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Tuesday, March 27, 2012

ScienceDaily: Strange Science News

ScienceDaily: Strange Science News


Research: 'Buckliball' opens new avenue in design of foldable engineering structures

Posted: 26 Mar 2012 01:08 PM PDT

Inspired by a toy, the 'buckliball' -- a collapsible structure fabricated from a single piece of material -- represents a new class of 3-D, origami-like structures.

Slime mold mimics Canadian highway network

Posted: 26 Mar 2012 10:36 AM PDT

A researcher placed rolled oats on a map of Canada, covering the major urban areas. One urban area held the slime mold. The slime mold reached out for the food, creating thin tubes that eventually formed a network mirroring the Canadian highway system.

New 'thermal' approach to invisibility cloaking hides heat to enhance technology

Posted: 26 Mar 2012 10:35 AM PDT

In a new approach to invisibility cloaking, a team of French researchers has proposed isolating or cloaking objects from sources of heat -- essentially "thermal cloaking." This method taps into some of the same principles as optical cloaking and may lead to novel ways to control heat in electronics and, on an even larger scale, might someday prove useful for spacecraft and solar technologies.

Smiling through the tears: Study shows how tearjerkers make people happier

Posted: 26 Mar 2012 10:25 AM PDT

People enjoy watching tragedy movies like "Titanic" because they deliver what may seem to be an unlikely benefit: tragedies actually make people happier in the short-term.

Tagged lice help researchers study social interactions of shy brown mouse lemurs

Posted: 26 Mar 2012 08:29 AM PDT

It can be difficult to uncover the behavior of small, shy, nocturnal primates like the brown mouse lemur, especially in the dense rainforests of Madagascar where this lemur lives. New research shows that the social interactions of brown mouse lemurs can be monitored by mapping the transfer of tagged lice.

'Noodle gels' or 'spaghetti highways' could become tools of regenerative medicine

Posted: 26 Mar 2012 08:24 AM PDT

Medicine's recipe for keeping older people active and functioning in their homes and workplaces — and healing younger people injured in catastrophic accidents — may include "noodle gels" and other lab-made invisible filaments that resemble uncooked spaghetti with nanoscale dimensions, a scientist has said.

Inner weapons against allergies: Gut bacteria control allergic diseases, study suggests

Posted: 25 Mar 2012 02:32 PM PDT

Researchers have found that commensal bacteria in humans might play an important role in influencing and controlling allergic inflammation. The study suggest that therapeutic targeting of immune cell responses to resident gut bacteria may be beneficial in treating allergic diseases.

Huge hamsters and pint-sized porcupines thrive on islands: Researchers test 'island rule' of rodent evolution

Posted: 23 Mar 2012 10:49 AM PDT

From miniature elephants to monster mice, and even Hobbit-sized humans, size changes in island animals are well known to science. Biologists have long believed that large animals evolving on islands tend to get smaller, while small animals tend to get bigger, a generalization they call "the island rule." A new study puts that old idea to the test in island and mainland rodents.

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