ScienceDaily: Top Science News

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• Turning the Moon into a cosmic ray detector
• Mechanized human hands: System designed to improve hand function lost to nerve damage
• On the road to artificial photosynthesis: Study reveals key catalytic factors in carbon dioxide reduction
• New discovery could pave way for spin-based computing: Novel oxide-based magnetism follows electrical commands
• Efficiently harvesting hydrogen fuel from Sun using Earth-abundant materials
• Agonizing rabies deaths can be stopped worldwide
• Earth's water is older than the sun: Likely originated as ices that formed in interstellar space
• Stone Age tools: Innovation was local, not imported, in Eurasia more than 300,000 years ago
• Amino acids? Interstellar molecules are branching out
• Unlocking long-hidden mechanisms of plant cell division
• Strategic or random? How the brain chooses
• Severe childhood epilepsies: Large international study pinpoints synapse genes with major roles
• Dinosaur family tree gives fresh insight into rapid rise of birds

Turning the Moon into a cosmic ray detector Posted: 26 Sep 2014 05:58 AM PDT Scientists are to turn the Moon into a giant particle detector to help understand the origin of Ultra-High-Energy (UHE) cosmic rays -- the most energetic particles in the Universe. The origin of UHE cosmic rays is one of the great mysteries in astrophysics. Nobody knows where these extremely rare cosmic rays come from or how they get their enormous energies. Physicists detect them on Earth at a rate of less than one particle per square kilometer per century.

Mechanized human hands: System designed to improve hand function lost to nerve damage Posted: 25 Sep 2014 02:26 PM PDT Engineers have developed and successfully demonstrated the value of a simple pulley mechanism to improve hand function after surgery. The device, tested in cadaver hands, is one of the first instruments ever created that could improve the transmission of mechanical forces and movement while implanted inside the body.

On the road to artificial photosynthesis: Study reveals key catalytic factors in carbon dioxide reduction Posted: 25 Sep 2014 12:08 PM PDT The excessive atmospheric carbon dioxide that is driving global climate change could be harnessed into a renewable energy technology that would be a win for both the environment and the economy. That is the lure of artificial photosynthesis in which the electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide is used to produce clean, green and sustainable fuels. However, finding a catalyst for reducing carbon dioxide that is highly selective and efficient has proven to be a huge scientific challenge. New experimental results have revealed the critical influence of the electronic and geometric effects in the carbon dioxide reduction reaction and might help make the problem easier to tackle.

New discovery could pave way for spin-based computing: Novel oxide-based magnetism follows electrical commands Posted: 25 Sep 2014 12:08 PM PDT Electricity and magnetism rule our digital world. Semiconductors process electrical information, while magnetic materials enable long-term data storage. A research team has now discovered a way to fuse these two distinct properties in a single material, paving the way for new ultrahigh density storage and computing architectures.

Efficiently harvesting hydrogen fuel from Sun using Earth-abundant materials Posted: 25 Sep 2014 11:12 AM PDT Scientists have a new efficient way of producing hydrogen fuel from sunlight and water. By combining a pair of solar cells made with a mineral called perovskite and low cost electrodes, scientists have obtained a 12.3 percent conversion efficiency from solar energy to hydrogen, a record using Earth-abundant materials as opposed to rare metals.

Agonizing rabies deaths can be stopped worldwide Posted: 25 Sep 2014 11:12 AM PDT Ridding the world of rabies in humans is cost-effective and achievable through mass dog vaccination programs, an international team of researchers says. A rabies vaccine has long existed. Even so, the disease kills an estimated 69,000 people worldwide -- that's 189 each day. Forty percent of them are children, mostly in Africa and Asia. The disease is spread primarily through the saliva of infected dogs. Once a person develops symptoms, the chance that he or she will die is nearly 100-percent.

Earth's water is older than the sun: Likely originated as ices that formed in interstellar space Posted: 25 Sep 2014 11:12 AM PDT Water was crucial to the rise of life on Earth and is also important to evaluating the possibility of life on other planets. Identifying the original source of Earth's water is key to understanding how life-fostering environments come into being and how likely they are to be found elsewhere. New work found that much of our solar system's water likely originated as ices that formed in interstellar space.

Stone Age tools: Innovation was local, not imported, in Eurasia more than 300,000 years ago Posted: 25 Sep 2014 11:12 AM PDT Analysis of stone artifacts from the excavation of a 300,000-year-old site in Armenia shows that new technologies evolved locally, rather than being imported from outside, as previously thought.

Amino acids? Interstellar molecules are branching out Posted: 25 Sep 2014 11:12 AM PDT Scientists have for the first time detected a carbon-bearing molecule with a 'branched' structure in interstellar space. The discovery of iso-propyl cyanide opens a new frontier in the complexity of molecules found in regions of star formation, and bodes well for the presence of amino acids, for which this branched structure is a key characteristic.

Unlocking long-hidden mechanisms of plant cell division Posted: 25 Sep 2014 10:28 AM PDT Along with copying and splitting DNA during division, cells must have a way to break safely into two viable daughter cells, a process called cytokinesis. But the molecular basis of how plant cells accomplish this without mistakes has been unclear for many years. Now a detailed new model that for the first time proposes how plant cells precisely position a 'dynamic and complex' structure called a phragmoplast at the cell center during every division and how it directs cytokinesis.

Strategic or random? How the brain chooses Posted: 25 Sep 2014 10:05 AM PDT The brain can temporarily disconnect information about past experience from decision-making circuits, thereby triggering random behavior, a study has demonstrated. The new studies look at how the brain generates strategic and random behavior, and how it switches between the two modes.

Severe childhood epilepsies: Large international study pinpoints synapse genes with major roles Posted: 25 Sep 2014 10:05 AM PDT An international research team has identified gene mutations causing severe, difficult-to-treat forms of childhood epilepsy. Many of the mutations disrupt functioning in the synapse, the junction at which nerve cells intercommunicate.

Dinosaur family tree gives fresh insight into rapid rise of birds Posted: 25 Sep 2014 10:05 AM PDT The study shows that the familiar anatomical features of birds – such as feathers, wings and wishbones – all first evolved piecemeal in their dinosaur ancestors over tens of millions of years. However, once a fully functioning bird body shape was complete, an evolutionary explosion began, causing a rapid increase in the rate at which birds evolved. This led eventually to the thousands of avian species that we know today.

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