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Saturday, March 15, 2014

ScienceDaily: Top Science News

ScienceDaily: Top Science News


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.

Little Foot is oldest complete Australopithecus, new stratigraphic research shows

Posted: 14 Mar 2014 08:15 AM PDT

After 13 years of meticulous excavation of the nearly complete skeleton of the Australopithecus fossil named Little Foot, South African and French scientists have now convincingly shown that it is probably around 3 million years old.

Atomically thick metal membranes

Posted: 14 Mar 2014 08:14 AM PDT

For the first time researchers have shown that freestanding metal membranes consisting of a single layer of atoms can be stable under ambient conditions. The success and promise of atomically thin carbon, in which carbon atoms are arranged in a honeycomb lattice, also known as graphene has triggered enormous enthusiasm for other two dimensional materials, for example, hexagonal boron nitride and molybdenum sulphide. These materials share a common structural aspect, namely, they are layered materials that one can think of as individual atomic planes that can be pulled away from their bulk 3D structure.

Patients with schizophrenia have impaired ability to imitate, brain mapping confirms

Posted: 14 Mar 2014 06:35 AM PDT

A brain-mapping study of patients with schizophrenia has found that areas associated with the ability to imitate are impaired, providing new support for the theory that deficits in this basic cognitive skill may underlie the profound difficulty with social interactions that characterize the disorder. According to psychologists, imitation is something that we all do whenever we learn a new skill, whether it is dancing or how to behave in specific social situations.

Nanoscale optical switch breaks miniaturization barrier

Posted: 13 Mar 2014 02:29 PM PDT

An ultra-fast and ultra-small optical switch has been invented that could advance the day when photons replace electrons in the innards of consumer products ranging from cell phones to automobiles. The new optical device can turn on and off trillions of times per second. It consists of individual switches that are only one five-hundredths the width of a human hair (200 nanometers) in diameter. This size is much smaller than the current generation of optical switches and it easily breaks one of the major technical barriers to the spread of electronic devices that detect and control light: miniaturizing the size of ultrafast optical switches.

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