ScienceDaily: Strange Science News

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• Shorter women have shorter pregnancies, study shows
• Hot chilli may unlock a new treatment for obesity
• Engineers identify how to keep surfaces dry underwater for months
• Massacres, torture and mutilation: Extreme violence in neolithic conflicts
• Meteorite impacts can create DNA building blocks
• A brain-computer interface for controlling an exoskeleton

Shorter women have shorter pregnancies, study shows Posted: 18 Aug 2015 12:35 PM PDT Shorter mothers have shorter pregnancies, smaller babies, and higher risk for a preterm birth. Investigators found that a mother's height directly influences her risk for preterm birth. They also found that maternal height, which is determined by genetic factors, helped shape the fetal environment, influencing the length of pregnancy and frequency of prematurity. In contrast, birth length and birth weight are mainly influenced by transmitted genes.

Hot chilli may unlock a new treatment for obesity Posted: 18 Aug 2015 11:27 AM PDT A high-fat diet may impair important receptors located in the stomach that signal fullness, researchers have discovered. They investigated the association between hot chilli pepper receptors (TRPV1) in the stomach and the feeling of fullness, in laboratory studies, suggesting that their work will inform further studies and the development of new therapies.

Engineers identify how to keep surfaces dry underwater for months Posted: 18 Aug 2015 11:26 AM PDT Imagine staying dry underwater for months. Engineers have examined a variety of surfaces that can do just that -- and they know why. They have identified the ideal 'roughness' needed in a surface's texture to keep it dry for a long time when submerged in water. The valleys in the surface roughness typically need to be less than one micron in width. That's really small -- but these nanoscopic valleys have macroscopic impact.

Massacres, torture and mutilation: Extreme violence in neolithic conflicts Posted: 18 Aug 2015 06:02 AM PDT Violent conflicts in Neolithic Europe were held more brutally than has been known so far. This emerges from a recent anthropological analysis of the roughly 7000-year-old mass grave of Schöneck-Kilianstädten. The findings show that victims were murdered and deliberately mutilated.

Meteorite impacts can create DNA building blocks Posted: 18 Aug 2015 05:57 AM PDT A new study shown that meteorite impacts on ancient oceans may have created nucleobases and amino acids. Researchers discovered this after conducting impact experiments simulating a meteorite hitting an ancient ocean.

A brain-computer interface for controlling an exoskeleton Posted: 17 Aug 2015 07:02 PM PDT Scientists have developed a brain-computer control interface for a lower limb exoskeleton by decoding specific signals from within the user's brain.

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