ScienceDaily: Top Science News |
- Small family size increases wealth of descendants but reduces evolutionary success
- Chimpanzees create 'social traditions': Unique handclasp grooming behavior reveals local difference
- NASA's Kepler discovers multiple planets orbiting a pair of stars
- Why are there so many species of beetles and so few crocodiles?
- Male snails babysit for other dads: Family secrets of marine whelk Solenosteira macrospira
- Metabolism in the brain fluctuates with circadian rhythm
- Heightened visual awareness by following brains natural rhythms?
- Gene that predicts happiness in women discovered
- Space-warping white dwarfs produce gravitational waves
- Enlisting the AIDS virus to fight cancer
| Small family size increases wealth of descendants but reduces evolutionary success Posted: 28 Aug 2012 04:09 PM PDT Evolutionary biologists have long puzzled over this because natural selection is expected to have selected for organisms that try to maximize their reproduction. But in industrialized societies around the world, increasing wealth coincides with people deliberately limiting their family size -- the so-called 'demographic transition'. In a new study, researchers reject a popular theory put forward to explain the phenomenon. This 'adaptive' hypothesis proposes that low fertility may boost evolutionary success in the long term by increasing offspring wealth, which in turn eventually increases the number of long-term descendants because richer offspring end up having more children.  |
| Chimpanzees create 'social traditions': Unique handclasp grooming behavior reveals local difference Posted: 28 Aug 2012 04:08 PM PDT Researchers have revealed that chimpanzees are not only capable of learning from one another, but also use this social information to form and maintain local traditions. A recent study shows that the way in which chimpanzees groom each other depends on the community to which they belong. Specifically, it is the unique handclasp grooming behaviour that reveals this local difference.  |
| NASA's Kepler discovers multiple planets orbiting a pair of stars Posted: 28 Aug 2012 04:01 PM PDT Coming less than a year after the announcement of the first circumbinary planet, Kepler-16b, NASA's Kepler mission has discovered multiple transiting planets orbiting two suns for the first time. This system, known as a circumbinary planetary system, is 4,900 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus.  |
| Why are there so many species of beetles and so few crocodiles? Posted: 28 Aug 2012 02:17 PM PDT Why are there so many species of beetles and so few crocodiles? The answer may be ecological limits to species number, scientists report.  |
| Male snails babysit for other dads: Family secrets of marine whelk Solenosteira macrospira Posted: 28 Aug 2012 01:30 PM PDT Pity the male of the marine whelk, Solenosteira macrospira. He does all the work of raising the young, from egg-laying to hatching -- even though few of the baby snails are his own. Throw in extensive promiscuity and sibling cannibalism, and the species has one of the most extreme life histories in the animal kingdom.  |
| Metabolism in the brain fluctuates with circadian rhythm Posted: 28 Aug 2012 11:33 AM PDT The rhythm of life is driven by the cycles of day and night, and most organisms carry in their cells a common, (roughly) 24-hour beat. In animals, this rhythm emerges from the suprachiasmatic nucleus in the hypothalamus. Take it out of the brain and keep it alive in a lab dish and this "brain clock" will keep on ticking for days. A new study reveals that the brain clock itself is driven, in part, by metabolism.  |
| Heightened visual awareness by following brains natural rhythms? Posted: 28 Aug 2012 10:51 AM PDT Like a melody that keeps playing in your head even after the music stops, researchers have shown that the beat goes on when it comes to the human visual system. Researchers used periodic visual stimuli and electroencephalogram recordings and found, one, that they could precisely time the brain's natural oscillations to future repetitions of the event, and, two, that the effect occurred even after the prompting stimuli was discontinued. These rhythmic oscillations lead to a heightened visual awareness of the next event, meaning controlling them could lead to better visual processing when it matters most, such as in environments like air traffic control towers.  |
| Gene that predicts happiness in women discovered Posted: 28 Aug 2012 10:51 AM PDT Sorry guys, this happiness gene is for women. A new study has found a gene that appears to make women happy, but it doesn't work for men.  |
| Space-warping white dwarfs produce gravitational waves Posted: 28 Aug 2012 10:49 AM PDT Gravitational waves, much like the recently discovered Higgs boson, are notoriously difficult to observe. Scientists first detected these ripples in the fabric of space-time indirectly, using radio signals from a pulsar-neutron star binary system. The find, which required exquisitely accurate timing of the radio signals, garnered its discoverers a Nobel Prize. Now a team of astronomers has detected the same effect at optical wavelengths, in light from a pair of eclipsing white dwarf stars.  |
| Enlisting the AIDS virus to fight cancer Posted: 28 Aug 2012 04:33 AM PDT Can HIV be transformed into a biotechnological tool for improving human health? According to a team of scientists, the answer is yes. Taking advantage of the HIV replication machinery, the researchers have been able to select a specific mutant protein. Added to a culture of tumor cells in combination with an anticancer drug, this protein improves the effectiveness of the treatment at 1/300 the normal dosage levels.  |
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