ScienceDaily: Strange Science News

---

• Rainfall monitoring: Mobile phones are taking over
• Growing mushrooms in diapers
• Viewers eat more while watching Hollywood action flick on TV
• Nature's tiny engineers: Corals control their environment, stirring up water eddies to bring nutrients
• Mom's hormones could make female magpie chicks more adventurous
• Sniffing-out smell of disease in feces: 'Electronic nose' for rapid detection of clostridum difficile infection

Rainfall monitoring: Mobile phones are taking over Posted: 02 Sep 2014 06:32 AM PDT Agriculture, water resource management, drought and flood warnings, etc.: rainfall monitoring is vital in many areas. But the observation networks remain insufficient. This is not the case for antennas for mobile telephones, which cover 90% of the world's inhabited areas. Besides transmitting radio signals, they record signal disturbances, which are partly due to precipitation, in order to monitor the quality of networks.

Growing mushrooms in diapers Posted: 02 Sep 2014 06:29 AM PDT Mexico is the third largest consumer of disposable diapers globally, which led to a Mexican scientist to design a technology capable of degrading the product materials by the mushroom Pleurotus ostreatus.

Viewers eat more while watching Hollywood action flick on TV Posted: 01 Sep 2014 06:15 PM PDT Television shows filled with action and sound may be bad for your waistline. TV viewers ate more M&Ms, cookies, carrots and grapes while watching an excerpt from a Hollywood action film than those watching an interview program.

Nature's tiny engineers: Corals control their environment, stirring up water eddies to bring nutrients Posted: 01 Sep 2014 06:14 PM PDT Conventional wisdom has long held that corals -- whose calcium-carbonate skeletons form the foundation of coral reefs -- are passive organisms that rely entirely on ocean currents to deliver dissolved substances, such as nutrients and oxygen. But now scientists have found that they are far from passive, engineering their environment to sweep water into turbulent patterns that greatly enhance their ability to exchange nutrients and dissolved gases with their environment.

Mom's hormones could make female magpie chicks more adventurous Posted: 01 Sep 2014 09:35 AM PDT Female magpies have been shown to be more adventurous than their male siblings, according to new research. "The fact that observable differences between the first hatched and last hatched magpie's behaviors exist indicates that mothers may be able to produce variable traits, possibly through adjustable transmission of maternal hormones or creating the conditions for sibling rivalry. Mothers could potentially produce a variety of personalities perhaps as an adaptive strategy in unpredictable environmental conditions," researchers say.

Sniffing-out smell of disease in feces: 'Electronic nose' for rapid detection of clostridum difficile infection Posted: 01 Sep 2014 06:03 AM PDT A fast-sensitive "electronic-nose" for sniffing the highly infectious bacteria C-diff, that causes diarrhea, temperature and stomach cramps, has been developed.

You are subscribed to email updates from Strange & Offbeat 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