ScienceDaily: Top Science News

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• Monster galaxies lose their appetite with age
• Stimulating brain cells can make false memories
• Cool heads likely won't prevail in a hotter, wetter world: Climate change will likely exacerbate violence
• Climate change occurring ten times faster than at any time in past 65 million years
• New water splitting technique efficiently produces hydrogen fuel
• As climate, disease links become clearer, study highlights need to forecast future shifts
• Temperature alters population dynamics of common plant pests
• 'Soft' approach leads to revolutionary energy storage: Graphene-based supercapacitors
• Arctic sea-ice loss has widespread effects on wildlife
• Long-sought method to efficiently make complex anticancer compound developed
• The when and where of the Y: Research on Y chromosomes uncovers new clues about human ancestry
• Existing cropland could feed four billion more by dropping biofuels and animal feed
• We each live in our own little world -- smellwise
• Extreme wildfires in Western U.S. likely fueled by climate change
• 'Evolution will punish you if you're selfish and mean'
• When galaxies switch off: Hubble's COSMOS survey solves 'quenched' galaxy mystery
• Under leaden skies: Where heavy metal clouds the stars
• Loss of health insurance: Boomers hit hardest by 'Great Recession'

Monster galaxies lose their appetite with age Posted: 01 Aug 2013 04:57 PM PDT Our universe is filled with gobs of galaxies, bound together by gravity into larger families called clusters. Lying at the heart of most clusters is a monster galaxy thought to grow in size by merging with neighboring galaxies, a process astronomers call galactic cannibalism. New research from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) is showing that, contrary to previous theories, these gargantuan galaxies appear to slow their growth over time, feeding less and less off neighboring galaxies.

Stimulating brain cells can make false memories Posted: 01 Aug 2013 03:03 PM PDT By activating a subset of brain cells in mice, researchers changed the way the animals remembered a particular setting. To determine if they could alter the way a mouse remembered a setting by activating neurons associated with it, researchers attempted to change whether or not a mouse was afraid of a particular cage. Their experiements implicated neurons in the brain's dentate gyrus as being responsible for inducing the animal's false memory of their cage.

Cool heads likely won't prevail in a hotter, wetter world: Climate change will likely exacerbate violence Posted: 01 Aug 2013 11:24 AM PDT Researchers report that even slight spikes in temperature and precipitation greatly increase the risk of personal and civil violence, and suggest that more human conflict is a likely outcome of climate change.

Climate change occurring ten times faster than at any time in past 65 million years Posted: 01 Aug 2013 11:24 AM PDT Not only is the planet undergoing one of the largest climate changes in the past 65 million years, scientists report that it's occurring at a rate 10 times faster than any change in that period. Without intervention, this extreme pace could lead to a 5-6 degree Celsius spike in annual temperatures by the end of the century.

New water splitting technique efficiently produces hydrogen fuel Posted: 01 Aug 2013 11:23 AM PDT Radically new technique uses the power of sunlight to efficiently split water into its components of hydrogen and oxygen, paving the way for the broad use of hydrogen as a clean, green fuel.

As climate, disease links become clearer, study highlights need to forecast future shifts Posted: 01 Aug 2013 11:23 AM PDT Climate change is affecting the spread of infectious diseases worldwide, according to an international team of leading disease ecologists, with serious impacts to human health and biodiversity conservation.

Temperature alters population dynamics of common plant pests Posted: 01 Aug 2013 11:23 AM PDT Temperature-driven changes alter outbreak patterns of tea tortrix -- an insect pest -- and may shed light on how temperature influences whether insects emerge as cohesive cohorts or continuously, according to an international team of researchers. These findings have implications for both pest control and how climate change may alter infestations.

'Soft' approach leads to revolutionary energy storage: Graphene-based supercapacitors Posted: 01 Aug 2013 11:23 AM PDT Researchers have brought next generation energy storage closer with an engineering first -- a graphene-based device that is compact, yet lasts as long as a conventional battery.

Arctic sea-ice loss has widespread effects on wildlife Posted: 01 Aug 2013 11:23 AM PDT How the Arctic wildlife and humans will be affected by the continued melting of Arctic sea ice is explored in a review article in the journal Science, by an international team of scientists. The article examines relationships among algae, plankton, whales, and terrestrial animals such as caribou, arctic foxes, and walrus; as well as the effects of human exploration of previously inaccessible parts of the region.

Long-sought method to efficiently make complex anticancer compound developed Posted: 01 Aug 2013 11:22 AM PDT Scientists have achieved the first efficient chemical synthesis of ingenol, a highly complex, plant-derived compound that has long been of interest to drug developers for its anticancer potential. The achievement will enable scientists to synthesize a wide variety of ingenol derivatives and investigate their therapeutic properties. The achievement also sets the stage for the efficient commercial production of ingenol mebutate, a treatment for actinic keratosis (a common precursor to non-melanoma skin cancer), that at present must be extracted and refined inefficiently from plants.

The when and where of the Y: Research on Y chromosomes uncovers new clues about human ancestry Posted: 01 Aug 2013 11:21 AM PDT Using advanced analysis of DNA from Y chromosomes from men all over the world, scientists have shed new light on the mystery of when and how a few early human ancestors started to give rise to the incredible diversity of today's population.

Existing cropland could feed four billion more by dropping biofuels and animal feed Posted: 01 Aug 2013 09:57 AM PDT The world's croplands could feed 4 billion more people than they do now just by shifting from producing animal feed and biofuels to producing exclusively food for human consumption, according to new research.

We each live in our own little world -- smellwise Posted: 01 Aug 2013 09:52 AM PDT There are some smells we all find revolting. But toward a handful of odors, different people display different sensitivities. A pair of studies identifies the genetic differences that underpin the differences in smell sensitivity. The researchers tested 200 people for their sensitivity to 10 different chemical compounds. They then searched through the subjects' genomes for areas of the DNA that differed between people who could smell a given compound and those who could not.

Extreme wildfires in Western U.S. likely fueled by climate change Posted: 01 Aug 2013 08:31 AM PDT Climate change is likely fueling the larger and more destructive wildfires that are scorching vast areas of the American West, according to new research.

'Evolution will punish you if you're selfish and mean' Posted: 01 Aug 2013 06:55 AM PDT Evolutionary biologists offer new evidence that evolution doesn't favor the selfish, disproving a theory popularized in 2012.

When galaxies switch off: Hubble's COSMOS survey solves 'quenched' galaxy mystery Posted: 01 Aug 2013 06:54 AM PDT Some galaxies hit a point in their lives when their star formation is snuffed out, and they become "quenched". Quenched galaxies in the distant past appear to be much smaller than the quenched galaxies in the Universe today. This has always puzzled astronomers -- how can these galaxies grow if they are no longer forming stars? A team of astronomers has now used a huge set of Hubble observations to give a surprisingly simple answer to this long-standing cosmic riddle.

Under leaden skies: Where heavy metal clouds the stars Posted: 01 Aug 2013 06:52 AM PDT Astronomers have discovered two unusual stars with extremely high concentrations of lead in their atmospheres.

Loss of health insurance: Boomers hit hardest by 'Great Recession' Posted: 31 Jul 2013 10:39 AM PDT A new study looks at California data on the uninsured between 2007 and 2009 and finds that of the approximately 700,000 Californians to lose health insurance during this time, a majority were between the ages of 45-64.

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