ScienceDaily: Strange Science News |
- Biologists discover female spiders produce mating plugs to prevent unwanted sex from males
- Test flight over Peru ruins could revolutionize archaeological mapping
- Brain imaging can predict how intelligent you are: 'Global brain connectivity' explains 10 percent of variance in individual intelligence
- Slower, longer sperm outcompete faster rivals, surprising finding shows
- Artificial butter flavoring ingredient linked to key Alzheimer's disease process
- Tropical climate in the Antarctic: Palm trees once thrived on today’s icy coasts 52 million years ago
- Theoretical physicists probe the Majorana mystery
- Strangers on a bus: Study reveals lengths commuters go to avoid each other
| Biologists discover female spiders produce mating plugs to prevent unwanted sex from males Posted: 01 Aug 2012 03:51 PM PDT Scientists have discovered a new mechanism of animal mating plug production. In the giant wood spider Nephila pilipes, a highly sexually dimorphic and polygamous species, many small males compete with one other for access to a few huge females. During copulation these males are known to sever their own genitals in an attempt to plug the female, thereby gaining paternity advantage by preventing other males from mating with her.  |
| Test flight over Peru ruins could revolutionize archaeological mapping Posted: 01 Aug 2012 01:55 PM PDT Archaeological sites that currently take years to map could be completed in minutes with a new system that uses an unmanned aerial vehicle that is currently being tested in Peru.  |
| Posted: 01 Aug 2012 12:47 PM PDT New research suggests that as much as 10 percent of individual differences in intelligence can be explained by the strength of neural pathways connecting the left lateral prefrontal cortex to the rest of the brain.  |
| Slower, longer sperm outcompete faster rivals, surprising finding shows Posted: 01 Aug 2012 11:37 AM PDT When it comes to sperm meeting eggs in sexual reproduction, conventional wisdom holds that the fastest swimming sperm are most likely to succeed in their quest to fertilize eggs. That wisdom was turned upside down in a new study of sperm competition in fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster), which found that slower and/or longer sperm outcompete their faster rivals.  |
| Artificial butter flavoring ingredient linked to key Alzheimer's disease process Posted: 01 Aug 2012 10:26 AM PDT A new study raises concern about chronic exposure of workers in industry to a food flavoring ingredient used to produce the distinctive buttery flavor and aroma of microwave popcorn, margarines, snack foods, candy, baked goods, pet foods and other products. It found evidence that the ingredient, diacetyl, intensifies the damaging effects of an abnormal brain protein linked to Alzheimer's disease.  |
| Posted: 01 Aug 2012 10:23 AM PDT Given the predicted rise in global temperatures in the coming decades, climate scientists are particularly interested in warm periods that occurred in the geological past. Knowledge of past episodes of global warmth can be used to better understand the relationship between climate change, variations in atmospheric carbon dioxide and the reaction of Earth's biosphere. Scientists have discovered an intense warming phase around 52 million years ago in drill cores obtained from the seafloor near Antarctica — a region that is especially important in climate research.  |
| Theoretical physicists probe the Majorana mystery Posted: 01 Aug 2012 08:35 AM PDT Physicists close in on a subatomic particle that could enable the next generation of supercomputers and illuminate the inscrutability of cosmic dark matter.  |
| Strangers on a bus: Study reveals lengths commuters go to avoid each other Posted: 01 Aug 2012 06:36 AM PDT You're on the bus, and one of the only free seats is next to you. How, and why, do you stop another passenger sitting there? New research reveals the tactics commuters use to avoid each other, a practice the article describes as 'nonsocial transient behavior.'  |
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