ScienceDaily: Top Science News

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• Photovoltaics from any semiconductor: Opens door to more widespread solar energy devices
• Do ovaries continue to produce eggs during adulthood?
• First robot that mimics the water striders' jumping abilities
• Protective role of skin microbiota described
• Climate change linked to ozone loss: May result in more skin cancer
• Biological mechanism for growing massive animal weapons, ornaments discovered
• Entropy can lead to order, paving the route to nanostructures
• World's smallest semiconductor laser created
• Brightest stars don't live alone: Most stellar heavyweights come in interacting pairs, VLT finds
• Engineers are designing, building mechanical ray
• One act of remembering can influence future acts
• Genetic cause of most lethal brain tumor pinpointed: May lead to new treatment
• Genomic study of Africa's hunter-gatherers elucidates human variation and ancient interbreeding
• Eye-writing technology: Writing in cursive with your eyes only
• Controlling monkey brains and behavior with light
• Actinobacteria as the base of the evolutionary tree
• Orientation of far-off multiplanet system has orientation very similar to our own solar system
• Switching the state of matter may provide a novel building block for ultra low power devices
• A pulsar with a tremendous hiccup: Young and energetic neutron star has unusually irregular rotation

Photovoltaics from any semiconductor: Opens door to more widespread solar energy devices Posted: 26 Jul 2012 03:03 PM PDT Researchers have developed a technology that enables low-cost, high efficiency solar cells to be made from virtually any semiconductor material. This opens the door to the use of plentiful, relatively inexpensive semiconductors previously considered unsuitable for photovoltaics.

Do ovaries continue to produce eggs during adulthood? Posted: 26 Jul 2012 03:02 PM PDT A compelling new genetic study tracing the origins of immature egg cells, or 'oocytes', from the embryonic period throughout adulthood adds new information to a growing controversy. The notion of a "biological clock" in women arises from the fact that oocytes progressively decline in number as females get older, along with a decades-old dogmatic view that oocytes cannot be renewed in mammals after birth.

First robot that mimics the water striders' jumping abilities Posted: 26 Jul 2012 12:39 PM PDT The first bio-inspired microrobot capable of not just walking on water like the water strider -- but continuously jumping up and down like a real water strider -- now is a reality. Scientists have developed the agile microrobot which could use its jumping ability to avoid obstacles on reconnaissance or other missions.

Protective role of skin microbiota described Posted: 26 Jul 2012 12:39 PM PDT Scientists have found that bacteria that normally live in the skin may help protect the body from infection. As the largest organ of the body, the skin represents a major site of interaction with microbes in the environment.

Climate change linked to ozone loss: May result in more skin cancer Posted: 26 Jul 2012 11:22 AM PDT Scientists are warning that a newly-discovered connection between climate change and depletion of the ozone layer over the US could allow more damaging ultraviolet (UV) radiation to reach Earth's surface, leading to increased incidence of skin cancer.

Biological mechanism for growing massive animal weapons, ornaments discovered Posted: 26 Jul 2012 11:22 AM PDT In the animal kingdom, huge weapons such as elk antlers or ornaments like peacock feathers are sexy. Their extreme size attracts potential mates and warns away lesser rivals. Now scientists have discovered a developmental mechanism they think may be responsible for the excessive growth of threatening horns or come-hither tail feathers.

Entropy can lead to order, paving the route to nanostructures Posted: 26 Jul 2012 11:22 AM PDT Researchers trying to herd tiny particles into useful ordered formations have found an unlikely ally: Entropy, a tendency generally described as "disorder."

World's smallest semiconductor laser created Posted: 26 Jul 2012 11:21 AM PDT Physicists have developed the world's smallest semiconductor laser, a breakthrough for emerging photonic technology with applications from computing to medicine.

Brightest stars don't live alone: Most stellar heavyweights come in interacting pairs, VLT finds Posted: 26 Jul 2012 11:21 AM PDT A study using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope has shown that most very bright high-mass stars do not live alone. Almost three quarters of them are found to have a close companion star, far more than previously thought. Surprisingly most of these pairs are experiencing disruptive interactions, and about one third are even expected to ultimately merge to form a single star.

Engineers are designing, building mechanical ray Posted: 26 Jul 2012 11:20 AM PDT Batoid rays, such as stingrays and manta rays, are among nature's most elegant swimmers. They are fast, highly maneuverable, graceful, energy-efficient, can cruise, bird-like, for long distances in the deep, open ocean, and rest on the sea bottom. Researchers are trying to emulate the seemingly effortless but powerful swimming motions of rays by engineering their own ray-like machine modeled on nature. They are designing an "autonomous underwater vehicle" that someday may surpass what nature has provided as a model. The vehicle has potential commercial and military applications, and could be used for undersea exploration and scientific research.

One act of remembering can influence future acts Posted: 26 Jul 2012 11:20 AM PDT Can the simple act of recognizing a face as you walk down the street change the way we think? Or can taking the time to notice something new on our way to work change what we remember about that walk? Researchers now show that remembering something old or noticing something new can bias how you process subsequent information.

Genetic cause of most lethal brain tumor pinpointed: May lead to new treatment Posted: 26 Jul 2012 11:20 AM PDT Researchers have discovered that some cases of glioblastoma, the most common and aggressive form of primary brain cancer, are caused by the fusion of two adjacent genes. The study also found that drugs that target the protein produced by this genetic aberration can dramatically slow the growth of glioblastomas in mice.

Genomic study of Africa's hunter-gatherers elucidates human variation and ancient interbreeding Posted: 26 Jul 2012 09:21 AM PDT Geneticists have analyzed the fully sequenced genomes of 15 Africans belonging to three different hunter-gatherer groups and decipher some of what these genetic codes have to say about human diversity and evolution.

Eye-writing technology: Writing in cursive with your eyes only Posted: 26 Jul 2012 09:21 AM PDT New technology might allow people who have almost completely lost the ability to move their arms or legs to communicate freely, by using their eyes to write in cursive. The eye-writing technology tricks the neuromuscular machinery into doing something that is usually impossible: to voluntarily produce smooth eye movements in arbitrary directions.

Controlling monkey brains and behavior with light Posted: 26 Jul 2012 09:21 AM PDT Researchers have for the first time shown that they can control the behavior of monkeys by using pulses of blue light to activate particular brain cells. The findings represent a key advance for optogenetics, a state-of-the-art method for making causal connections between brain activity and behavior. The researchers say that similar light-based mind control could likely also be made to work in humans for therapeutic ends.

Actinobacteria as the base of the evolutionary tree Posted: 26 Jul 2012 08:27 AM PDT Using comparisons of protein structure, researchers identified Actinobacteria as the base of the evolutionary tree.

Orientation of far-off multiplanet system has orientation very similar to our own solar system Posted: 26 Jul 2012 08:13 AM PDT Our solar system exhibits a remarkably orderly configuration: The eight planets orbit the sun much like runners on a track, circling in their respective lanes and always keeping within the same sprawling plane. In contrast, most exoplanets discovered in recent years -- particularly the giants known as "hot Jupiters" -- inhabit far more eccentric orbits. Now researchers have detected the first exoplanetary system, 10,000 light years away, with regularly aligned orbits similar to those in our solar system. At the center of this faraway system is Kepler-30, a star as bright and massive as the sun.

Switching the state of matter may provide a novel building block for ultra low power devices Posted: 26 Jul 2012 07:17 AM PDT Sixty years after the transistor began a technological revolution that transformed nearly every aspect of our daily lives, a new transistor brings innovations that may help to do so again. The device uses the electrostatic accumulation of electrical charge on the surface of a strongly-correlated material to trigger bulk switching of electronic state. Functional at room temperature and triggered by a potential of only 1 V, the switching mechanism provides a novel building block for ultra low power devices, non-volatile memory and optical switches based on a new device concept.

A pulsar with a tremendous hiccup: Young and energetic neutron star has unusually irregular rotation Posted: 26 Jul 2012 07:17 AM PDT Pulsars are superlative cosmic beacons. These compact neutron stars rotate about their axes many times per second, emitting radio waves and gamma radiation into space.  Using ingenious data analysis methods, researchers dug a very special gamma-ray pulsar out of data from the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. The pulsar J1838-0537 is radio-quiet, very young, and, during the observation period, experienced the strongest rotation glitch ever observed for a gamma-ray-only pulsar.

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