ScienceDaily: Strange Science News

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• Invisibility cloak might enhance efficiency of solar cells
• Sniffing out cancer with improved 'electronic nose' sensors
• New way of retaining quantum memories stored in light
• Measuring X-rays created by lightning strikes on an aircraft in-flight
• Parenting in the animal world: Turning off the infanticide instinct
• Could 'The Martian's' scientist survive on potatoes alone?
• How number of sex partners differ by height, body mass
• Cheaters sometimes prosper on Facebook
• Tiny, record-breaking Chinese land snails fit almost 10 times into the eye of a needle

Invisibility cloak might enhance efficiency of solar cells Posted: 30 Sep 2015 08:04 AM PDT Success of the energy turnaround will depend decisively on the extended use of renewable energy sources. However, their efficiency partly is much smaller than that of conventional energy sources. The efficiency of commercially available photovoltaic cells, for instance, is about 20 percent. Scientists of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology have now published an unconventional approach to increasing the efficiency of the panels. Optical invisibility cloaks guide sunlight around objects that cast shadows on the solar panel.

Sniffing out cancer with improved 'electronic nose' sensors Posted: 30 Sep 2015 06:25 AM PDT Scientists have been exploring new ways to 'smell' signs of cancer by analyzing what's in patients' breath. In a new study, one team now reports new progress toward this goal. The researchers have developed a small array of flexible sensors, which accurately detect compounds in breath samples that are specific to ovarian cancer.

New way of retaining quantum memories stored in light Posted: 30 Sep 2015 04:44 AM PDT Chinese scientists uncover a novel way of stopping light in a state that stores information encoded in photons, opening the door to applications in quantum information processing.

Measuring X-rays created by lightning strikes on an aircraft in-flight Posted: 30 Sep 2015 04:44 AM PDT Scientists have recorded measurements of X-rays of energies up to 10 MeV caused by electrons accelerated in the intense electric fields inside a thundercloud.

Parenting in the animal world: Turning off the infanticide instinct Posted: 30 Sep 2015 04:43 AM PDT Many bachelor mammals, including lions, mountain gorillas, monkeys, and mice, attack and kill the offspring of other males--a form of infanticide--yet display parental behavior once they themselves become fathers. Now, scientists in Japan have discovered two small brain regions that control which of these very opposite behaviors a male mouse will exhibit. The experiments show how activity patterns in two forebrain regions determine whether males have the urge to act paternally towards mouse pups or to attack them.

Could 'The Martian's' scientist survive on potatoes alone? Posted: 29 Sep 2015 03:13 PM PDT In the movie "The Martian," the main character is stranded on Mars and must rely on his own super-science knowledge to survive. Because the crew had packed some potatoes for a Thanksgiving celebration, Watney creates a lab "garden" and is able to survive off the potatoes -- after calculating how many calories he would need to survive until a rescue mission could arrive. However, packing some pinto bean seeds would increase his chances of survival, experts say.

How number of sex partners differ by height, body mass Posted: 29 Sep 2015 11:22 AM PDT New research shows that how many sex partners people have is relative to their height and body mass. The study focused on 60,058 heterosexual men and women asking each to indicate their height, weight, and how many sex partners they have had. The median number of 'sex partners' reported for both men and women ages 30 to 44 was eight partners since they have been sexually active.

Cheaters sometimes prosper on Facebook Posted: 29 Sep 2015 11:20 AM PDT What does it mean to cheat in a Facebook game like FarmVille? Is it any different from breaking the rules in a traditional videogame like World of Warcraft? New research shows that players often dismiss the seriousness of social network games -- meaning cheating isn't so serious when it's done on Facebook.

Tiny, record-breaking Chinese land snails fit almost 10 times into the eye of a needle Posted: 28 Sep 2015 09:25 AM PDT Land snails vary between 1 mm and 20 cm in terms of the largest diameter of their shells. However, they very rarely reach shell diameters smaller than 1 mm. An international team, led by Dr. Barna Pall-Gergely, Shinshu University, Japan, described seven new land snail species from southern China, including two, which are probably the smallest land snails ever reported. Their findings were published in the open-access journal ZooKeys.

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