ScienceDaily: Strange Science News

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• Need an expert? Try the crowd
• An artificial retina with the capacity to restore normal vision
• Researchers feed pigs, chickens high-protein fungus grown on ethanol leftovers
• Seeing sprites: Researchers catch glimpses of electromagnetic bursts high in Earth's atmosphere
• Researchers simulate volcanic eruptions: Large-scale experiment to shed light on powerful natural disaster
• Mutation in male moth's antenna lets him find a female at the other end of a football field
• Dead men do tell tales: Sociologist used 100 years of obituaries as cultural barometer
• Impulsive micromanager microbes help plants adapt, survive
• Macabre finds in the bog at Alken Enge, Denmark: Skeletal remains of hundreds of warriors unearthed
• Tongue pacemaker for snoring successfully implanted
• Old skull bone rediscovered in mammals
• Mysterious snake disease decoded

Need an expert? Try the crowd Posted: 14 Aug 2012 06:36 PM PDT Can a crowd be an expert? Apparently, yes. Scientists have created the first-ever crowd-sourced predictive model.

An artificial retina with the capacity to restore normal vision Posted: 14 Aug 2012 06:33 PM PDT For the first time, researchers decipher the retina's neural code for brain communication to create novel, more effective prosthetic retinal device for blindness.

Researchers feed pigs, chickens high-protein fungus grown on ethanol leftovers Posted: 14 Aug 2012 06:32 PM PDT A research team is feeding fungi grown on the leftovers of ethanol production to pigs and chickens. The feed-production process also cleans water used to make ethanol, boosting the amount of water that can be recycled back into biofuels.

Seeing sprites: Researchers catch glimpses of electromagnetic bursts high in Earth's atmosphere Posted: 14 Aug 2012 11:48 AM PDT High above the clouds during thunderstorms, some 50 miles above Earth a different kind of lightning dances. Bursts of red and blue light, known as "sprites," flash for a scant one thousandth of a second. They are often only visible to those in flight above a storm, and happen so quickly you might not even see it unless you chance to be looking directly at it. One hard-to-reach place that gets a good view of sprites is the International Space Station.

Researchers simulate volcanic eruptions: Large-scale experiment to shed light on powerful natural disaster Posted: 14 Aug 2012 11:20 AM PDT A rare large-scale attempt to simulate volcanic eruptions will provide much-needed insight into one of Earth's most powerful and mysterious natural disasters.

Mutation in male moth's antenna lets him find a female at the other end of a football field Posted: 14 Aug 2012 09:11 AM PDT A female moth sitting on a goal post could attract a male moth on the other end of a football field. And even if she switched her scent over time, the male could still find her because of a mutation to a single gene in his antenna.

Dead men do tell tales: Sociologist used 100 years of obituaries as cultural barometer Posted: 14 Aug 2012 09:10 AM PDT You know you're living in a culture of celebrity when the Twitter for the president of the United States ranks No. 6, trailing behind rock stars Justin Bieber and Katy Perry by millions of followers. But have celebrities always trumped achievers for public attention? A sociologist has used 100 years of New York Times obituaries as a cultural barometer.

Impulsive micromanager microbes help plants adapt, survive Posted: 14 Aug 2012 08:09 AM PDT Soil microbes are impulsive. So much so that they help plants face the challenges of a rapidly changing climate. Biologists have studied how plants and microbes work together to help plants survive the effects of global changes.

Macabre finds in the bog at Alken Enge, Denmark: Skeletal remains of hundreds of warriors unearthed Posted: 14 Aug 2012 07:03 AM PDT A fractured skull and a thighbone hacked in half. Finds of damaged human bones along with axes, spears, clubs and shields confirm that the bog at Alken Enge was the site of violent conflict.

Tongue pacemaker for snoring successfully implanted Posted: 14 Aug 2012 07:02 AM PDT The first tongue pacemaker was implanted Europe-wide that prevents pauses in breathing during sleep and helps protect against snoring. Physicians used the device for a patient who suffers from obstructive sleep apnea syndrome. In this, at times life-threatening illness, pauses in breathing can occur when the upper throat muscles are excessively relaxed during sleep. As a result, parts of the respiratory tract narrow and the person has difficulty breathing. The typical snoring noises occur when the affected person tries with great effort to get air through the blocked airways.

Old skull bone rediscovered in mammals Posted: 14 Aug 2012 05:54 AM PDT Although clearly discernible in the embryo, shortly afterwards it fuses with other bones beyond recognition. Consequently, researchers have often missed it. Now, however, paleontologists have rediscovered it: the "os interparietale", a skull bone also referred to as the interparietal. Using imaging methods, they were able to detect its presence in all mammals – including humans, which is new as it was previously believed to have been lost in the course of evolution.

Mysterious snake disease decoded Posted: 14 Aug 2012 05:53 AM PDT A novel virus has been identified as the possible cause of a common but mysterious disease that kills a significant number of pet snakes all over the world, thanks to new research.

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