ScienceDaily: Top Science News

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• Blame it on the rain (from Saturn's rings): More charged water particles fall than thought
• Early warning signs of population collapse
• First objective measure of pain discovered in brain scan patterns
• Discovery of a blue supergiant star born in the wild
• Ancient Roman man hidden beneath famous painting at the Louvre
• Subconscious mental categories help brain sort through everyday experiences
• Scientists develop first photonic topological insulators to provide protection for transport of light
• Faster than silicon: Redesigned material could lead to lighter, faster electronics
• Alcohol use, anxiety predict Facebook use by college students
• Young children have grammar and chimpanzees don't
• Transparent brain using hydrogel process
• World's oldest dinosaur embryo bonebed yields organic remains
• Pottery reveals Ice Age hunter-gatherers’ taste for fish
• Overcoming a major barrier to medical and other uses of 'microrockets' and 'micromotors'
• Clinging to crevices, E. coli thrive
• Cardiopoietic 'smart' stem cells show promise in heart failure patients
• Chimpanzees use botanical skills to discover fruit
• Ghostly green bubble: Detailed image of planetary nebula
• Adult generations of today are less healthy than their counterparts of previous generations
• Unusual anal fin offers new insight into evolution

Blame it on the rain (from Saturn's rings): More charged water particles fall than thought Posted: 10 Apr 2013 05:23 PM PDT A new study tracks the "rain" of charged water particles into the atmosphere of Saturn and finds there is more of it and it falls across larger areas of the planet than previously thought. The study, whose observations were funded by NASA and whose analysis was led by the University of Leicester, England, reveals that the rain influences the composition and temperature structure of parts of Saturn's upper atmosphere.

Early warning signs of population collapse Posted: 10 Apr 2013 05:19 PM PDT Spatial measurements of population density could reveal when threatened natural populations are in danger of crashing.

First objective measure of pain discovered in brain scan patterns Posted: 10 Apr 2013 05:18 PM PDT For the first time, scientists have been able to predict how much pain people are feeling by looking at images of their brains, according to a new study led by the University of Colorado Boulder.

Discovery of a blue supergiant star born in the wild Posted: 10 Apr 2013 04:42 PM PDT Astronomers have discovered a blue supergiant star located far beyond our Milky Way Galaxy in the constellation Virgo. Over 55 million years ago, the star emerged in an extremely wild environment, surrounded by intensely hot plasma (a million degrees centigrade) and amidst raging cyclone winds blowing at four million kilometers per hour. Research using the Subaru Telescope, the Canada-France-Hawaii-Telescope (CFHT) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) revealed unprecedented views of the star formation process in this intergalactic context and showed the promise of future investigations of a possibly new mode of star formation, unlike that within our Milky Way.

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.

Subconscious mental categories help brain sort through everyday experiences Posted: 10 Apr 2013 11:15 AM PDT Researchers found that the brain breaks experiences into the "events," or related groups that help us mentally organize the day's many situations, using subconscious mental categories it creates. These categories are based on how the brain considers people, objects and actions are related in terms of how they tend to — or tend not to — pop up near one another at specific times.

Scientists develop first photonic topological insulators to provide protection for transport of light Posted: 10 Apr 2013 11:13 AM PDT Researchers have developed and successfully demonstrated a photonic Floquet topological insulator, a new device used to protect the transport of light through a unique, lattice of 'waveguides.' This could play a key role in the photonics industry.

Faster than silicon: Redesigned material could lead to lighter, faster electronics Posted: 10 Apr 2013 10:15 AM PDT The same material that formed the first primitive transistors more than 60 years ago can be modified in a new way to advance future electronics, according to a new study. Chemists have developed the technology for making a one-atom-thick sheet of germanium, and found that it conducts electrons more than ten times faster than silicon and five times faster than conventional germanium.

Alcohol use, anxiety predict Facebook use by college students Posted: 10 Apr 2013 10:13 AM PDT Anxiety and alcohol use significantly predict emotional connectedness to Facebook, a new study suggests. According to one of the researchers, alcohol use is generally viewed as normative, or socially acceptable, among college students, so increased alcohol use may cause an increase in emotional connectedness to Facebook. Researchers also found that marijuana use predicted the opposite: a lack of emotional connectedness with Facebook.

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.

World's oldest dinosaur embryo bonebed yields organic remains Posted: 10 Apr 2013 10:12 AM PDT A 190-million-year-old dinosaur bonebed near the city of Lufeng, in Yunnan, China has revealed for the first time how dinosaur embryos grew and developed in their eggs.

Pottery reveals Ice Age hunter-gatherers’ taste for fish Posted: 10 Apr 2013 10:11 AM PDT Hunter-gatherers living in glacial conditions produced pots for cooking fish, according to the findings of a pioneering new study which reports the earliest direct evidence for the use of ceramic vessels. Scientists carried out chemical analysis of food residues in pottery up to 15,000 years old from the late glacial period, the oldest pottery so far investigated.

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.

Clinging to crevices, E. coli thrive Posted: 10 Apr 2013 07:33 AM PDT New research helps to explain how waterborne bacteria can colonize rough surfaces —- even those that have been designed to resist water.

Cardiopoietic 'smart' stem cells show promise in heart failure patients Posted: 10 Apr 2013 07:33 AM PDT Therapy with cardiopoietic (cardiogenically-instructed) or "smart" stem cells can improve heart health for people suffering from heart failure. This is the first application in patients of lineage-guided stem cells for targeted regeneration of a failing organ, paving the way to development of next generation regenerative medicine solutions.

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.

Ghostly green bubble: Detailed image of planetary nebula Posted: 10 Apr 2013 05:27 AM PDT An intriguing new picture shows the glowing green planetary nebula IC 1295 surrounding a dim and dying star located about 3300 light-years away in the constellation of Scutum (The Shield). This is the most detailed picture of this object ever taken.

Adult generations of today are less healthy than their counterparts of previous generations Posted: 10 Apr 2013 05:24 AM PDT Despite their greater life expectancy, the adults of today are less "metabolically" healthy than their counterparts of previous generations. That's the conclusion of a large cohort study which compared generational shifts in a range of well established metabolic risk factors for cardiovascular disease. Assessing the trends, the investigators concluded that "the more recently born generations are doing worse", and warn "that the prevalence of metabolic risk factors and the lifelong exposure to them have increased and probably will continue to increase."

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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