ScienceDaily: Top Science News

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• For polar bears, it's survival of the fattest
• Scientists discover reasons behind snakes' 'shrinking heads'
• Face of the future rears its head: Digital talking head expresses human emotions on demand
• Laser-like photons signal major step towards quantum 'Internet'
• Sleep study reveals how the adolescent brain makes the transition to mature thinking
• Neanderthal brains focused on vision and movement leaving less room for social networking
• Adoption and risk management in fish: how cichlids prevent their young from being eaten
• New nanomedicine resolves inflammation, promotes tissue healing

For polar bears, it's survival of the fattest Posted: 19 Mar 2013 05:20 PM PDT One of the most southerly populations of polar bears in the world – and the best studied – is struggling to cope with climate-induced changes to sea ice, new research reveals. Based on over 10 years' data the study sheds new light on how sea ice conditions drive polar bears' annual migration on and off the ice.

Scientists discover reasons behind snakes' 'shrinking heads' Posted: 19 Mar 2013 01:04 PM PDT Scientists have uncovered how some sea snakes have developed 'shrunken heads' -- or smaller physical features than their related species.

Face of the future rears its head: Digital talking head expresses human emotions on demand Posted: 19 Mar 2013 01:00 PM PDT Meet Zoe: a digital talking head which can express human emotions on demand with "unprecedented realism" and could herald a new era of human-computer interaction.

Laser-like photons signal major step towards quantum 'Internet' Posted: 19 Mar 2013 09:42 AM PDT The realization of quantum networks is one of the major challenges of modern physics. Now, new research shows how high-quality photons can be generated from "solid-state" chips, bringing us closer to the quantum "Internet."

Sleep study reveals how the adolescent brain makes the transition to mature thinking Posted: 19 Mar 2013 07:27 AM PDT A new study conducted by monitoring the brain waves of sleeping adolescents has found that remarkable changes occur in the brain as it prunes away neuronal connections and makes the major transition from childhood to adulthood.

Neanderthal brains focused on vision and movement leaving less room for social networking Posted: 19 Mar 2013 06:36 AM PDT Neanderthal brains were adapted to allow them to see better and maintain larger bodies, according to new research. Although Neanderthals' brains were similar in size to their contemporary modern human counterparts, fresh analysis of fossil data suggests that their brain structure was rather different. Results imply that larger areas of the Neanderthal brain, compared to the modern human brain, were given over to vision and movement and this left less room for the higher level thinking required to form large social groups.

Adoption and risk management in fish: how cichlids prevent their young from being eaten Posted: 19 Mar 2013 06:11 AM PDT For a variety of reasons, many humans choose to adopt children.  More surprisingly, adoption is fairly widespread in the animal kingdom, even though it would seem to counteract the basic premise of Darwin's theory of evolution, which suggests that animals should raise as many of their own offspring as possible.  Understanding the rationale for adoption has challenged theorists for generations. Scientists now describe a new approach to the problem.

New nanomedicine resolves inflammation, promotes tissue healing Posted: 19 Mar 2013 06:10 AM PDT Researchers have developed biodegradable nanoparticles that are capable of delivering inflammation-resolving drugs to sites of tissue injury. The nanoparticles, which were successfully tested in mice, have potential for the treatment of a wide array of diseases characterized by excessive inflammation, such as atherosclerosis.

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