ScienceDaily: Top News

---

• Tension triggers muscle building
• Years of High School Football not linked to Neurocognitive Decline, study suggests
• Contagious yawning a mystery: May not be linked to empathy after all
• Brighter inks, without pigment: Nanostructured capsules could bring about paints and electronic displays that never fade
• Significant increase in painkillers prescribed to US adults visiting emergency departments
• Lunar crater counting shows crowdsourcing is accurate tool

Tension triggers muscle building Posted: 14 Mar 2014 06:22 PM PDT Skeletal muscles are built from small contractile units, the sarcomeres. They are connected in a well-ordered series to form myofibrils that span the entire muscle. Contractions of these sarcomeres result in contraction of the respective muscle. Scientists recently identified a key mechanism how this muscle architecture is built during development. 'Mechanical tension is the essential trigger,' explains the group leader.

Years of High School Football not linked to Neurocognitive Decline, study suggests Posted: 14 Mar 2014 06:20 PM PDT As more parents consider whether it's safe for adolescents to play football, a new study of high school players found no link between years of play and any decline in neurocognitive function. The study suggests that the risks of sport-related brain injuries are relatively low.

Contagious yawning a mystery: May not be linked to empathy after all Posted: 14 Mar 2014 06:18 PM PDT While previous studies have suggested a connection between contagious yawning and empathy, new research finds that contagious yawning may decrease with age and is not strongly related to variables like empathy, tiredness and energy levels. Contagious yawning is a well-documented phenomenon that occurs only in humans and chimpanzees in response to hearing, seeing or thinking about yawning.

Brighter inks, without pigment: Nanostructured capsules could bring about paints and electronic displays that never fade Posted: 14 Mar 2014 01:42 PM PDT Encapsulated nanoparticles can create bright colors by amplifying particular wavelengths of light. These microcapsules could offer a new, non-toxic and long-lasting source of color for paints and electronic displays. Unlike color that we usually think of, which arises from paints and dyes absorbing certain wavelengths of light and reflecting the remainder, structural color is created when an object's very nanostructure amplifies a specific wavelength.

Significant increase in painkillers prescribed to US adults visiting emergency departments Posted: 14 Mar 2014 01:41 PM PDT Researchers report dramatic increases in prescriptions of opioid analgesics, such as Percocet, Vicodin, oxycodone and Dilaudid, during U.S. emergency department visits from 2001 to 2010. These findings were not explained by higher visit rates for painful conditions, which only increased modestly during the time period.

Lunar crater counting shows crowdsourcing is accurate tool Posted: 13 Mar 2014 01:45 PM PDT A new study showed that as a group, volunteer counters who examined a particular patch of lunar real estate using NASA images did just as well in identifying individual craters as professional crater counters with five to 50 years of experience. The crater-counting effort was initiated by CosmoQuest, a citizen science Web project that contributes real science to NASA space missions through the use of volunteers. In addition to analyzing high-resolution photos of the moon, the volunteers are helping planetary scientists tally craters on Mercury and the asteroid Vesta.

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