ScienceDaily: Strange Science News

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• Chimps can vary their smiles like humans
• Ultracold molecules created
• Robot eyes will benefit from insect vision
• Lonely galaxy 'lost in space'
• Engineer creates origami battery, for five cents
• A celestial butterfly emerges from its dusty chrysalis
• Work-experience schoolboy discovers a new planet
• Developing a robot that learns from scratch, like a child
• Longest ever tiger shark tracking reveals remarkable, bird-like migrations
• Decreased social anxiety among young adults who eat fermented foods

Chimps can vary their smiles like humans Posted: 10 Jun 2015 01:17 PM PDT A new study has revealed that chimpanzees have the same types of smiles as humans when laughing, which suggests these smile types evolved from positive expressions of ancestral apes.

Ultracold molecules created Posted: 10 Jun 2015 10:18 AM PDT Experimental physicists have successfully cooled molecules in a gas of sodium potassium to a temperature of 500 nanokelvins -- just a hair above absolute zero, and over a million times colder than interstellar space. The researchers found that the ultracold molecules were relatively long-lived and stable, resisting reactive collisions with other molecules. The molecules also exhibited very strong dipole moments -- strong imbalances in electric charge within molecules that mediate magnet-like forces between molecules over large distances.

Robot eyes will benefit from insect vision Posted: 10 Jun 2015 10:14 AM PDT The way insects see and track their prey is being applied to a new robot under development, in the hopes of improving robot visual systems.

Lonely galaxy 'lost in space' Posted: 10 Jun 2015 08:11 AM PDT Although the Universe may seem spacious most galaxies are clumped together in groups or clusters and a neighbor is never far away. But this galaxy, known as NGC 6503, has found itself in a lonely position, shown here at the edge of a strangely empty patch of space called the Local Void.

Engineer creates origami battery, for five cents Posted: 10 Jun 2015 08:10 AM PDT Origami, the Japanese art of paper folding, can be used to create beautiful birds, frogs and other small sculptures. Now an engineer says the technique can be applied to building batteries, too.

A celestial butterfly emerges from its dusty chrysalis Posted: 10 Jun 2015 06:34 AM PDT Some of the sharpest images ever made with ESO's Very Large Telescope have, for the first time, revealed what appears to be an ageing star giving birth to a butterfly-like planetary nebula. These observations of the red giant star L2 Puppis, from the ZIMPOL mode of the newly installed SPHERE instrument, also clearly showed a close stellar companion.

Work-experience schoolboy discovers a new planet Posted: 10 Jun 2015 06:31 AM PDT A 15-yr-old schoolboy has discovered a new planet orbiting a star 1000 light years away in our galaxy. The student was doing a work-experience project when he spotted the planet by finding a tiny dip in the light of a star as a planet passed in front of it.

Developing a robot that learns from scratch, like a child Posted: 10 Jun 2015 06:31 AM PDT Researchers have made a robot that learns like a young child. At least, that's the idea. The machine starts with nothing -- it has to learn everything from scratch.

Longest ever tiger shark tracking reveals remarkable, bird-like migrations Posted: 09 Jun 2015 06:33 PM PDT A new study has yielded the first ever continuous, two or more-year satellite tagging tracks for tiger sharks. This study reveals remarkable, and previously unknown, migration patterns more similar to birds, turtles and some marine mammals than other fishes.

Decreased social anxiety among young adults who eat fermented foods Posted: 09 Jun 2015 06:28 AM PDT A possible connection between fermented foods, which contain probiotics, and social anxiety symptoms, is the focus of recent study. The study is just the first in a series that the researchers have planned to continue exploring the mind-gut connection, including another examination of the data to see whether a correlation exists between fermented food intake and autism symptoms.

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