ScienceDaily: Top Science News |
- Male Eurasian jays know that their female partners' desires can differ from their own
- Million suns shed light on fossilized plant
- Brain differences in college-aged occasional drug users
- Biologists use sound to identify breeding grounds of endangered whales
- Sensing gravity with acid: Scientists discover role for protons in neurotransmission
- Salamanders shrinking as their mountain havens heat up
- Blood test may help predict whether a child will become obese
- Paleontologists assemble giant turtle bone from fossil discoveries made centuries apart
- Inbreeding in woolly mammoths: Neck rib provide clues about decline and eventual extinction
- Simple, like a neutron star: How neutron stars are like (and unlike) black holes
- Strange materials cropping up in condensed matter laboratories
- Rates of blindness and partial sight have plummeted in developed world
- Medical Marijuana May Ease Some MS Symptoms; Little Evidence For Other Complementary or Alternative Therapies
- Crude oil causes developmental abnormalities in large marine fish: Deepwater Horizon oil disrupts heart development in tunas
| Male Eurasian jays know that their female partners' desires can differ from their own Posted: 25 Mar 2014 06:06 PM PDT Researchers investigated the extent to which males could disengage from their own current desires to feed the female what she wants. The behavior suggests the potential for 'state-attribution' in these birds -- the ability to recognize and understand the internal life and psychological states of others.  |
| Million suns shed light on fossilized plant Posted: 25 Mar 2014 06:04 PM PDT Scientists have used one of the brightest lights in the Universe to expose the biochemical structure of a 50 million-year-old fossil plant to stunning visual effect. The team of palaeontologists, geochemists and physicists investigated the chemistry of exceptionally preserved fossil leaves from the Eocene-aged 'Green River Formation' of the western United States by bombarding the fossils with X-rays brighter than a million suns produced by synchrotron particle accelerators.  |
| Brain differences in college-aged occasional drug users Posted: 25 Mar 2014 04:07 PM PDT Impaired neuronal activity has been found in the parts of the brain associated with anticipatory functioning among occasional 18- to 24-year-old users of stimulant drugs, such as cocaine, amphetamines and prescription drugs such as Adderall. The brain differences, detected using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), are believed to represent an internal hard wiring that may make some people more prone to drug addiction later in life.  |
| Biologists use sound to identify breeding grounds of endangered whales Posted: 25 Mar 2014 12:42 PM PDT Biologists have confirmed what many conservationists fear -- that Roseway Basin, a heavily traveled shipping lane, off the coast of Nova Scotia, is a vital habitat area for the endangered North Atlantic right whale.  |
| Sensing gravity with acid: Scientists discover role for protons in neurotransmission Posted: 25 Mar 2014 12:42 PM PDT While probing how organisms sense gravity and acceleration, scientists uncovered evidence that acid (proton concentration) plays a key role in communication between neurons. Scientists discovered that sensory cells in the inner ear continuously transmit information on orientation of the head relative to gravity and low-frequency motion to the brain using protons as the key means of synaptic signal transmission.  |
| Salamanders shrinking as their mountain havens heat up Posted: 25 Mar 2014 12:42 PM PDT Salamanders in some of North America's best habitat are shrinking fast as their surroundings get warmer and drier, forcing them to burn more energy. A new article examines specimens caught in the Appalachian Mountains from 1957 to 2007 and wild salamanders caught at the same sites in 2011-2012. Animals measured after 1980 averaged 8 percent smaller -- one of the fastest rates of changing body size ever recorded.  |
| Blood test may help predict whether a child will become obese Posted: 25 Mar 2014 08:30 AM PDT Scientists have found that a simple blood test, which can read DNA, could be used to predict obesity levels in children. Researchers used the test to assess the levels of epigenetic switches in the PGC1a gene - a gene that regulates fat storage in the body. Epigenetic switches take place through a chemical change called DNA methylation, which controls how genes work and is set during early life. The test, when carried out on children at five years old, differentiates between children with a high body fat and those with a low body fat when they were older.  |
| Paleontologists assemble giant turtle bone from fossil discoveries made centuries apart Posted: 25 Mar 2014 06:58 AM PDT A broken fossil turtle bone discovered by an amateur paleontologist in 2012 turned out to be the missing half of a bone first described in 1849. The surprising puzzle discovery has led paleontologists to revise conventional wisdom of how long fossils can survive exposed to surface conditions. It also provides insight into one of the largest turtle species ever known.  |
| Inbreeding in woolly mammoths: Neck rib provide clues about decline and eventual extinction Posted: 25 Mar 2014 06:58 AM PDT Researchers recently noticed that the remains of woolly mammoths from the North Sea often possess a 'cervical' (neck) rib -- in fact, 10 times more frequently than in modern elephants (33.3 percent versus 3.3 percent). In modern animals, these cervical ribs are often associated with inbreeding and adverse environmental conditions during pregnancy. If the same factors were behind the anomalies in mammoths, this reproductive stress could have further pushed declining mammoth populations towards ultimate extinction.  |
| Simple, like a neutron star: How neutron stars are like (and unlike) black holes Posted: 25 Mar 2014 06:44 AM PDT For astrophysicists neutron stars are extremely complex astronomical objects. Research has demonstrated that in certain respects these stars can instead be described very simply and that they show similarities with black holes.  |
| Strange materials cropping up in condensed matter laboratories Posted: 25 Mar 2014 06:42 AM PDT Physicists are using surprising ideas and mathematical tools originating in string theory to guide research into strange materials that are cropping up in condensed matter laboratories. There are a handful of systems that cannot be described by considering electrons (or any other kind of quasi-particle) moving around.  |
| Rates of blindness and partial sight have plummeted in developed world Posted: 24 Mar 2014 05:05 PM PDT Rates of blindness and impaired eyesight have plummeted over the past 20 years in the developed world. But macular degeneration has replaced cataract as the leading cause of blindness in rich countries, reveals an analysis of the available.  |
| Posted: 24 Mar 2014 03:12 PM PDT A new guideline suggests that there is little evidence that most complementary or alternative medicine therapies (CAM) treat the symptoms of multiple sclerosis (MS). However, the guideline states the CAM therapies oral cannabis, or medical marijuana pills, and oral medical marijuana spray may ease patients' reported symptoms of spasticity, pain related to spasticity and frequent urination in multiple sclerosis (MS). The guideline states that there is not enough evidence to show whether smoking marijuana is helpful in treating MS symptoms.  |
| Posted: 24 Mar 2014 12:40 PM PDT Crude oil from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster causes severe defects in the developing hearts of bluefin and yellowfin tunas, according to a new study. The findings show how the largest marine oil spill in United States history may have affected tunas and other species that spawned in oiled offshore habitats in the northern Gulf of Mexico.  |
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