ScienceDaily: Strange Science News

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• When scaling the quantum slopes, veer for the straight path
• Grasshopper mice are numb to the pain of the bark scorpion sting
• Polymer scientists jam nanoparticles, trapping liquids in useful shapes
• Persuading light to mix it up with matter
• Scientists solve mystery of odd patterns of oxygen in solar system's earliest rocks
• Ghostly shape of 'coldest place in the universe' revealed
• Washing your hands makes you optimistic
• Male spiders have better chance of fathering offspring in return for good gifts to potential female mates
• Sharing the power of the crowd
• Tear, repair and rehab: Live tweets of ACL surgery
• Need different types of tissue? Just print them!
• Researcher learns how to break a sweat
• Seeing the song: Study aims to understand how, when the auditory system registers complex auditory-visual synchrony
• Oral bacteria create a 'fingerprint' in your mouth
• 'Name that tune' algorithm used to identify signature whistles of dolphins
• Ignorance is sometimes bliss

When scaling the quantum slopes, veer for the straight path Posted: 24 Oct 2013 01:05 PM PDT Researchers have found that the "landscape" of quantum control -- a representation of quantum mechanics that allows the dynamics of atoms and molecules to be manipulated -- can be unexpectedly simple, which could allow for ready control of quantum operating devices at the nanoscale.

Grasshopper mice are numb to the pain of the bark scorpion sting Posted: 24 Oct 2013 11:34 AM PDT The painful, potentially deadly stings of bark scorpions are nothing more than a slight nuisance to grasshopper mice, which voraciously kill and consume their prey with ease. When stung, the mice briefly lick their paws and move in again for the kill.

Polymer scientists jam nanoparticles, trapping liquids in useful shapes Posted: 24 Oct 2013 11:33 AM PDT Sharp observation by a doctoral student in a polymer science and engineering laboratory recently led her to discover how to kinetically trap and control one liquid within another, locking and separating them in a stable system over long periods, with the ability to tailor and manipulate the shapes and flow characteristics of each. The advance holds promise for a wide range of different applications including in drug delivery, biosensing, fluidics, photovoltaics, encapsulation and bicontinuous media for energy applications and separations media.

Persuading light to mix it up with matter Posted: 24 Oct 2013 11:33 AM PDT Scientists have documented a never-before-seen coupling of photons with electrons on the surface of an exotic crystal.

Scientists solve mystery of odd patterns of oxygen in solar system's earliest rocks Posted: 24 Oct 2013 11:33 AM PDT By re-creating conditions in the solar nebula, the swirl of gas that coalesced to form our star, the planets and the remnant rocky debris that circles the Sun as asteroids, the researchers demonstrated that a simple chemical reaction, governed by known physical principles, can generate silicate dust with oxygen anomalies that match those found in the oldest rocks in the solar system.

Ghostly shape of 'coldest place in the universe' revealed Posted: 24 Oct 2013 11:31 AM PDT Astronomers have taken a new look at the Boomerang Nebula, the so-called "coldest place in the Universe" to learn more about its frigid properties and determine its true shape, which has an eerily ghost-like appearance.

Washing your hands makes you optimistic Posted: 24 Oct 2013 11:13 AM PDT Washing our hands influences how we think, judge and decide. This is what researchers confirmed through experiments when examining how physical cleansing affects us after failure.

Male spiders have better chance of fathering offspring in return for good gifts to potential female mates Posted: 24 Oct 2013 09:19 AM PDT If a male spider goes to the trouble of finding a good gift, wraps it up nicely in spider silk and offers it to a female he would like to mate, he has far better chances of fathering her offspring than if he skipped the present. This is shown in new research, where researchers studied what it means for female spiders to receive gifts.

Sharing the power of the crowd Posted: 24 Oct 2013 09:13 AM PDT Over the past three years, 300,000 gamers have helped scientists with genomic research by playing Phylo, an online puzzle game. Now the developers of the game are making this crowd of players available to scientists around the globe. The idea is to put human talent to work to improve on what is already being done by computers in the field of comparative genomics.

Tear, repair and rehab: Live tweets of ACL surgery Posted: 24 Oct 2013 09:12 AM PDT In sports, anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tears happen. When star players suffer one, fans sometimes have questions as to what these injuries involve and how they are repaired.

Need different types of tissue? Just print them! Posted: 24 Oct 2013 07:20 AM PDT What sounds like a dream of the future has already been the subject of research for a few years: simply printing out tissue and organs. Now scientists have further refined the technology and are able to produce various tissue types.

Researcher learns how to break a sweat Posted: 23 Oct 2013 03:39 PM PDT Without sweat, we would overheat and die. In a recent paper, a team of researchers explored the ultimate origin of this sticky, stinky but vital substance -- sweat gland stem cells.

Seeing the song: Study aims to understand how, when the auditory system registers complex auditory-visual synchrony Posted: 23 Oct 2013 03:32 PM PDT Imagine the brain's delight when experiencing the sounds of Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" while simultaneously taking in a light show produced by a visualizer. A new study did more than that. To understand how the brain responds to complex auditory-visual stimuli like music and moving images, the study tracked parts of the auditory system involved in the perceptual processing of "Moonlight Sonata" while synchronized with the light show made by the iTunes Jelly visualizer.

Oral bacteria create a 'fingerprint' in your mouth Posted: 23 Oct 2013 03:32 PM PDT The bacteria in the human mouth -- particularly those nestled under the gums -- are as powerful as a fingerprint at identifying a person's ethnicity, new research shows.

'Name that tune' algorithm used to identify signature whistles of dolphins Posted: 23 Oct 2013 03:32 PM PDT The same algorithm used to find tunes in music retrieval systems has been successfully applied in identifying the signature whistles of dolphins, affording a new time-saving device for research into the world of dolphin communication.

Ignorance is sometimes bliss Posted: 23 Oct 2013 11:11 AM PDT Evolutionary biologist W.D. Hamilton predicted that organisms ought to evolve the ability to discriminate degrees of kinship so as to refine their ability to direct help to individuals with whom they shared the most genes. But two biologists point out that there seem to be many cases where "a veil of ignorance" prevents organisms from gaining this kind of information, forcing them to consider a situation from the perspective of all members of their group.

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