ScienceDaily: Top Science News

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• Building heart tissue that beats
• Bees capable of learning feats with tasty prize in sight
• Strongest evidence yet of two distinct human cognitive systems
• Amazon inhales more carbon than it emits, NASA finds
• Climatologists offer explanation for widening of Earth's tropical belt
• Sea anemone is genetically half animal, half plant
• Study of complete RNA collection of fruit fly uncovers unprecedented complexity
• New view of supernova death throes in 3-D
• Archaeologists discover earliest complete example of a human with cancer, from 3,000 years ago
• Scent of the familiar: You may linger like perfume in your dog's brain
• Electronic media associated with poorer well-being in children
• Suppressing unwanted memories reduces their unconscious influence on behavior
• Astronomers complete cosmic dust census
• Rats' brains may 'remember' odor experienced while under general anesthesia, study suggests

Building heart tissue that beats Posted: 18 Mar 2014 12:47 PM PDT When a heart gets damaged, such as during a major heart attack, there's no easy fix. But scientists working on a way to repair the vital organ have now engineered tissue that closely mimics natural heart muscle that beats, not only in a lab dish but also when implanted into animals.

Bees capable of learning feats with tasty prize in sight Posted: 18 Mar 2014 11:25 AM PDT Bumblebees are capable of some remarkable learning feats, especially when they might get a tasty reward, according to two studies. In the first study, the researchers found bees capable of learning to solve increasingly complex problems, an example of scaffold learning. In a second study, the researchers found bees learned by watching and communicating with other bees, a process called social learning.

Strongest evidence yet of two distinct human cognitive systems Posted: 18 Mar 2014 11:07 AM PDT Cognitive scientists may have produced the strongest evidence yet that humans have separate and distinct cognitive systems with which they can categorize, classify, and conceptualize their worlds. The systems also may have different courses of decline in cognitive aging, which would have ramifications for remediation and compensation in dementia.

Amazon inhales more carbon than it emits, NASA finds Posted: 18 Mar 2014 10:08 AM PDT A new NASA-led study seven years in the making has confirmed that natural forests in the Amazon remove more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than they emit, therefore reducing global warming. This finding resolves a long-standing debate about a key component of the overall carbon balance of the Amazon basin.

Climatologists offer explanation for widening of Earth's tropical belt Posted: 18 Mar 2014 08:38 AM PDT Climatologists posit that the recent widening of the tropical belt is primarily caused by multi-decadal sea surface temperature variability in the Pacific Ocean. This variability includes the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (a long-lived El Niño-like pattern of Pacific climate variability) and anthropogenic pollutants, which act to modify the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. Until now there was no clear explanation for what is driving the widening.

Sea anemone is genetically half animal, half plant Posted: 18 Mar 2014 08:38 AM PDT Evolutionary and developmental biologists have discovered that sea anemones display a genomic landscape with a complexity of regulatory elements similar to that of fruit flies or other animal model systems. This suggests that this principle of gene regulation is already 600 million years old and dates back to the common ancestor of human, fly and sea anemone.

Study of complete RNA collection of fruit fly uncovers unprecedented complexity Posted: 18 Mar 2014 08:36 AM PDT New research has revealed the transcriptome of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster in unprecedented detail, identifying thousands of new genes, transcripts and proteins. The study shows that the Drosophila genome is far more complex than previously suspected and suggests that the same will be true of the genomes of other higher organisms.

New view of supernova death throes in 3-D Posted: 18 Mar 2014 08:36 AM PDT A powerful, new three-dimensional model provides fresh insight into the turbulent death throes of supernovas, whose final explosions outshine entire galaxies and populate the universe with elements that make life on Earth possible. It shows how the turbulent mixing of elements inside stars causes them to expand, contract, and spit out matter before they finally detonate.

Archaeologists discover earliest complete example of a human with cancer, from 3,000 years ago Posted: 18 Mar 2014 08:22 AM PDT Archaeologists have found the oldest complete example in the world of a human with metastatic cancer in a 3,000 year-old skeleton. The skeleton of the young adult male was found in a tomb in modern Sudan in 2013 and dates back to 1200BC. Analysis has revealed evidence of metastatic carcinoma, cancer which has spread to other parts of the body from where it started, from a malignant soft-tissue tumour spread across large areas of the body, making it the oldest convincing complete example of metastatic cancer in the archaeological record.

Scent of the familiar: You may linger like perfume in your dog's brain Posted: 18 Mar 2014 08:20 AM PDT An area of the canine brain associated with reward responds more strongly to the scents of familiar humans than it does to the scents of other humans, or even to those of familiar dogs. This is among the first brain-imaging studies of dogs responding to biological odors. When humans smell the perfume or cologne of someone they love, they may have an immediate, emotional reaction that's not necessarily cognitive.

Electronic media associated with poorer well-being in children Posted: 18 Mar 2014 06:39 AM PDT The use of electronic media, such as watching television, using computers and playing electronic games, was associated with poorer well-being in children. Researchers noted that using electronic media can be a sedentary behavior and sedentary behavior is associated with adverse health outcomes, and may be detrimental at a very young age. Similarly, less monitoring by mothers of the time their children spent watching TV or playing video games appears to be associated with higher BMI for children at age 7 and increasing deviance from child BMI norms between the ages of 5 to 9 years.

Suppressing unwanted memories reduces their unconscious influence on behavior Posted: 18 Mar 2014 06:39 AM PDT Researchers have shown that, contrary to what was previously assumed, suppressing unwanted memories reduces their unconscious influences on subsequent behavior, and have shed light on how this process happens in the brain.

Astronomers complete cosmic dust census Posted: 18 Mar 2014 06:32 AM PDT Astronomers have completed a benchmark study of more than 300 galaxies, producing the largest census of dust in the local Universe, the Herschel Reference Survey. Astronomers observed galaxies at far-infrared and sub-millimeter wavelengths and captured the light directly emitted by dust grains.

Rats' brains may 'remember' odor experienced while under general anesthesia, study suggests Posted: 18 Mar 2014 06:30 AM PDT Rats' brains may remember odors they were exposed to while deeply anesthetized, suggests research. In the study, rats were exposed to a specific odor while under general anesthesia. Examination of the brain tissue after they had recovered from anesthesia revealed evidence of cellular imprinting, even though the rats behaved as if they had never encountered the odor before.

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