ScienceDaily: Top Science News

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• Traffic jams lend insight into emperor penguin huddle
• Four new mammal species discovered in Democratic Republic of Congo
• Do patients in a vegetative state recognize loved ones?
• Discovery of 1.4 million-year-old fossil human hand bone closes human evolution gap
• Cat domestication traced to Chinese farmers 5,300 years ago
• Global warming: Four degree rise will end vegetation 'carbon sink', research suggests
• Neanderthals buried their dead, new research of remains concludes
• Nearby failed stars may harbor planet, astronomers find
• Ultrafast heating of water: This pot boils faster than you can watch it
• Mothers see their youngest as shorter than they are
• Smithsonian's Submillimeter Array reveals giant star cluster in the making
• When will Earth lose its oceans?
• Loudspeaker is first-ever 3-D-printed consumer electronic
• Scientists discover potential vaccine for malaria
• Climate change threatens genetic diversity, future of world's caribou

Traffic jams lend insight into emperor penguin huddle Posted: 16 Dec 2013 05:40 PM PST Emperor penguins maintain the tight huddle that protects them from the harsh conditions of an Antarctic winter with stop-and-go movements like cars in a traffic jam, a new study has shown.

Four new mammal species discovered in Democratic Republic of Congo Posted: 16 Dec 2013 03:38 PM PST Scientists have discovered four new species of small mammals in the eastern section of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Do patients in a vegetative state recognize loved ones? Posted: 16 Dec 2013 12:50 PM PST Patients in a vegetative state do not respond to what is happening around them and exhibit no signs of conscious awareness. Now research has shown that the brains of patients in a vegetative state emotionally react to photographs of people they know personally as though they recognize them.

Discovery of 1.4 million-year-old fossil human hand bone closes human evolution gap Posted: 16 Dec 2013 12:49 PM PST Scientists have found a new hand bone from a human ancestor who roamed the earth in East Africa approximately 1.42 million years ago. The discovery of this bone is the earliest evidence of a modern human-like hand, indicating that this anatomical feature existed more than half a million years earlier than previously known.

Cat domestication traced to Chinese farmers 5,300 years ago Posted: 16 Dec 2013 12:48 PM PST Five-thousand years before it was immortalized in a British nursery rhyme, the cat that caught the rat that ate the malt was doing just fine living alongside farmers in the ancient Chinese village of Quanhucun, new research has shown.

Global warming: Four degree rise will end vegetation 'carbon sink', research suggests Posted: 16 Dec 2013 12:48 PM PST New research suggests that a temperature increase of four degrees is likely to "saturate" areas of dense vegetation with carbon, preventing plants from helping to balance CO2 escalation -- and consequently accelerating climate change.

Neanderthals buried their dead, new research of remains concludes Posted: 16 Dec 2013 12:43 PM PST Neanderthals buried their dead, an international team of archaeologists has concluded after a 13-year study of remains discovered in southwestern France.

Nearby failed stars may harbor planet, astronomers find Posted: 16 Dec 2013 11:28 AM PST Astronomers took precise measurements of the closest pair of failed stars to the Sun, which suggest that the system harbors a third, planetary-mass object.

Ultrafast heating of water: This pot boils faster than you can watch it Posted: 16 Dec 2013 11:26 AM PST Scientists have devised a novel way to boil water in less than a trillionth of a second. The theoretical concept, which has not yet been demonstrated in practice, could heat a small amount of water by as much as 600 degrees Celsius in just half a picosecond (a trillionth of a second). This would make the technique the fastest water-heating method on Earth.

Mothers see their youngest as shorter than they are Posted: 16 Dec 2013 11:25 AM PST Many parents say when their second child is born that their first child suddenly appears to have grown overnight. Now, researchers have an explanation: until the birth of the new child, those parents were subject to a "baby illusion," routinely misperceiving their youngest child as smaller (and younger) than he or she really was.

Smithsonian's Submillimeter Array reveals giant star cluster in the making Posted: 16 Dec 2013 11:24 AM PST W49A might be one of the best-kept secrets in our galaxy. This star-forming region shines 100 times brighter than the Orion nebula, but is so obscured by dust that very little visible or infrared light escapes. Astronomers have peered through the dusty fog to provide the first clear view of this stellar nursery.

When will Earth lose its oceans? Posted: 16 Dec 2013 11:23 AM PST The natural increase in solar luminosity -- a very slow process unrelated to current climate warming -- will cause the Earth's temperatures to rise over the next few hundred million years. This will result in the complete evaporation of the oceans. The first three-dimensional climate model able to simulate the phenomenon predicts that liquid water will disappear on Earth in approximately one billion years, extending previous estimates by several hundred million years.

Loudspeaker is first-ever 3-D-printed consumer electronic Posted: 16 Dec 2013 11:22 AM PST Researchers have 3-D printed a working loudspeaker, seamlessly integrating the plastic, conductive and magnetic parts, and ready for use almost as soon as it comes out of the printer.

Scientists discover potential vaccine for malaria Posted: 16 Dec 2013 07:30 AM PST Scientists have discovered a key process during the invasion of the blood cell by the Malaria parasite, and more importantly, found a way to block this invasion.

Climate change threatens genetic diversity, future of world's caribou Posted: 16 Dec 2013 06:55 AM PST Caribou in southern and eastern Canada may disappear from most of their current range in 60 years if climate change takes the toll on their habitat that scientists predict. Scientists looked at reservoirs of genetic diversity in caribou and whether that diversity was linked to stable habitats.

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