ScienceDaily: Strange Science News

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• Goosefish capture small puffins over deep water of Northwest Atlantic
• Ancient Roman man hidden beneath famous painting at the Louvre
• Safety reflector technology from footwear getting new life in detecting bioterror threats
• Great white sharks scavenging on dead whales
• Young children have grammar and chimpanzees don't
• Transparent brain using hydrogel process
• Liquid on liquid goes solid
• Overcoming a major barrier to medical and other uses of 'microrockets' and 'micromotors'
• Chimpanzees use botanical skills to discover fruit
• Dark lightning: Are airplane passengers exposed to radiation from intense bursts of gamma-rays from thunderclouds?
• Unusual anal fin offers new insight into evolution

Goosefish capture small puffins over deep water of Northwest Atlantic Posted: 10 Apr 2013 12:50 PM PDT A recent study has shown that bottom-dwelling goosefish, also known as monkfish, prey on dovekies, a small Arctic seabird and the smallest member of the puffin family. To understand how this deep-water fish finds a shallow-feeding bird in offshore waters, researchers looked at when, where, and how these animals were most likely to be in the same place at the same time.

Ancient Roman man hidden beneath famous painting at the Louvre Posted: 10 Apr 2013 12:46 PM PDT In the latest achievement in efforts to see what may lie underneath the surface of great works of art, scientists today described the first use of an imaging technology like that used in airport whole-body security scanners to detect the face of an ancient Roman man hidden below the surface of a wall painting in the Louvre Museum in Paris.

Safety reflector technology from footwear getting new life in detecting bioterror threats Posted: 10 Apr 2013 12:46 PM PDT Tiny versions of the reflectors on sneakers and bicycle fenders that help ensure the safety of runners and bikers at night are moving toward another role in detecting bioterrorism threats and diagnosing everyday infectious diseases, scientists have said.

Great white sharks scavenging on dead whales Posted: 10 Apr 2013 11:15 AM PDT Biologists have explored the behaviors of Great white sharks scavenging on dead whales in South Africa. The team documented as many as 40 different sharks scavenging on a carcass over the course of a single day, revealing unique social interactions among sharks.

Young children have grammar and chimpanzees don't Posted: 10 Apr 2013 10:13 AM PDT A new study has shown that children as young as two understand basic grammar rules when they first learn to speak and are not simply imitating adults. The study also applied the same statistical analysis on data from one of the most famous animal language-acquisition experiments -- Project Nim -- and showed that Nim Chimpsky, a chimpanzee who was taught sign language over the course of many years, never grasped rules like those in a two-year-old's grammar.

Transparent brain using hydrogel process Posted: 10 Apr 2013 10:12 AM PDT Combining neuroscience and chemical engineering, researchers have developed a process that renders a mouse brain transparent.

Liquid on liquid goes solid Posted: 10 Apr 2013 10:11 AM PDT Not all liquids are mixable. Researchers have investigated chemical processes with atomic resolution at the interface between two such liquids and have made an exciting discovery. They observed the formation of an ordered crystal of exactly five atomic layers between the two liquids, which acts as a foundation for growing even bigger crystals.

Overcoming a major barrier to medical and other uses of 'microrockets' and 'micromotors' Posted: 10 Apr 2013 07:39 AM PDT An advance in micromotor technology akin to the invention of cars that fuel themselves from the pavement or air is opening the door to new medical and industrial uses for these tiny devices, scientists say. Their update on development of the motors -- so small that thousands would fit inside this "o" -- was part of a recent conference presentation.

Chimpanzees use botanical skills to discover fruit Posted: 10 Apr 2013 06:41 AM PDT Fruit-eating animals are known to use their spatial memory to relocate fruit, yet, it is unclear how they manage to find fruit in the first place. Researchers have now investigated which strategies chimpanzees in the Taï National Park in Côte d'Ivoire, West Africa, use in order to find fruit in the rain forest. The result: Chimpanzees know that trees of certain species produce fruit simultaneously and use this botanical knowledge during their daily search for fruit.

Dark lightning: Are airplane passengers exposed to radiation from intense bursts of gamma-rays from thunderclouds? Posted: 10 Apr 2013 05:27 AM PDT Scientists have known for almost a decade that thunderstorms are capable of generating brief but powerful bursts of gamma-rays called terrestrial gamma-ray flashes, or TGFs. Because they can originate near the same altitudes at which commercial aircraft routinely fly, scientists have been trying to determine whether or not terrestrial gamma ray flashes present a radiation hazard to individuals in aircraft. In the middle of the storm, radiation doses could be roughly equal to a full-body CT scan, preliminary research suggests.

Unusual anal fin offers new insight into evolution Posted: 10 Apr 2013 05:22 AM PDT An unusual fossil fish that has fins behind its anus could have implications for human evolution.

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