ScienceDaily: Strange Science News

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• Fresh look at trope about Eskimo words for snow
• Electrons slide through the hourglass on surface of bizarre material
• Computers in your clothes? A milestone for wearable electronics
• Why bearcats smell like buttered popcorn
• Are humans the new supercomputer?
• Prehistoric peepers give vital clue in solving 300 million year old 'Tully Monster'
• Drone collisions: Catapult tests the dangers of drones

Fresh look at trope about Eskimo words for snow Posted: 13 Apr 2016 12:12 PM PDT Researchers have taken a fresh look at words for snow, taking on an urban legend referred to by some as 'the great Eskimo vocabulary hoax.'

Electrons slide through the hourglass on surface of bizarre material Posted: 13 Apr 2016 11:01 AM PDT A new state of matter in which current flows only through a set of surface channels that resemble an hourglass is the subject of new research. The team theorized that a new particle, the 'hourglass fermion,' is responsible for this current flow. The tuning of the material's properties can sequentially create and destroy the hourglass fermions, suggesting a range of potential applications such as efficient transistor switching.

Computers in your clothes? A milestone for wearable electronics Posted: 13 Apr 2016 10:59 AM PDT Researchers who are working to develop wearable electronics have reached a milestone: They are able to embroider circuits into fabric with 0.1 mm precision -- the perfect size to integrate electronic components such as sensors and computer memory devices into clothing.

Why bearcats smell like buttered popcorn Posted: 13 Apr 2016 10:59 AM PDT The bearcat. The binturong. Whatever you call this shy, shaggy-haired creature from Southeast Asia, many people who have met one notice the same thing: it smells like a movie theater snack bar. Most describe it as hot buttered popcorn. And for good reason -- the chemical compound that gives freshly made popcorn its mouthwatering smell is also the major aroma emitted by binturong pee, finds a new study.

Are humans the new supercomputer? Posted: 13 Apr 2016 10:58 AM PDT Online computer games allow gamers to solve a class of problems in quantum physics that cannot be easily solved by algorithms alone. Citizen science games have already proved successful in advancing scientific endeavours, but had not previously been applied to quantum physics. A Danish team of scientists find, that players succeed where purely numerical optimization fails, and they present a new optimization method based on the observed player strategies that outperforms prominent, established numerical methods.

Prehistoric peepers give vital clue in solving 300 million year old 'Tully Monster' Posted: 13 Apr 2016 10:56 AM PDT A 300-million-year-old fossil mystery has been solved by a research team which has identified that the ancient 'Tully Monster' was a vertebrate -- due to the unique characteristics of its eyes.

Drone collisions: Catapult tests the dangers of drones Posted: 13 Apr 2016 05:43 AM PDT A new experimental setup with a motorized catapult and high-speed camera now documents in detail what happens when one of the popular small hobby drones hit objects or people. In the first film from the lab, drones are sent on a collision course with a pork roast.

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