ScienceDaily: Top Science News

---

• Light steered in new directions: 2-D material could lead to shaped, wavy, curved, and sharply bending ways to steer light
• What direction does Earth's center spin? New insights solve 300-year-old problem
• How and where imagination occurs in human brains
• Scientists use 'wired microbes' to generate electricity from sewage
• Extremely potent, improved derivatives of successful anticancer drug created
• Wide-faced men make others act selfishly
• Invention jet prints nanostructures with self-assembling material
• Birth of Earth's continents: New research points to crust stacking, rather than upwelling of hot material
• Feeling small: Fingers can detect nano-scale wrinkles even on a seemingly smooth surface
• Obese stomachs tell us diets are doomed to fail
• Time is in the eye of the beholder: Time perception in animals depends on their pace of life
• Graphene photodetector integrated into silicon chip
• Magnetic jet shows how stars begin their final transformation

Light steered in new directions: 2-D material could lead to shaped, wavy, curved, and sharply bending ways to steer light Posted: 16 Sep 2013 01:20 PM PDT For the first time, researchers have built and demonstrated the ability of two-dimensional disordered photonic band gap material, designed to be a platform to control light in unprecedented ways. The new material could lead to arbitrarily shaped, wavy, curved, and sharply bending ways to steer light.

What direction does Earth's center spin? New insights solve 300-year-old problem Posted: 16 Sep 2013 01:20 PM PDT Scientists have solved a 300-year-old riddle about which direction the center of Earth spins. Earth's inner core, made up of solid iron, 'superrotates' in an eastward direction -- meaning it spins faster than the rest of the planet -- while the outer core, comprising mainly molten iron, spins westwards at a slower pace.

How and where imagination occurs in human brains Posted: 16 Sep 2013 01:20 PM PDT Philosophers and scientists have long puzzled over where human imagination comes from. In other words, what makes humans able to create art, invent tools, think scientifically and perform other incredibly diverse behaviors? The answer, researchers conclude, lies in a widespread neural network -- the brain's "mental workspace" -- that consciously manipulates images, symbols, ideas and theories and gives humans the laser-like mental focus needed to solve complex problems and come up with new ideas.

Scientists use 'wired microbes' to generate electricity from sewage Posted: 16 Sep 2013 01:17 PM PDT Engineers have devised a new way to generate electricity from sewage using naturally-occurring "wired microbes" as mini power plants, producing electricity as they digest plant and animal waste.

Extremely potent, improved derivatives of successful anticancer drug created Posted: 16 Sep 2013 11:05 AM PDT Scientists have found a way to make dramatic improvements to the cancer cell-killing power of vinblastine, one of the most successful chemotherapy drugs of the past few decades. The team's modified versions of vinblastine showed 10 to 200 times greater potency than the clinical drug.

Wide-faced men make others act selfishly Posted: 16 Sep 2013 11:04 AM PDT Researchers have previously shown that men with wider faces are more aggressive, less trustworthy and more prone to engaging in deception. Now they have shown, in a series of four studies, that individuals behave more selfishly when interacting with men with wider faces and this selfish behavior elicits selfish behavior in others.

Invention jet prints nanostructures with self-assembling material Posted: 16 Sep 2013 11:04 AM PDT Engineers have developed a new approach to the fabrication of nanostructures for the semiconductor and magnetic storage industries. This approach combines advanced ink-jet printing technology with self-assembling block copolymers.

Birth of Earth's continents: New research points to crust stacking, rather than upwelling of hot material Posted: 16 Sep 2013 09:21 AM PDT New research provides strong evidence against continent formation above a hot mantle plume, similar to an environment that presently exists beneath the Hawaiian Islands.

Feeling small: Fingers can detect nano-scale wrinkles even on a seemingly smooth surface Posted: 16 Sep 2013 08:08 AM PDT In a ground-breaking study, Swedish scientists have shown that people can detect nano-scale wrinkles while running their fingers upon a seemingly smooth surface. The findings could lead such advances as touch screens for the visually impaired and other products.

Obese stomachs tell us diets are doomed to fail Posted: 16 Sep 2013 07:33 AM PDT The way the stomach detects and tells our brains how full we are becomes damaged in obese people but does not return to normal once they lose weight, according to new research.

Time is in the eye of the beholder: Time perception in animals depends on their pace of life Posted: 16 Sep 2013 07:20 AM PDT Scientists have shown that animals' ability to perceive time is linked to their pace of life. The rate at which time is perceived varies across animals. For example, flies owe their skill at avoiding rolled up newspapers to their ability to observe motion on finer timescales than our own eyes can achieve, allowing them to avoid the newspaper in a similar fashion to the "bullet time" sequence in the popular film The Matrix. In contrast, one species of tiger beetle runs faster than its eyes can keep up, essentially becoming blind and requiring it to stop periodically to re-evaluate its prey's position. Even in humans, athletes in various sports have also been shown to quicken their eyes' ability to track moving balls during games.

Graphene photodetector integrated into silicon chip Posted: 16 Sep 2013 06:08 AM PDT Today, most information is transmitted by light -- for example, in optical fibers. Computer chips, however, work electronically. Somewhere between the optical data highway and the electronic chips, photons have to be converted into electrons using light-detectors. Scientists have now managed to combine a graphene photodetector with a standard silicon chip. It can transform light of all important frequencies used in telecommunications into electrical signals.

Magnetic jet shows how stars begin their final transformation Posted: 16 Sep 2013 06:08 AM PDT Astronomers have for the first time found a jet of high-energy particles emanating from a dying star. The discovery is a crucial step in explaining how some of the most beautiful objects in space are formed -- and what happens when stars like the sun reach the end of their lives.

You are subscribed to email updates from ScienceDaily: Top Science News To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610