ScienceDaily: Top Science News

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• Astronomers find clues to decades-long coronal heating mystery
• World ocean systems undermined by climate change by 2100
• Small bits of genetic material fight cancer's spread
• Beyond antibiotics: 'PPMOs' offer new approach to bacterial infection, other diseases
• New 3-D method used to grow miniature pancreas
• Method of recording brain activity could lead to mind-reading devices, Stanford scientists say
• Scientists unravel mechanisms in chronic itching
• Women leave their handprints on the cave wall
• Newly discovered mechanism propels micromotors
• Bending world's thinnest glass shows atoms' dance
• New evidence on lightning strikes: Mountains a lot less stable than we think
• Poetry is like music to the mind, functional magnetic resonance imaging reveals

Astronomers find clues to decades-long coronal heating mystery Posted: 15 Oct 2013 04:16 PM PDT Scientists found evidence that magnetic waves in a polar coronal hole contain enough energy to heat the corona and moreover that they also deposit most of their energy at sufficiently low heights for the heat to spread throughout the corona. The observations help to answer a 70-year-old solar physics conundrum about the unexplained extreme temperature of the Sun's corona -- known as the coronal heating problem.

World ocean systems undermined by climate change by 2100 Posted: 15 Oct 2013 04:14 PM PDT An ambitious new study describes the full chain of events by which ocean biogeochemical changes triggered by humanmade greenhouse gas emissions may cascade through marine habitats and organisms, penetrating to the deep ocean and eventually influencing humans. Factoring in predictable synergistic changes such as the depletion of dissolved oxygen in seawater and a decline in productivity of ocean ecosystems, no corner of the world ocean will be untouched by climate change by 2100.

Small bits of genetic material fight cancer's spread Posted: 15 Oct 2013 11:29 AM PDT Researchers have found that microRNAs -- small bits of genetic material capable of repressing the expression of certain genes -- may serve as both therapeutic targets and predictors of metastasis, or a cancer's spread from its initial site to other parts of the body.

Beyond antibiotics: 'PPMOs' offer new approach to bacterial infection, other diseases Posted: 15 Oct 2013 10:49 AM PDT Researchers today announced the successful use of a new type of antibacterial agent called a PPMO, which appears to function as well or better than an antibiotic, but may be more precise and also solve problems with antibiotic resistance. The new PPMOs offer a fundamentally different way to attack bacterial infection.

New 3-D method used to grow miniature pancreas Posted: 15 Oct 2013 09:35 AM PDT An international team of researchers has successfully developed an innovative 3-D method to grow miniature pancreas from progenitor cells. The future goal is to use this model to help in the fight against diabetes.

Method of recording brain activity could lead to mind-reading devices, Stanford scientists say Posted: 15 Oct 2013 09:35 AM PDT A brain region activated when people are asked to perform mathematical calculations in an experimental setting is similarly activated when they use numbers -- or even imprecise quantitative terms, such as "more than" -- in everyday conversation, according to a new study.

Scientists unravel mechanisms in chronic itching Posted: 15 Oct 2013 09:33 AM PDT New research shows that chronic itching, which can occur in many medical conditions, is different from the urge to scratch a mosquito bite. Chronic itching appears to incorporate more than just the nerve cells that normally transmit itch signals. In chronic itching, neurons that send itch signals also co-opt pain neurons to intensify the itch sensation.

Women leave their handprints on the cave wall Posted: 15 Oct 2013 08:39 AM PDT Plaster handprints from kindergarten, handprint turkeys, handprints outside Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood -- are all part of modern life, but ancient people also left their handprints on rocks and cave walls. Now, an anthropologist can determine the sex of some of the people who left their prints, and the majority of them were women.

Newly discovered mechanism propels micromotors Posted: 15 Oct 2013 07:36 AM PDT Scientists studying the behavior of platinum particles immersed in hydrogen peroxide may have discovered a new way to propel microscopic machines.

Bending world's thinnest glass shows atoms' dance Posted: 15 Oct 2013 06:56 AM PDT Watch what happens when you bend and break the world's thinnest glass. This glass was recently featured in the Guinness Book of World Records and is made of the same compounds as everyday windowpanes. Scientists used an electron microscope to bend, deform and melt the one-molecule-thick glass. These are all things that happen just before glass shatters, and for the first time, the researchers have directly imaged such deformations and the resulting "dance" of rearranging atoms in silica glass.

New evidence on lightning strikes: Mountains a lot less stable than we think Posted: 15 Oct 2013 06:40 AM PDT Lightning strikes causing rocks to explode have for the first time been shown to play a huge role in shaping mountain landscapes in southern Africa, debunking previous assumptions that angular rock formations were necessarily caused by cold temperatures, and proving that mountains are a lot less stable than we think.

Poetry is like music to the mind, functional magnetic resonance imaging reveals Posted: 09 Oct 2013 09:59 AM PDT Scientists use functional magnetic resonance imaging technology to visualize which parts of the brain are activated to process various activities. But until now, no one had ever looked specifically at the differing responses in the brain to poetry and prose.

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