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"Long before it's in the papers"
May 23, 2013

 = EXCLUSIVES = 

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Men want status from romantic relationships, research finds
A set of surveys suggests men and women get self-es­teem from rela­t­ion­ships in dif­fer­ent ways.

 

Killed twice in 1600s, hoax “dragon” slain again—in creationism dispute
Scient­ists say they’ve proven what some suspected three centuries ago: the swamp dra­gon from Rome was a hoax. And maybe now it mat­ters more.

Yes, gentlemen, size matters—but something else matters more, study finds
Scientists as­sessed how pe­nis size, body height and body shape inter­act to in­flu­ence fe­male rank­ings of male al­lure.

 

Babies may be drawn to those who mistreat the “different”
Re­searchers report new evi­dence that hard-to-eradi­cate bia­ses based on race, sex and other diff­er­ences take root early in life.

Your brain cells may be capable of outliving you—by a lot
New findings make scient­ists hope­ful that if hu­man life­span is increased, brain cells will coop­erate by liv­ing long­er accord­ing­ly.

 

Chimps found to play fairness game like people
In some im­por­tant ways, chimps may have more hu­man-like con­cepts of fair­ness than pre­vi­ously rec­og­nized, bi­ol­o­gists say.

For signs of life, some strange planetary systems may be most promising
Atmos­pheric chem­icals be­tray­ing the pre­sence of alien life might be de­tect­able around white dwarf stars, a study says.

Did some Neanderthals learn advanced skills from “moderns”?
Sur­pris­ing­ly, some Ne­an­der­thal peo­ple seem to have made body or­na­ments and soph­is­t­icated tools, a study re­ports.


Theory that cooking gave us big brains gains support
New research backs up a the­o­ry that the ad­vent of cook­ing al­most two mill­ion years ago en­abled hu­mans to get smart­er.

Friendliness to minorities may often be a performance—a fragile one
Many whites be­have ex­tra nicely to mi­nor­i­ties, but it’s often an act that ar­ises from a sense of obli­ga­t­ion, new re­search sug­gests.


 

Gospel of Matthew linked to trail of bizarre self-mutilations
A particu­lar set of verses from a book in the Bi­ble has crea­ted con­stern­ation among some med­i­cal pro­fes­sionals.

“Racial purity” DNA testing slammed as perversion, but halting practice might not be easy
A pol­i­ti­cian has sparked out­rage af­ter re­port­ed­ly tak­ing a DNA test for a shock­ing pur­pose. But just where the red line lies is not wide­ly agreed up­on.

Moral “taint” still seeps along familial lines
We are still blamed to some de­gree for the mis­deeds of our rel­a­tives, ac­cord­ing to a set of newly re­ported sur­veys.


American heads have been changing shape, but why?
White people’s heads in the Unit­ed States have got­ten taller and nar­row­er since the days the steam­ship was king, re­search indi­cates.

Cold case solved? Study probes riddle of sinking beer bubbles
Bub­bles in dark beer are seen to slide down­ward, iron­ic­ally, be­cause they’re trying to head up­ward, a study re­ports.

Move elephants into Australia, scientist proposes
Does the Land Down Under need an in­fu­sion of large mam­mals to solve its ec­o­log­i­cal and wild­fire prob­lems?


Was blackmail essential for marriage to evolve?
A study takes a cold new look at a cus­tom as ancient and firmly estab­lished as it is sa­cred to mil­lions.

A human bias against creativity is hindering science, research claims
Most of us love crea­ti­vi­ty—until it ac­tually comes knock­ing, some psy­cho­lo­gists say.

Pluto has even colder “twin” of similar size, studies find
A “d­warf plan­et” or­bit­ing our sun three times fur­ther away than Plu­to is about the size of that better-known, frig­id world, as­tro­no­mers say.

 

Could simple anger have taught people to cooperate?
A new study chal­lenges one of the lead­ing the­o­ries as a sol­u­tion for an evo­lu­tion­ary puz­zle.

Different cultures’ music matches their speech styles, study finds
Re­search­ers have de­bat­ed for years what the bi­o­log­i­cal ba­sis of mu­sic might be.

 

Your parrot isn’t just parroting, study suggests

While many own­ers will at­test that pet par­rots have a pur­pose in their talk­ing, the sub­ject was lit­tle stud­ied be­fore re­cent­ly. 

Music making may help keep mind in tune in old age
Long­time play­ing of a mu­si­cal in­stru­ment may help keep your mind sharp as others’ start go­ing flat, re­search sug­gests.

 

Tiny bugs have own personalities despite being clones, scientists say
Ti­ny green in­sects known as pea aphids have in­di­vid­ual be­hav­ior pat­terns, or “per­sonal­i­ties,” a study re­ports.

Does a smile mean something to a dog?
Dogs can learn to tell apart smiles from blank ex­pres­sions in pho­tos of peo­ple, a study has found.


Why do men use silly pickup lines?
A new study assesses the psych­o­logy and suc­cess rates of va­rious gam­bits by which men try to get women’s at­ten­tion.

"Forests" detectable even in distant solar systems, scientists suggest
Once humans start im­ag­ing Earth-like plan­ets in other solar systems, tree-like life forms might also be detectable, a study proposes.






Bars may kill spiral galaxies
Some lovely cos­mic struct­ures may event­ual­ly come un­done, say re­search­ers aided by cit­i­zen vol­un­teers.

 = MORE NEWS = 

* * * LATEST * * *

Overeating learned in infancy, study suggests
Some sim­ple par­ent­ing prac­tices may sub­stant­ially re­duce a child’s risk of obe­sity, re­search­ers say.

 

Allosaurus ate more like a falcon, T. rex more like a croc, study finds
Seem­ing­ly simi­lar dino­saurs may have had quite different feed­ing styles.

Hurricanes are part of forecast—for Saturn moon
Ti­tan might be in for wild weath­er and some of its first known waves.

Mammoths may have died after impact from space
Tiny balls of car­bon hint at a dis­aster that melted rock and af­fected at least four cont­i­nents, sci­ent­ists say.

 

Stacking 2-D materials leads to surprises
A near­ly perf­ectly flat “won­der mat­erial” called graph­ene lacks one key property. Phy­sic­ists hope to reme­dy that.

Does your physical strength influence your politics?
Men’s upper-body strength pre­dicts some of their po­liti­cal views, ac­cord­ing to new re­search.

NASA planet-hunting telescope breaks down
A NASA space­craft de­signed to hunt for Earth-like plan­ets has bro­ken, and agen­cy sci­en­tists don’t know wheth­er they will be able to fix it.

 

Cotton may offer “eco-friendly” way to clean up oil spills
A cheap form of raw cot­ton re­port­edly can sop up more than 30 times its weight in oil.

New principle may help explain why nature is quantum
Like chil­dren, sci­en­tists are al­ways ask­ing “why?” One ques­tion they’ve yet to an­swer is why na­ture pick­ed quan­tum phys­ics.

Study may overturn thinking on human intellect
The hu­man edge in in­tel­li­gence is­n’t due mainly to the large size of the front part of our brain, new research indicates.

 

Moon, Earth water traced to same source: ancient meteorites
The moon’s wa­ter, like Earth’s, came from small, prim­i­tive me­te­orites in the first 100 mil­lion years or so of the so­lar sys­tem, re­search­ers say.

Anti-cocaine vaccine getting ready for prime time
Preliminary tests are done and hu­man test­ing should beg­in with­in a year, sci­ent­ists re­port.

Scientists boost cellular “trash collection” to gives flies extra life
Biologists say they have iden­ti­fied a gene­tic pro­cess that could event­ually help hu­mans.

 

Blocking single gene makes cancer cells nicer, study finds
The gene is nor­mally sup­posed to be turned off long be­fore we’re born.

Stem cells found to cure epilepsy in mice
A study is said to be the first re­port­ed in which treat­ment ended seiz­ures mice with a rodent version of adult ep­i­lep­sy.

DNA similarities increasingly seen in different cancers
A large study of en­do­me­trial can­cer hints at new ways to class­i­fy tum­ors that might aid treat­ment, sci­ent­ists say.

 

Stunning new view of Saturn storm shows eye about the size of India
The first close-up views of a gi­gan­tic hur­ri­cane at Sat­urn’s north pole could help us un­der­stand Earth hurri­canes too, scien­t­ists say.

Moon blamed in death of US Civil War general
Stone­wall Jack­son has gone down in le­gend as a hero of the South, but his friendly-fire death has fueled long de­bate.

Empathy processes seen lacking in psychopaths’ brains
Pris­on­ers who are psy­chopaths lack the bas­ic brain pro­cesses that let them care for oth­ers, ac­cord­ing to a stu­dy.

 

To understand far-off worlds, astronomer looks closer to home
Scientists are bet­ting that com­par­ing dis­tant, plan­et-hosting stars to bet­ter-known ones near­by could help reveal their properties.

Carrying baby leads to comfort—from mice to people, study says
Mothers’ car­ry­ing of ba­bies to calm them down is a ritual that has worked through­out a long evol­u­tion­ary per­iod, re­search sug­gests.

 

Bacteria may help pummel one of toughest cancers
A weak­ened, ra­di­o­ac­t­ive strain of bac­te­ria killed tu­mor cells in mice with pan­cre­at­ic can­cer, re­search­ers re­port.

Depression-like symptoms seen in flies
Animals faced with im­pos­si­ble cir­cum­stances often hun­ker down in a cond­ition called learned help­less­ness.

 

“Earth-like,” possibly habitable planets identified
Re­search­ers say they have iden­ti­fied the first fairly Earth-sized plan­ets in a Sun-like star’s “hab­it­able zone.”

DNA of “living fossil” decoded
The Af­ri­can coe­la­canth is thought to be one of the clos­er liv­ing rel­a­tives of the first land-walk­ing, four-legged an­i­mals.

 

“Tantalizing hint” of dark matter particles
Phys­i­cists said they found with 99.8 cer­tain­ty a par­t­i­cle of a type the­o­rized to make up a mys­terious por­tion of the universe.

Inedible plant material may be convertible to food
Re­search­ers say they have man­aged to turn an in­ed­i­ble plant ma­te­ri­al called cel­lu­lose in­to starch.

 

Study tracks “rain” from Saturn’s rings
Water drops from Sa­turn’s rings more exten­sively than pre­viously thought, a study finds.

NASA plan to grab asteroid could spur other technologies, too
An ambit­ious new pro­posal could also drive deve­lop­ment of techn­ol­ogies to save Earth from as­ter­oids and to ex­plore deep­er space.

Laziness genes possibly found
Sci­en­tists have added a new twist to the ar­gu­ment over wheth­er obes­ity stems from la­zi­ness or an un­for­tu­nate mix of genes.

 

More evidence of swimming dinos reported
Dinosaurs includ­ing an an­ces­tral form of T. rex may have been able to pad­dle long dis­tances, re­search sug­gests.

New heart disease-red meat link also involves popular supplement
A com­pound plenti­ful in red meat and added as a sup­ple­ment to pop­u­lar en­er­gy drinks has been found to pro­mote ath­er­o­scle­rosis.

 

3-D view inside proton may be coming into focus
Phys­i­cists are measuring how the most basic known par­t­i­cles—quarks—are ar­ranged to make up pieces of the atom­ic nu­cle­us.

Dream-reading machine in the works?
Sci­en­tists have ap­plied com­put­er pro­cess­ing to brain scans to see what im­ages pop up in sleep­ing peo­ple’s heads.

 

Simulations may reveal how galaxies become spiral
How ga­lax­ies like ours get and main­tain their char­ac­ter­is­tic arms has proved to be an en­dur­ing puz­zle.

Buddhists are right: meditation makes you kinder, scientists say
Medi­tat­ors in a con­trolled study were found more apt to become that nice stran­ger who steps for­ward to help when no one else will.

 

Scientists use robots to replicate ant colony behavior
New experi­ments show that ants don’t need great smarts to navi­gate effi­cient­ly, re­search­ers say.

A new way to lose weight?
Mice were found to quick­ly shed weight when im­planted with gut mi­crobes from oth­er mice that had un­der­gone gas­tric by­pass.

 

How one microscopic creature juggles seven sexes
Biolo­gists say they have fi­gured out how nature de­ter­mines which of se­ven sexes a new­born Tetra­hy­me­na is as­signed.

“Near-death experience” memories found to share qualities with true ones
The mys­ti­cal, mean­ing­ful ex­per­iences some­times de­scribed by sur­vi­vors of close brush­es with death have long fas­cin­ated sci­ent­ists.

Who pays for sex, anyway? New findings offer surprises
Most men don’t visit pros­ti­tutes, yet those who do seem to be pret­ty typ­i­cal guys, a U.S. study sug­gests.

 

Dodos weren’t alone: Huge bird die-off blamed on ancient man
The last re­gion on col­o­nized by peo­ple har­bored more than 1,000 spe­cies of birds that then died out, a study says.

In earliest image of cosmos, “strange” features
The most ac­cu­rate map ev­er made of the old­est light in the uni­verse re­veals some sur­prises, as­tro­no­mers re­port.

 

First man-made object may have left solar system—or not
The Voy­ag­er 1 space­craft may have es­caped the Sun’s zone of in­flu­ence, a stu­dy says, but not all agree.

Newborn stars make a splash with astronomers
The find­ings br­ing sci­en­tists “closer to wit­ness­ing the mo­ment when a star be­gins to form,” one says.

 

“Black Death” could return in force, study warns
An­ti­bi­ot­ic-re­sist­ant strains of a bac-ter-ium that de­ci­mated me­die­val peo­ples are being called a se­rious con­cern.

Scientists said to clone embryos of extinct frog
Although “Ju­rassic Park” may be im­possible, sci­enti­sts hope to re­vive some ex­tinct spe­cies through clon­ing tech­no­logy.

Mars rover finds conditions once suited for life
An anal­y­sis of a sam­ple col­lect­ed by NASA’s Cu­ri­os­ity rov­er sug­gests an­cient Mars could have sup­ported liv­ing mi­crobes.

 

Hidden stellar companions revealed almost next door
A pair of newly dis­cov­ered stars is the third-clos­est star sys­tem to us, and might har­bor plan­ets, ac­cord­ing to a re­port.

Using magic tricks to study the brain
An en­gi­neer is us­ing his ex­pert­ise with mag­ic to re­search the brain’s pow­ers of per­cep­tion and mem­o­ry.

 

Scientists report breaking barrier to efficient cloning
Se­quent­ial clon­ing—mak­ing copies of cop­ies, and so forth—may be no long­er be the prob­lem it has been.

World Science Archive
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Flowers, not quite from nature Sub-micro­scopic "flower" sculp­tures such as this one self-as­sem­bled out of crys­tals simp­ly as a result of sci­entists man­i­pu­lating chemical gra­dients in a beak­er. A gra­dient is a gra­dually chang­ing con­cen­tra­tion of a substance from place to place. The im­age is art­i­ficial­ly co­lored and was cap­tured using an elec­tron micro­scope. Click on the image for more im­ages and in­for­mation. (Cour­tesy Har­vard U. School of En­gin­eer­ing & Ap­plied Sci­ences)

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News alerts
 * Meteoroid impact triggers bright flash on the moon (Reuters)
* NASA spacecraft's planet-hunting days may be over (AP)
* Evidence backs up accounts of cannibalism at colonial Jamestown (NBC)
* See-through brains clarify connections (Nature.com)
 

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