ScienceDaily: Strange Science News

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• Secrets of 'SuperAger' brains: Elderly super-agers have brains that look and act decades younger than their age
• Common parasite may trigger suicide attempts: Inflammation from T. gondii produces brain-damaging metabolites
• Sun's almost perfectly round shape baffles scientists
• 'Soft robots' could camouflage themselves one minute, and stand out, the next
• Democracy works for Endangered Species Act, study finds; Citizen involvement key in protecting and saving threatened species
• New form of carbon can put a dent in a diamond
• Polar bears dying in zoo from virus that jumped from zebras
• Brain scans don't lie about age
• 3-D movies in your living room, without the glasses
• Psychopaths get a break from biology: Judges reduce sentences if genetics, neurobiology are blamed
• Bird louse study shows how evolution sometimes repeats itself
• A GPS in your DNA
• 'Dinosaur bends' caused by prolonged diving
• Beetle mating requires strong grip as defensive behavior

Secrets of 'SuperAger' brains: Elderly super-agers have brains that look and act decades younger than their age Posted: 16 Aug 2012 05:16 PM PDT Scientists for the first time have identified an elite group of elderly people age 80 and older whose memories are as sharp as people 20 to 30 years younger than them. And on 3-D MRI scans, the brains of these "SuperAgers" appear as young -- and one brain region was even bigger -- than the brains of the middle-aged participants. The SuperAger's cortex was astoundingly vital and resembled the cortex of people ages 50 to 65.

Common parasite may trigger suicide attempts: Inflammation from T. gondii produces brain-damaging metabolites Posted: 16 Aug 2012 02:04 PM PDT A parasite thought to be harmless and found in many people may actually be causing subtle changes in the brain, leading to suicide attempts. New research adds to the growing work linking an infection caused by the Toxoplasma gondii parasite to suicide attempts.

Sun's almost perfectly round shape baffles scientists Posted: 16 Aug 2012 12:08 PM PDT The sun is nearly the roundest object ever measured. If scaled to the size of a beach ball, it would be so round that the difference between the widest and narrow diameters would be much less than the width of a human hair.

'Soft robots' could camouflage themselves one minute, and stand out, the next Posted: 16 Aug 2012 11:15 AM PDT Researchers have developed a system -- inspired by nature -- that allows soft robots to either camouflage themselves against a background, or to make bold color displays. Such a "dynamic coloration" system could one day have a host of uses, ranging from helping doctors plan complex surgeries to acting as a visual marker to help search crews following a disaster.

Democracy works for Endangered Species Act, study finds; Citizen involvement key in protecting and saving threatened species Posted: 16 Aug 2012 11:15 AM PDT In protecting endangered species, the power of the people is key, an analysis of listings under the US Endangered Species Act finds. The analysis compares listings of "endangered" and "threatened" species initiated by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the agency that administers the Endangered Species Act, to those initiated by citizen petition. Researchers found that citizens, on average, do a better job of picking species that are threatened than does the FWS.

New form of carbon can put a dent in a diamond Posted: 16 Aug 2012 11:15 AM PDT Scientists have observed a new form of very hard carbon clusters, which are unusual in their mix of crystalline and disordered structure. The material is capable of indenting diamond. This finding has potential applications for a range of mechanical, electronic, and electrochemical uses.

Polar bears dying in zoo from virus that jumped from zebras Posted: 16 Aug 2012 10:34 AM PDT Zoos bring together different animal species that would never encounter each other in the wild. On occasion, this can have unforeseen consequences. When in 2010 at the Wuppertal Zoo one polar bear died and another fell severely ill, zoo veterinarians were at a loss as to the cause of the symptoms. It has now been shown that the bears were infected with a recombinant zebra-derived virus that had jumped into other species.

Brain scans don't lie about age Posted: 16 Aug 2012 09:19 AM PDT It isn't uncommon for people to pass for ages much older or younger than their years, but researchers have now found that this feature doesn't apply to our brains. The findings show that sophisticated brain scans can be used to accurately predict age, give or take a year.

3-D movies in your living room, without the glasses Posted: 16 Aug 2012 09:18 AM PDT New television screens will make it possible for viewers to enjoy three-dimensional television programming without those bothersome 3-D glasses. Still, the content has been rather lacking – until now. A new technology will soon be adapting conventional 3-D films to the new displays in real time.

Psychopaths get a break from biology: Judges reduce sentences if genetics, neurobiology are blamed Posted: 16 Aug 2012 09:18 AM PDT A survey of judges in 19 states found that if a convicted criminal is a psychopath, judges consider it an aggravating factor in sentencing, but if judges also hear biological explanations for the disorder, they reduce the sentence by about a year on average.

Bird louse study shows how evolution sometimes repeats itself Posted: 16 Aug 2012 08:08 AM PDT Birds of a feather flock together and -- according to a new analysis -- so do their lice. A study of the genetic heritage of avian feather lice indicates that their louse ancestors first colonized a particular group of birds (ducks or songbirds, for example) and then "radiated" to different habitats on those birds -- to the wings or heads, for instance, where they evolved into different species.

A GPS in your DNA Posted: 16 Aug 2012 07:10 AM PDT Scientists have devised a method for more precisely determining the geographical location of a person's ancestral origins based on a model of genetic traits for every coordinate on the globe. He says that the method also has the potential to reveal new information about the migration patterns of many different human and animal populations.

'Dinosaur bends' caused by prolonged diving Posted: 16 Aug 2012 06:24 AM PDT Dinosaur-like creatures may have injured themselves during leisurely deep-sea diving trips and not from resurfacing too quickly, as previously thought.

Beetle mating requires strong grip as defensive behavior Posted: 15 Aug 2012 02:48 PM PDT Sexual selection in the forked fungus beetle favors larger body and horn size, and a new study investigates the relationship between these traits and the beetles' grip strength.

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