ScienceDaily: Strange Science News

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• Languages written to design synthetic living systems useful for new products, health care
• Stirring the simmering 'designer baby' pot
• Human brains 'hard-wired' to link what we see with what we do
• 'Fluorescent' mouse can teach us about many diseases, drugs
• New fossil species reveals parental care of young from 450 million years ago
• 'Super circles' to lessen rush-hour traffic congestion
• Soft robotic fish moves like the real thing: New robotic fish can change direction almost as rapidly as a real fish
• Origin of life: Simulating how Earth kick-started metabolism
• Exchange rate behaves like particles in a molecular fluid
• Environmentally friendly fashion? Dress knitted out of birch cellulose fiber
• 3-D X-ray film: Rapid movements in real time
• Students' space experiment recovered from Arctic Circle
• DNA fix for school timetables
• No one likes a copycat, no matter where you live
• Shade will be a precious resource to lizards in a warming world

Languages written to design synthetic living systems useful for new products, health care Posted: 13 Mar 2014 01:45 PM PDT A computer-aided design tool has been developed to create genetic languages to guide the design of biological systems. Known as GenoCAD, the open-source software was developed by researchers to help synthetic biologists capture biological rules to engineer organisms that produce useful products or health-care solutions from inexpensive, renewable materials.

Stirring the simmering 'designer baby' pot Posted: 13 Mar 2014 11:27 AM PDT From genetic and genomic testing to new techniques in human assisted reproduction, various technologies are providing parents with more of a say about the children they have and 'stirring the pot of 'designer baby' concerns.

Human brains 'hard-wired' to link what we see with what we do Posted: 13 Mar 2014 09:31 AM PDT Your brain's ability to instantly link what you see with what you do is down to a dedicated information 'highway,' suggests new research. For the first time, researchers have found evidence of a specialized mechanism for spatial self-awareness that combines visual cues with body motion. The newly-discovered system could explain why some schizophrenia patients feel like their actions are controlled by someone else.

'Fluorescent' mouse can teach us about many diseases, drugs Posted: 13 Mar 2014 09:31 AM PDT A mouse has been created by scientists that expresses a fluorescing 'biosensor' in every cell of its body, allowing diseased cells and drugs to be tracked and evaluated in real time and in three dimensions.

New fossil species reveals parental care of young from 450 million years ago Posted: 13 Mar 2014 09:27 AM PDT A portrait of prehistoric parenthood captured deep in the fossil record has been uncovered by an international team of scientists. The 'nursery in the sea' has revealed a species new to science -- with specimens preserved incubating their eggs together with probable hatched individuals. As a result, the team has named the new species Luprisca incuba after Lucina, goddess of childbirth, and alluding to the fact that the fossils are ancient and in each case the mother was literally sitting on her eggs.

'Super circles' to lessen rush-hour traffic congestion Posted: 13 Mar 2014 09:25 AM PDT While Mother Nature continues to challenge drivers across the country, a team of traffic engineers is working hard on a new way to make rush-hour commutes safer and faster in any weather. A "super circle" involves adding a stop light to one approach of a roundabout to control the number of vehicles entering during rush hours.

Soft robotic fish moves like the real thing: New robotic fish can change direction almost as rapidly as a real fish Posted: 13 Mar 2014 07:17 AM PDT Soft robots don't just have soft exteriors but are also powered by fluid flowing through flexible channels. Researchers now report the first self-contained autonomous soft robot capable of rapid body motion: a "fish" that can execute an escape maneuver, convulsing its body to change direction in just a fraction of a second, or almost as quickly as a real fish can.

Origin of life: Simulating how Earth kick-started metabolism Posted: 13 Mar 2014 06:27 AM PDT Researchers have developed a new approach to simulating the energetic processes that may have led to the emergence of cell metabolism on Earth -- a crucial biological function for all living organisms. The research could help scientists to understand whether it is possible for life to have emerged in similar environments on other worlds.

Exchange rate behaves like particles in a molecular fluid Posted: 13 Mar 2014 06:27 AM PDT The swings in market prices and exchange rates have the same foundations as molecule movements in physics. This has been demonstrated by a team of scientists from Switzerland and Japan.

Environmentally friendly fashion? Dress knitted out of birch cellulose fiber Posted: 13 Mar 2014 06:24 AM PDT The first garment made out of birch cellulose fiber using the Ioncell method is displayed at a fashion show. The Ioncell method is an environmentally friendly alternative to cotton in textile production. The dress is a significant step forward in the development of fiber for industrial production.

3-D X-ray film: Rapid movements in real time Posted: 13 Mar 2014 06:22 AM PDT How does the hip joint of a crawling weevil move? A technique to record 3-D X-ray films showing the internal movement dynamics in a spatially precise manner and, at the same time, in the temporal dimension has now been developed. The scientists applied this technique to a living weevil. From up to 100,000 two-dimensional radiographs per second, they generated complete 3D film sequences in real time or slow motion.

Students' space experiment recovered from Arctic Circle Posted: 12 Mar 2014 05:25 AM PDT A team of students has recovered crucial data from an innovative experiment that could reduce the cost of space construction -- with help from Swedish hunters.

DNA fix for school timetables Posted: 12 Mar 2014 05:24 AM PDT Scientists in Russia plan to use DNA -- our genetic material -- to help them solve one of the perennial "back to school" problems faced by school administrators the world over: how to match up students, with classes and available teachers. DNA's ability to store information can be used to encode the timetabling problem and then a solution read out using enzymes, according to the scientists.

No one likes a copycat, no matter where you live Posted: 11 Mar 2014 01:28 PM PDT Even very young children understand what it means to steal a physical object, yet it appears to take them another couple of years to understand what it means to steal an idea. Psychologists discovered that preschoolers often don't view a copycat negatively, but they do by the age of 5 or 6. And that holds true even across cultures that typically view intellectual property rights in different ways.

Shade will be a precious resource to lizards in a warming world Posted: 10 Mar 2014 12:22 PM PDT Climate change may even test lizards' famous ability to tolerate and escape the heat -- making habitat protection increasingly vital -- according to a new study by international biodiversity experts.

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