive black hole inside galaxy 3C 264, located 260 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Leo.

Hallucinations and delusions more common than thought Posted: 27 May 2015 09:47 AM PDT Scientists have found that hearing voices and seeing things (that others cannot) impacts about 5 percent of the general population at some point in their lives.

DNA: Expanding code of life with new 'letters' Posted: 27 May 2015 08:31 AM PDT The DNA encoding all life on Earth is made of four building blocks called nucleotides, commonly known as 'letters,' that line up in pairs and twist into a double helix. Now, two groups of scientists are reporting for the first time that two new nucleotides can do the same thing -- raising the possibility that entirely new proteins could be created for medical uses.

Perfume researchers lend their noses to design less odorous latrines Posted: 27 May 2015 08:29 AM PDT About 2.5 billion people worldwide don't have access to sanitary toilets. Latrines are an option for many of those people, but these facilities' overwhelming odors can deter users, who then defecate outdoors instead. To improve this situation, fragrance scientists paired experts' noses and analytical instruments to determine the odor profiles of latrines with the aim of countering the offensive stench.

Theory of everything? How spacetime is built by quantum entanglement Posted: 27 May 2015 08:29 AM PDT Physicists and mathematicians have made a significant step toward unifying general relativity and quantum mechanics by explaining how spacetime emerges from quantum entanglement in a more fundamental theory.

Physicists solve quantum tunneling mystery Posted: 27 May 2015 07:31 AM PDT Scientists studying ultrafast physics have solved a mystery of quantum mechanics, and found that quantum tunneling is an instantaneous process.

Experiment confirms quantum theory weirdness Posted: 27 May 2015 07:31 AM PDT The bizarre nature of reality as laid out by quantum theory has survived another test, with scientists performing a famous experiment and proving that reality does not exist until it is measured. Physicists have conducted John Wheeler's delayed-choice thought experiment, which involves a moving object that is given the choice to act like a particle or a wave. The group reversed Wheeler's original experiment, and used helium atoms scattered by light.

Physicists simulate charged Majorana particles, which are not supposed to exist Posted: 27 May 2015 07:24 AM PDT Physicists simulate for the first time charged Majorana particles -- elementary particles, which are not supposed to exist. They developed a photonic set-up that consists of complex waveguide circuits engraved in a glass chip, which enabled them to simulate charged Majorana particles and, thus, allowed them to conduct physical experiments.

Clever snail? Animals, like humans, excel at some tasks but not others Posted: 27 May 2015 06:54 AM PDT Animals, like humans, excel at some tasks but not others. Researchers used pond snails to investigate learning and memory. They found that if an individual is good at forming memories about food they are poor at forming memories related to predator threat and vice versa.

Homely men who misbehave can't win for losing: Attractiveness influences online daters, jurors Posted: 27 May 2015 06:26 AM PDT Women tolerate an unattractive man up to a point, but beware if he misbehaves. Then they'll easily shun him, researchers report, after finding that a woman's view of a man is influenced by how handsome and law-abiding he is. Their study, they say, has significance for those using dating sites or doing jury duty.

Similarities between aurorae on Mars and Earth Posted: 27 May 2015 06:26 AM PDT Astronomers have for the first time predicted the occurrence of aurorae visible to the naked eye on a planet other than Earth.

Toddler temperament could be influenced by different types of gut bacteria Posted: 27 May 2015 06:14 AM PDT The microbiome of a toddler's gut may influence their behavior, a new study suggests. Scientists found correlations between temperament and the presence of specific types of intestinal bacteria in both girls and boys. The researchers aren't looking for a way to help parents modify the 'terrible twos,' but for clues about how - and where - chronic illnesses like obesity, asthma, allergies and bowel diseases start.

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