ScienceDaily: Top Science News |
- Mouth bacteria can change its diet, supercomputers reveal
- Rare blurring of black hole light spotted
- Is empathy in humans and apes actually different? 'Yawn contagion' effect studied
- Awake within a dream: Lucid dreamers show greater insight in waking life
- Treating mental illness by changing memories of things past
- Our ancestor's 'leaky' membrane answers big questions in biology
- Antarctic midge's genome is smallest in insects to date: Bare-bones genome is adaptation to deep freeze
- Geckos use toe hairs to turn stickiness on and off
- Vaccine alternative protects mice against malaria
- Synthetic molecule makes cancer self-destruct
| Mouth bacteria can change its diet, supercomputers reveal Posted: 12 Aug 2014 01:38 PM PDT Mouth bacteria can change their metabolism in disease versus health. The Stampede and Lonestar supercomputers compared gene expression of 160,000 genes in healthy and diseased periodontal communities. Research paves way for biomarkers to predict illness from wide-ranging diseases such as periodontitis, diabetes, and Crohn's disease.       |
| Rare blurring of black hole light spotted Posted: 12 Aug 2014 11:20 AM PDT Scientists have captured an extreme and rare event in the regions immediately surrounding a supermassive black hole. A compact source of X-rays that sits near the black hole, called the corona, has moved closer to the black hole over a period of just days.  |
| Is empathy in humans and apes actually different? 'Yawn contagion' effect studied Posted: 12 Aug 2014 09:22 AM PDT Whether or not humans are the only empathic beings is still under debate. In a new study, researchers directly compared the 'yawn contagion' effect between humans and bonobos -- our closest evolutionary cousins. By doing so they were able to directly compare the empathic abilities of ourselves with another species, and found that a close relationship between individuals is more important to their empathic response than the fact that individuals might be from the same species.  |
| Awake within a dream: Lucid dreamers show greater insight in waking life Posted: 12 Aug 2014 09:18 AM PDT People who are aware they are asleep when they are dreaming have better than average problem-solving abilities, new research has discovered. Experts say that those who experience 'lucid dreaming' – a phenomena where someone who is asleep can recognize that they are dreaming – can solve problems in the waking world better than those who remain unaware of the dream until they wake up. The concept of lucid dreaming was explored in the 2010 film Inception, where the dreamers were able to spot incongruities within their dream. It is thought some people are able to do this because of a higher level of insight, meaning their brains detect they are in a dream because events would not make sense otherwise.  |
| Treating mental illness by changing memories of things past Posted: 12 Aug 2014 09:18 AM PDT Author Marcel Proust makes a compelling case that our identities and decisions are shaped in profound and ongoing ways by our memories. This truth is powerfully reflected in mental illnesses, like posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and addictions. In PTSD, memories of traumas intrude vividly upon consciousness, causing distress, driving people to avoid reminders of their traumas, and increasing risk for addiction and suicide. In addiction, memories of drug use influence reactions to drug-related cues and motivate compulsive drug use.  |
| Our ancestor's 'leaky' membrane answers big questions in biology Posted: 12 Aug 2014 09:17 AM PDT All life on Earth came from one common ancestor -- a single-celled organism -- but what it looked like, how it lived and how it evolved into today's modern cells is a four billion year old mystery being solved by researchers at using mathematical modelling. Findings suggest for the first time that life's Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA) had a 'leaky' membrane, which helps scientists answer two of biology's biggest questions.  |
| Posted: 12 Aug 2014 09:13 AM PDT Scientists who sequenced the genome of the Antarctic midge suspect the genome's small size -- the smallest in insects described to date -- can probably be explained by the midge's adaptation to its extreme living environment.  |
| Geckos use toe hairs to turn stickiness on and off Posted: 12 Aug 2014 09:13 AM PDT If you've ever watched a gecko, you probably wondered about their uncanny ability to adhere to any surface -- including upside down. It turns out the little lizards can turn the "stickiness" of toe hairs on their feet on and off, which enables them to run at great speeds or cling to ceilings without expending much energy. Researchers describe new work exploring the subtleties of geckos' adhesion system mechanism.  |
| Vaccine alternative protects mice against malaria Posted: 11 Aug 2014 01:58 PM PDT Injecting a vaccine-like compound into mice was effective in protecting them from malaria, a study suggests. The findings suggest a potential new path toward the elusive goal of malaria immunization. Malaria is one of the world's deadliest infectious diseases, killing as many as 1 million people per year, the majority of them children in Africa.  |
| Synthetic molecule makes cancer self-destruct Posted: 11 Aug 2014 12:16 PM PDT A molecule that can cause cancer cells to self-destruct by ferrying sodium and chloride ions into the cancer cells has been developed by scientists. These synthetic ion transporters confirm a two-decades-old hypothesis that could point the way to new anticancer drugs while also benefiting patients with cystic fibrosis.  |
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