ScienceDaily: Strange Science News

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• Sperm crane their neck to turn right
• What makes a celebrity look like a celebrity?
• Huge organs defy austerity for tiny cave snails in the subterranean realm
• Belugas blow bubbles based on mood
• In social movements, 'slactivists' matter
• Men's interest in babies linked with hormonal responses to sexual stimuli
• Stretchy hydrogel 'Band-Aid' senses, lights up, delivers medicine
• Men have better sense of direction than women, study suggests
• Biologically powered chip created

Sperm crane their neck to turn right Posted: 07 Dec 2015 01:40 PM PST Spermatozoa need to crane their necks to turn right to counteract a left-turning drive caused by the rotation of their tails, new research has found. The researchers discovered that all sperm tails (flagella) rotate in a counter-clockwise motion as they beat to enable them to move through and against the motion of a fluid.

What makes a celebrity look like a celebrity? Posted: 07 Dec 2015 10:19 AM PST Researchers have reconstructed 3-D models of celebrities such as Tom Hanks from large Internet photo collections. The models can deliver speeches that the real actor never performed - one step toward developing fully interactive digital models of people from family or historic photo collections.

Huge organs defy austerity for tiny cave snails in the subterranean realm Posted: 07 Dec 2015 10:15 AM PST While most of the knowledge about tiny snails comes from studying deserted shells sifted out from piles of dust and sand, the present research is the first contemporary microscopic exploration of organs in cave snails tinier than 2 mm. The paper reveals that underneath their seemingly fragile shells, there are strikingly huge organs.

Belugas blow bubbles based on mood Posted: 07 Dec 2015 08:53 AM PST A newly-released study is providing insight into why Beluga whales blow bubbles underwater and how their different shaped bubbles may be indicative of a Beluga's mood.

In social movements, 'slactivists' matter Posted: 07 Dec 2015 08:39 AM PST People who casually like or retweet activist content on social media are often criticized as 'slacktivists.' But in analyzing millions of tweets surrounding social protests, researchers find that in fact, these peripheral users serve to double the reach of the core protesters' message.

Men's interest in babies linked with hormonal responses to sexual stimuli Posted: 07 Dec 2015 08:39 AM PST Young men's interest in babies is associated with their physiological reactivity to sexually explicit material, according to new research. The study showed that young men who reported more interest in babies showed a lower increase in testosterone in response to sexually explicit material than men who weren't as interested in babies.

Stretchy hydrogel 'Band-Aid' senses, lights up, delivers medicine Posted: 07 Dec 2015 08:38 AM PST Engineers have designed what may be the Band-Aid of the future: a sticky, stretchy, gel-like material that can incorporate temperature sensors, LED lights, and other electronics, as well as tiny, drug-delivering reservoirs and channels. The 'smart wound dressing' releases medicine in response to changes in skin temperature and can be designed to light up if, say, medicine is running low.

Men have better sense of direction than women, study suggests Posted: 07 Dec 2015 05:18 AM PST Researchers studied women and men using fMRI during wayfinding tasks in a recently learned virtual environment. Men consistently performed better than women. When women were given a drop of testosterone under their tongue, however, their ability to orient themselves along the four cardinal directions improved.

Biologically powered chip created Posted: 07 Dec 2015 05:18 AM PST Researchers have, for the first time, harnessed the molecular machinery of living systems to power an integrated circuit from ATP, the energy currency of life. They achieved this by integrating a conventional solid-state complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor integrated circuit with an artificial lipid bilayer membrane containing ATP-powered ion pumps, opening the door to creating entirely new artificial systems that contain both biological and solid-state components.

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