ScienceDaily: Strange Science News

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• Foraging baboons are picky punters: Baboon foraging choices depend on their habitat and social status
• Looking at you: Face genes identified; Five genes have been found to determine human facial shapes
• Honestly? Just sign here -- first; Signature placement curbs cheating, study shows
• Long menopause allows killer whales to care for adult sons
• Researchers look to alien soils for heat shield
• Boiling water without bubbles: Researchers engineer special surface, allowing water to boil without producing bubbles
• Chemists develop nose-like array to 'smell' cancer
• Snakes minus birds equals more spiders for Guam: Ecologists look for effects of bird loss caused by invasive brown treesnake
• Scientists use sound waves to levitate liquids, improve pharmaceuticals
• Study of giant viruses shakes up tree of life
• Laser-powered 'needle' promises pain-free injections
• Immune system compensates for 'leaky gut' in inflammatory bowel disease susceptibility
• Under-twisted DNA origami delivers cancer drugs to tumors
• Computer program can identify rough sketches
• World's hottest temperature cools a bit
• Shine and Rise: Light-activated reversal of anesthesia
• Predicting if scientists will be stars: New formula reveals if young scientists will have brilliant future
• Facebook boosts voter turnout: 61-million-person experiment demonstrates voting can be influenced by social networks
• Over fishing tips scales towards a fish population of slow growing, couch potatoes

Foraging baboons are picky punters: Baboon foraging choices depend on their habitat and social status Posted: 13 Sep 2012 05:39 PM PDT Baboons choose which tree to find food in and who to take foraging, just like humans decide where to shop and who to go shopping with.

Looking at you: Face genes identified; Five genes have been found to determine human facial shapes Posted: 13 Sep 2012 02:33 PM PDT Five genes have been found to determine human facial shapes, researchers report.

Honestly? Just sign here -- first; Signature placement curbs cheating, study shows Posted: 13 Sep 2012 11:14 AM PDT Tax collectors and insurance agencies trying to boost honest reporting could improve compliance simply by asking people to sign their forms at the beginning instead of at the end. That's because attesting to the truthfulness of the information before a form is filled out tends to activate people's moral sense, making it harder for them to fudge their numbers after, says a new paper.

Long menopause allows killer whales to care for adult sons Posted: 13 Sep 2012 11:14 AM PDT Scientists have found the answer to why female killer whales have the longest menopause of any non-human species -- to care for their adult sons. The research shows that, for a male over 30, the death of his mother means an almost 14-fold-increase in the likelihood of his death within the following year.

Researchers look to alien soils for heat shield Posted: 13 Sep 2012 11:04 AM PDT An important test is coming up next week to see whether a heat shield made from the soil of the moon, Mars or an asteroid will stand up to the searing demands of a plunge through Earth's atmosphere. At stake is the possibility that future spacecraft could leave Earth without carrying a heavy heat shield and instead make one on the surface of another world and ride it home safely. The weight savings opens new possibilities ranging from using smaller rockets to carrying many more supplies on an exploration mission.

Boiling water without bubbles: Researchers engineer special surface, allowing water to boil without producing bubbles Posted: 13 Sep 2012 10:29 AM PDT Every cook knows that boiling water bubbles, right? New research turns that notion on its head. Scientists have shown how a specially engineered coated surface can create a stable vapor cushion between the surface and a hot liquid and eliminate the bubbles that are created during boiling.

Chemists develop nose-like array to 'smell' cancer Posted: 13 Sep 2012 10:23 AM PDT In the fight against cancer, knowing the enemy's identity is crucial for diagnosis and treatment, especially in metastatic cancers that spread between organs and tissues. Now chemists have developed a rapid, sensitive way to detect microscopic levels of many metastatic cell types in living tissue.

Snakes minus birds equals more spiders for Guam: Ecologists look for effects of bird loss caused by invasive brown treesnake Posted: 13 Sep 2012 09:36 AM PDT Ecologists have found as many as 40 times more spiders in Guam's remote jungle than are found on nearby islands. The booming spider population is likely due to the destruction of the island's forest birds, including those that eat insects, by the invasive brown treesnake. The large-scale cross-island comparison uncovered a larger effect of birds on spiders than had been predicted from small-scale experiments.

Scientists use sound waves to levitate liquids, improve pharmaceuticals Posted: 13 Sep 2012 09:35 AM PDT Scientists have been using an "acoustic levitator" to find new ways to achieve containerless drug processing.

Study of giant viruses shakes up tree of life Posted: 13 Sep 2012 09:35 AM PDT A new study of giant viruses supports the idea that viruses are ancient living organisms and not inanimate molecular remnants run amok, as some scientists have argued. The study reshapes the universal family tree, adding a fourth major branch to the three that most scientists agree represent the fundamental domains of life.

Laser-powered 'needle' promises pain-free injections Posted: 13 Sep 2012 09:35 AM PDT From flu shots to immunizations, needle injections are among the least popular staples of medical care. A new laser-based system that blasts microscopic jets of drugs into the skin could soon make getting a shot as painless as being hit with a puff of air. The system uses a laser to propel a tiny, precise stream of medicine with just the right amount of force.

Immune system compensates for 'leaky gut' in inflammatory bowel disease susceptibility Posted: 13 Sep 2012 09:35 AM PDT New research could clarify how inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), conditions that include ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease, are triggered and develop. Scientists have shown how the immune system can compensate for a 'leaky gut' and prevent disease in mice that are susceptible to intestinal inflammation. These findings could explain why some individuals who are susceptible to developing IBD do or do not get the disease.

Under-twisted DNA origami delivers cancer drugs to tumors Posted: 13 Sep 2012 09:29 AM PDT Scientists in Sweden describe in a new study how so-called DNA origami can enhance the effect of certain cytostatics used in the treatment of cancer. With the aid of modern nanotechnology, scientists can target drugs direct to the tumor while leaving surrounding healthy tissue untouched.

Computer program can identify rough sketches Posted: 13 Sep 2012 07:50 AM PDT Computer scientists have developed a new program that can recognize rough sketches in real time, something that up to now had been very difficult for computers to do. To make the program work, the researchers used 20,000 real sketches to teach the program how humans actually sketch objects.

World's hottest temperature cools a bit Posted: 13 Sep 2012 06:21 AM PDT If you think this summer was hot, it's nothing compared to the summer of 1913, when the hottest temperature ever recorded was a searing 134 F in Death Valley, Calif. But while that reading was made 99 years ago, it is only being recognized today by the World Meteorological Organization as the most extreme temperature ever recorded. That's because an international team of meteorologists recently finished an in-depth investigation of what had been the world-record temperature extreme of 58 degrees Celsius (136.4 F), recorded on Sept. 13, 1922, in El Azizia, Libya. The group found that there were enough questions surrounding the measurement and how it was made that it was probably inaccurate, overturning the record 90 years to the day it was recorded.

Shine and Rise: Light-activated reversal of anesthesia Posted: 13 Sep 2012 05:46 AM PDT In a new study, a light-sensitive moiety has been added to propofol, a commonly used anesthetic, allowing its narcotic effect to be controlled by light. The compound also offers a possible route to the treatment of certain eye diseases.

Predicting if scientists will be stars: New formula reveals if young scientists will have brilliant future Posted: 12 Sep 2012 01:14 PM PDT Will a young scientist's career be brilliant or ordinary? Now there's a crystal ball in the form of a new formula that accurately predicts a young scientist's success up to 10 years into the future and could be useful for hiring, tenure and funding decisions. The new formula is more than twice as accurate as a measure called the h index for predicting future success for researchers in the life sciences.

Facebook boosts voter turnout: 61-million-person experiment demonstrates voting can be influenced by social networks Posted: 12 Sep 2012 12:28 PM PDT A 61-million-person experiment conducted on Facebook during the U.S. elections in 2010 demonstrates (for the first time, the authors believe) that important real-world behaviors like voting can be influenced by online social networks. The authors estimate that Facebook's "get out the vote" message yielded 300,000+ more voters at the polls in 2010. Close friends made all the difference.

Over fishing tips scales towards a fish population of slow growing, couch potatoes Posted: 12 Sep 2012 06:38 AM PDT Fish populations around the world could soon be full of slow growing, unproductive 'couch potatoes' if the current levels of intensive fishing continue, according to new research. Scientists found that faster growing fish, regardless of their size, fall prey to fishing nets at twice the rate of slower growing fish.

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