ScienceDaily: Strange Science News |
- Repeat act: Parallel selection tweaks many of the same genes to make big and heavy mice
- Why women wiggling in high heels could help improve prosthetic limbs and robots
- African designer and scientist fashion anti-malaria garment that wards off bugs
- Gestures fulfill a big role in language
- Bats, whales, and bio-sonar: New findings about whales’ foraging behavior reveal surprising evolutionary convergence
- Male college students believe taking performance-enhancing drugs for sports is more unethical than using stimulants to improve grades
- Sperm crawl and collide on way to egg, say scientists
| Repeat act: Parallel selection tweaks many of the same genes to make big and heavy mice Posted: 08 May 2012 07:01 PM PDT Organisms are adapted to their environment through their individual characteristics, like body size and body weight. Such complex traits are usually controlled by many genes. As a result, individuals show tremendous variations and can also show subtle gradations. Researchers have now investigated how evolution alters such traits through selection. To do this, they examined the genomes of mouse lines that were selected independently of each other for extreme body size.  |
| Why women wiggling in high heels could help improve prosthetic limbs and robots Posted: 08 May 2012 07:01 PM PDT People walking normally, women tottering in high heels and ostriches strutting all exert the same forces on the ground despite very differently-shaped feet, according to new research. The finding suggests that prosthetic lower limbs and robots' legs could be made more efficient by making them less human-like and more like the prosthetics used by 'Blade Runner' Oscar Pistorius.  |
| African designer and scientist fashion anti-malaria garment that wards off bugs Posted: 08 May 2012 12:20 PM PDT A scientist and designer from Africa have together created a fashionable hooded bodysuit embedded at the molecular level with insecticides for warding off mosquitoes infected with malaria. The outfit debuted on the runway at the Cornell Fashion Collective spring fashion show, April 28.  |
| Gestures fulfill a big role in language Posted: 08 May 2012 12:20 PM PDT People of all ages and cultures gesture while speaking, some much more noticeably than others. But is gesturing uniquely tied to speech, or is it, rather, processed by the brain like any other manual action? Scientists have discovered that actual actions on objects, such as physically stirring a spoon in a cup, have less of an impact on the brain's understanding of speech than simply gesturing as if stirring a spoon in a cup.  |
| Posted: 08 May 2012 12:19 PM PDT Though they evolved separately over millions of years in different worlds of darkness, bats and toothed whales use surprisingly similar acoustic behavior to locate, track, and capture prey using echolocation, the biological equivalent of sonar. Now researchers have shown that the acoustic behavior of these two types of animals while hunting is eerily similar.  |
| Posted: 08 May 2012 06:39 AM PDT In the eyes of young college men, it's more unethical to use steroids to get an edge in sports than it is to use prescription stimulants to enhance one's grades, according to new research.  |
| Sperm crawl and collide on way to egg, say scientists Posted: 07 May 2012 12:41 PM PDT Scientists have shed new light on how sperm navigate the female reproductive tract, "crawling" along the channel walls and swimming around corners -- with frequent collisions.  |
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