ScienceDaily: Top Science News

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• Extinctions during human era one thousand times more than before
• Benefits for babies exposed to two languages found in Singaporean birth cohort study
• Modern population boom traced to pre-industrial roots
• Asian camel crickets now common in US homes
• Nature's tiny engineers: Corals control their environment, stirring up water eddies to bring nutrients
• How neurons in bats' brains ensure a safe flight
• Neurons in human skin perform advanced calculations
• Real tremors, or drug-seeking patient? New app can tell

Extinctions during human era one thousand times more than before Posted: 02 Sep 2014 12:11 PM PDT The gravity of the world's current extinction rate becomes clearer upon knowing what it was before people came along. A new estimate finds that species die off as much as 1,000 times more frequently nowadays than they used to. That's 10 times worse than the old estimate of 100 times.

Benefits for babies exposed to two languages found in Singaporean birth cohort study Posted: 02 Sep 2014 08:50 AM PDT There are advantages associated with exposure to two languages in infancy, as team of investigators and clinician-scientists in Singapore and internationally have found. The findings reveal a generalized cognitive advantage that emerges early in bilingual infants, and is not specific to a particular language.

Modern population boom traced to pre-industrial roots Posted: 02 Sep 2014 08:47 AM PDT The foundation of the human population explosion, commonly attributed to a sudden surge in industrialization and public health during the 18th and 19th centuries, was actually laid as far back as 2,000 years ago, suggests an extended model of detailed demographic and archeological data.

Asian camel crickets now common in US homes Posted: 02 Sep 2014 06:34 AM PDT With their long, spiky legs and their propensity for eating anything, including each other, camel crickets are the stuff of nightmares. And now research finds that non-native camel cricket species have spread into homes across the eastern United States.

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.

How neurons in bats' brains ensure a safe flight Posted: 01 Sep 2014 07:23 AM PDT Bats emit ultrasound pulses and measure the echoes reflected from their surroundings. They have an extremely flexible internal navigation system that enables them to do this. A study shows that when a bat flies close to an object, the number of active neurons in the part of a bat's brain responsible for processing acoustic information about spatial positioning increases. This information helps bats to react quickly and avoid obstacles.

Neurons in human skin perform advanced calculations Posted: 01 Sep 2014 06:03 AM PDT Neurons in human skin perform advanced calculations, previously believed that only the brain could perform. A characteristic of neurons that extend into the skin and record touch, is that they branch in the skin so that each neuron reports touch from many highly-sensitive zones on the skin. According to researchers, this branching allows first-order tactile neurons not only to send signals to the brain that something has touched the skin, but also process geometric data about the object touching the skin.

Real tremors, or drug-seeking patient? New app can tell Posted: 29 Aug 2014 05:42 AM PDT A new smartphone uses data from built-in accelerometer to measure the frequency of alcohol withdrawal tremors. Withdrawal is a potentially fatal condition that is easily treated with benzodiazepine drugs, a class of sedatives used to treat alcohol withdrawal, anxiety, seizures, insomnia and more. But physicians are often reluctant to prescribe them because they're frequently abused and can be dangerous when mixed with other drugs, especially alcohol and opiates.

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