ScienceDaily: Top Science News

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• Oral immunotherapy shows promise as treatment for egg allergy
• Environmental concerns increasing infectious disease in amphibians, other animals
• Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope report the earliest spiral galaxy ever seen
• Sinking carbon: Researchers publish results of an iron fertilization experiment
• X-rays illuminate the origin of volcanic hotspots
• Neanderthals in northern Spain had knowledge of plants' healing qualities, study reveals
• Heat is source of 'Pioneer Anomaly', NASA spacecraft study finds
• Magma world: NASA'S Spitzer finds evidence for an exoplanet smaller than Earth
• Do dolphins think nonlinearly?
• Certain jobs dads do linked to higher risk of birth defects
• Heart of a distant quasar observed with unprecedented sharpness: Sharpness two million times finer than human vision
• Mechanisms that allow embryonic stem cells to become any cell in the human body identified

Oral immunotherapy shows promise as treatment for egg allergy Posted: 18 Jul 2012 04:19 PM PDT Giving children and adolescents with egg allergy small but increasing daily doses of egg white powder holds the possibility of developing into a way to enable some of them to eat egg-containing foods without having allergic reactions, according to a new study.

Environmental concerns increasing infectious disease in amphibians, other animals Posted: 18 Jul 2012 11:36 AM PDT Climate change, habitat destruction, pollution and invasive species are all involved in the global crisis of amphibian declines and extinctions, researchers suggest in a new analysis, but increasingly these forces are causing actual mortality in the form of infectious disease.

Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope report the earliest spiral galaxy ever seen Posted: 18 Jul 2012 10:17 AM PDT Astronomers have discovered the first spiral galaxy in the early universe, billions of years before many other spiral galaxies formed.

Sinking carbon: Researchers publish results of an iron fertilization experiment Posted: 18 Jul 2012 10:17 AM PDT Scientists have shown that a substantial proportion of carbon from an induced algal bloom sank to the deep sea floor with iron fertilization, contrary to earlier findings. These results, which were thoroughly analyzed before being published, provide a valuable contribution to our better understanding of the global carbon cycle.

X-rays illuminate the origin of volcanic hotspots Posted: 18 Jul 2012 10:17 AM PDT Scientists have recreated the conditions at Earth's core-mantle boundary 2,900 km beneath the surface. Using X-rays at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility, they probed tiny rock samples at extreme temperature and pressure showing for the first time that partially molten rock under these conditions is buoyant and should segregate towards the surface. This observation is strong evidence for the theory that volcanic hotspots like the Hawaiian Islands originate from mantle plumes generated at the core-mantle boundary.

Neanderthals in northern Spain had knowledge of plants' healing qualities, study reveals Posted: 18 Jul 2012 10:13 AM PDT An international team of researchers has provided the first molecular evidence that Neanderthals not only ate a range of cooked plant foods, but also understood its nutritional and medicinal qualities.

Heat is source of 'Pioneer Anomaly', NASA spacecraft study finds Posted: 18 Jul 2012 08:53 AM PDT The unexpected slowing of NASA's Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft -- the so-called "Pioneer Anomaly" -- turns out to be due to the slight, but detectable effect of heat pushing back on the spacecraft, according to a recent paper. The heat emanates from electrical current flowing through instruments and the thermoelectric power supply.

Magma world: NASA'S Spitzer finds evidence for an exoplanet smaller than Earth Posted: 18 Jul 2012 08:49 AM PDT Astronomers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have detected what they believe is a planet two-thirds the size of Earth. The exoplanet candidate, called UCF-1.01, is located a mere 33 light-years away, making it possibly the nearest world to our solar system that is smaller than our home planet.

Do dolphins think nonlinearly? Posted: 18 Jul 2012 06:06 AM PDT Research, which examines how dolphins might process their sonar signals, could provide a new system for human-made sonar to detect targets, such as sea mines, in bubbly water. When hunting prey, dolphins have been observed to blow 'bubble nets' around schools of fish, which force the fish to cluster together, making them easier for the dolphins to pick off. However, such bubble nets would confound the best human-made sonar because the strong scattering by the bubbles generates 'clutter' in the sonar image, which cannot be distinguished from the true target.

Certain jobs dads do linked to higher risk of birth defects Posted: 18 Jul 2012 04:40 AM PDT Several types of job carried out by future fathers may be linked to an increased risk of birth defects in their babies, suggests new research. These included: mathematicians, physicists, computer scientists; artists; photographers and photo processors; food service workers; landscapers and groundsmen; hairdressers and make-up artists; office and admin support workers; office and admin support workers; sawmill operatives; those working with petrol and gas; those working in chemical industries; printers; those operating cranes and diggers; and drivers.

Heart of a distant quasar observed with unprecedented sharpness: Sharpness two million times finer than human vision Posted: 18 Jul 2012 04:39 AM PDT Astronomers have observed the heart of a distant quasar with unprecedented sharpness, two million times finer than human vision. The observations form a crucial step towards the dramatic scientific goal of the "Event Horizon Telescope" project: imaging the supermassive black holes at the center of our own galaxy and others.

Mechanisms that allow embryonic stem cells to become any cell in the human body identified Posted: 18 Jul 2012 04:37 AM PDT New research sheds light on pluripotency -- the ability of embryonic stem cells to renew themselves indefinitely and to differentiate into all types of mature cells. If scientists can replicate the mechanisms that make pluripotency possible, they could create cells in the laboratory which could be implanted in humans to cure diseases characterized by cell death, such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, diabetes and other degenerative diseases.

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