Science News

May 9, 2008

Breastfeeding Associated With Increased Intelligence - The largest randomized study of breastfeeding ever conducted reports that breastfeeding raises children's IQs and improves their academic performance, a McGill researcher and his team have found.

New Link To Schizophrenia Discovered - Neuroscientists at Johns Hopkins have discovered that mice lacking an enzyme that contributes to Alzheimer disease exhibit a number of schizophrenia-like behaviors.

Animal Interaction Behind Cambrian Explosion? - An event as simple as the world’s first bite may have sparked an ancient “explosion” of life 500 million years ago that led to the rise of the broad groups of animals that are still alive today.

May 8, 2008

First Steps Toward Autonomous Robot Surgeries - The day may be getting a little closer when robots will perform surgery on patients in dangerous situations or in remote locations, such as on the battlefield or in space, with minimal human guidance.

Scientists Make Artificial Mouth - For years scientists have tried to build an electronic tongue, a robotic tasting device that could have profound applications in improving food quality and safety.

Does The Brain Control Muscles Or Movements? - One of the major scientific questions about the brain is how it can translate the simple intent to perform an action - say, reach for a glass - into the dynamic, coordinated symphony of muscle movements required for that action.

May 7, 2008

Dinosaur Bones Reveal Ancient Bug Bites - Paleontologists have long been perplexed by dinosaur fossils with missing pieces – sets of teeth without a jaw bone, bones that are pitted and grooved, even bones that are half gone.

Laugh Your Way To Wellness With Yoga Trend - Ho ho, ha ha ha, students in a fitness class at the University of Michigan Health System chant repeatedly while clapping their hands and walking around the room.

Is Bipolar Disorder Overdiagnosed? - A new study by Rhode Island Hospital and Brown University researchers reports that fewer than half the patients previously diagnosed with bipolar disorder received a diagnosis of bipolar disorder based on a comprehensive, psychiatric diagnostic interview - the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV (SCID).

May 6, 2008

Brain-training To Improve Memory Boosts Fluid Intelligence - Brain-training efforts designed to improve working memory can also boost scores in general problem-solving ability and improve fluid intelligence, according to new University of Michigan research.

Scientists Discover Why Plague Is So Lethal - Bacteria that cause the bubonic plague may be more virulent than their close relatives because of a single genetic mutation, according to research published in the May issue of the journal Microbiology.

NASA Spacecraft Tracks Raging Saturn Storm - As a powerful electrical storm rages on Saturn with lightning bolts 10,000 times more powerful than those found on Earth, the Cassini spacecraft continues its five-month watch over the dramatic events.

May 5, 2008

Young Songbirds Babble Before They Learn To Sing - Young songbirds babble before they can mimic an adult's song, much like their human counterparts.

Weight Loss Possible When Self-belief High - If you are what you eat, what you eat has a lot to do with how you think about yourself, says a QUT PhD researcher whose study is part of an international research project on the healthy ageing of women.

Big Black Holes Cook Flambeed Stellar Pancakes - According to two astrophysicists from Paris Observatory, the fate of stars that venture too close to massive black holes could be even more violent than previously believed.

May 2, 2008

Ancient Ecosystems Organized Much Like Our Own - Similarities between half-billion-year-old and recent food webs point to deep principles underpinning the structure of ecological relationships, as shown by researchers from the Santa Fe Institute, Microsoft Research Cambridge and elsewhere.

Artificial Intelligence Boosts Science From Mars - Artificial intelligence (AI) being used at the European Space Operations Centre is giving a powerful boost to ESA's Mars Express as it searches for signs of past or present life on the Red Planet.

Obesity Worsens Impact Of Asthma - Obesity can worsen the impact of asthma and may also mask its severity in standard tests, according to researchers in New Zealand, who studied lung function in asthmatic women with a range of body mass indexes (BMIs).

May 1, 2008

Bionic Eyes Implants Give Partial Vision to Blind Patients - Exciting breakthroughs promise partial vision to blind, though much research work remains.

Hypnosis: The Key To Unlocking The Delusional Mind? - Researchers at Macquarie University have developed an original new approach to the study of delusions, using hypnosis to temporarily create typical delusional beliefs in otherwise non-delusional people.

Ultra-dense Galaxies Found In Early Universe - A team of astronomers looking at the universe's distant past found nine young, unusually compact galaxies, each weighing in at 200 billion times the mass of the Sun.

April 30, 2008

Birds Can Detect Predators Using Smell - Many animal species detect and avoid predators by smell, but this ability has largely been ignored in the study of birds, since it was traditionally thought that they did not make use of this sense.

'Sticky Nanotubes' Hold Key To Future Technologies - Researchers at Purdue University are the first to precisely measure the forces required to peel tiny nanotubes off of other materials, opening up the possibility of creating standards for nano-manufacturing and harnessing a gecko's ability to walk up walls.

Can Virtual Reality Help With Alcoholism? - Patients in therapy to overcome addictions have a new arena to test their coping skills - the virtual world. A new study by University of Houston Associate Professor Patrick Bordnick says that a virtual reality (VR) environment can provide the climate necessary to spark an alcohol craving so that patients can practice how to say no in a realistic and safe setting.

April 29, 2008

Decision Making, Is It All 'Me, Me, Me'? - People act in their own best interests, according to traditional views of how and why we make the decisions that we do.

T.Rex Has Clear Evolutionary Link To Birds - Putting more meat on the theory that dinosaurs' closest living relatives are modern-day birds, molecular analysis of a shred of 68-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex protein confirms that dinosaurs share common ancestry with chickens, ostriches, and to a lesser extent, alligators.

Shoulder Motor Balks On Opportunity Rover's Robotic Arm - A small motor in the robotic arm of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity that began stalling occasionally more than two years ago has become more troublesome recently.

April 28, 2008

Explaining Science Through Drawings - If a picture is worth a thousand words, creating one can have as much value to the illustrator as to the intended audience.

Was Early Elephant An Amphibian? - Scientists studying two very ancient elephants surmised that they were probably semi-aquatic mammals, eating freshwater plants.

Next Step In Robot Development Is Child's Play - Teaching robots to understand enough about the real world to allow them act independently has proved to be much more difficult than first thought.

April 25, 2008

Psychologists Demonstrate Simplicity Of Working Memory - A mind is a terrible thing to waste, but humans may have even less to work with than previously thought.

Pregnancy Is Possible After Cancer Treatment - It has been reported for the first time in Germany that healthy ovarian tissue has been taken from a non-pregnant woman with cancer and then re-implanted after cancer therapy.

Dramatic Collisions Trigger Bursts Of Star Formation - Interacting galaxies are found throughout the Universe, sometimes as dramatic collisions that trigger bursts of star formation, on other occasions as stealthy mergers that result in new galaxies.

April 24, 2008

Glaciers Reveal Martian Climate Has Been Recently Active - The prevailing thinking is that Mars is a planet whose active climate has been confined to the distant past. About 3.5 billion years ago, the Red Planet had extensive flowing water and then fell quiet - deadly quiet.

How Exercise Changes Structure And Function Of Heart - For the first time researchers are beginning to understand exactly how various forms of exercise impact the heart.

Human Brain Appears 'Hard-wired' For Hierarchy - Human imaging studies have for the first time identified brain circuitry associated with social status, according to researchers at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) of the National Institutes of Health.

April 23, 2008

Chemotherapy's Damage To The Brain Detailed - A commonly used chemotherapy drug causes healthy brain cells to die off long after treatment has ended and may be one of the underlying biological causes of the cognitive side effects - or "chemo brain" - that many cancer patients experience.

Stellar Birth In The Galactic Wilderness - A new image from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer shows baby stars sprouting in the backwoods of a galaxy - a relatively desolate region of space more than 100,000 light-years from the galaxy's bustling center.

'Fluidhand': Each Finger Can Be Moved Separately - It can hold a credit card, use a keyboard with the index finger, and lift a bag weighing up to 20 kg – the world’s first commercially available pros-thetic hand that can move each finger separately and has an astounding range of grip configurations.

April 22, 2008

Intelligence And Rhythmic Accuracy Go Hand In Hand - People who score high on intelligence tests are also good at keeping time, new Swedish research shows.

Neanderthals Speak Again After 30,000 Years - Dr. Robert McCarthy, an assistant professor of anthropology in the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters at Florida Atlantic University, has reconstructed vocal tracts that simulate the sound of the Neanderthal voice.

Could There Be Life On Saturn's Moon Enceladus? - Could microbial life exist inside Enceladus, where no sunlight reaches, photosynthesis is impossible and no oxygen is available?

April 21, 2008

What Are The Odds Of Finding Extraterrestrial Intelligent Life? - Is there anybody out there? Probably not, according to a scientist from the University of East Anglia.

Graphene Used To Create World's Smallest Transistor - Researchers have used the world's thinnest material to create the world's smallest transistor, one atom thick and ten atoms wide.

Aerobic Exercise Boosts Older Bodies And Minds - Aerobic exercise could give older adults a boost in brainpower, according to a recent review of studies from the Netherlands.

April 18, 2008

Your Belly Fat Could Be Making You Hungrier - The extra fat we carry around our middle could be making us hungrier, so we eat more, which in turn leads to even more belly fat.

Saliva Can Help Diagnose Heart Attack - Early diagnosis of a heart attack may now be possible using only a few drops of saliva and a new nano-bio-chip, a multi-institutional team led by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin reported at a recent meeting of the American Association for Dental Research.

Lingering Star Streams Skirt Two Nearby Spiral Galaxies - An international team of astronomers has identified huge star streams in the outskirts of two nearby spiral galaxies. For the first time, they have obtained a panoramic overview of an example of galactic cannibalism similar to that involving the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy in the vicinity of the Milky Way.

April 17, 2008

How Big Is Your Brain? - From autopsies, researchers have long known that some people die with sharp minds and perfect memories, but their brains riddled with the plaques and tangles of Alzheimer's disease.

World's Oldest Living Tree Discovered In Sweden - The world's oldest recorded tree is a 9,550 year old spruce in the Dalarna province of Sweden. The spruce tree has shown to be a tenacious survivor that has endured by growing between erect trees and smaller bushes in pace with the dramatic climate changes over time.

Engineers Develop Systems For Recognizing Emotion - Emotions are an intrinsic part of communications. But machines don’t have, perceive or react to them, which makes us – their handlers – hot under the collar. But thanks to building blocks developed by European researchers, machines that ‘feel’ may no longer be confined to science fiction.

April 16, 2008

Getting Wired For Terahertz Computing - University of Utah engineers took an early step toward building superfast computers that run on far-infrared light instead of electricity.

Decision-making May Be Surprisingly Unconscious Activity - Contrary to what most of us would like to believe, decision-making may be a process handled to a large extent by unconscious mental activity.

Hubble Pinpoints Location Of Record-breaking Cosmic Explosion - Peering across 7.5 billion light-years and halfway back to the Big Bang, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has photographed the fading optical counterpart of a powerful gamma ray burst that holds the record for being the intrinsically brightest naked-eye object ever seen from Earth.

April 15, 2008

Spitzer Sees Shining Stellar Sphere - Millions of clustered stars glisten like an iridescent opal in a new image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

Does The Internet Really Influence Suicidal Behavior? - People searching the Internet for information about suicide methods are most likely to come across sites that encourage suicide rather than sites offering help and support, finds a study in the British Medical Journal.

Ancient Komodo Dragon Has Space-age Skull - The fearsome Komodo dragon is the world's largest living lizard and can take very large animal prey: now a new international study has revealed how it can be such an efficient killing machine despite having a wimpy bite and a featherweight skull.

April 14, 2008

Wine May Protect Against Dementia - There may be constituents in wine that protect against dementia. This is shown in research from the Sahlgrenska Academy at University of Gothenburg in Sweden.

Mental Health Cultivated On The Farm - Time down on the farm with animals could provide some therapeutic benefit for people with mental illness, according to researchers.

NASA Spacecraft Images Mars Moon In Color And In 3D - A new stereo view of Phobos, the larger and inner of Mars' two tiny moons, has been captured by a NASA spacecraft orbiting Mars.

April 11, 2008

Just 20 Minutes Of Weekly Housework Boosts Mental Health - Just 20 minutes of any physical activity, including housework, in a week is enough to boost mental health, reveals a large study published ahead of print in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

New Rocky Planet Found In Constellation Leo - Spanish and UCL (University College London) scientists have discovered a possible terrestrial-type planet orbiting a star in the constellation of Leo.

How Fast You'll Age Is Written In Your Bones - Perhaps the aging process can’t be stopped. But it can be predicted, and new research from Tel Aviv University indicates that people may live longer and lead healthier lives as a result.

April 10, 2008

Rats Can Discriminate Odors In Milliseconds - Using an ethologically relevant task - exploratory sniffing - Daniel Wesson and colleagues from Boston University discovered that rats are able to discriminate odors much more quickly than previously thought, in as little as 140 milliseconds.

Research Reveals Internet "Black Holes" - Sometimes you try to reach a site and mysteriously you can't get to it. Perhaps you think its simply your imagination, something wrong with your computer, or perhaps the site is under attack. Or maybe the server that the site is hosted on went down.

New State Of Matter: 'Superinsulator' Created - Superinsulation may sound like a marketing gimmick for a drafty attic or winter coat. But it is actually a newly discovered fundamental state of matter created by scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory in collaboration with several European institutions.

April 9, 2008

First Lungless Frog Discovered - Researchers have confirmed the first case of complete lunglessness in a frog, according to a report in the April 8th issue of Current Biology.

Sleep Problems Common In Children With ADHD - Children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) appear likely to experience sleep problems, according to a new report.

Old Galaxies Stick Together In The Young Universe - Using the most sensitive images ever obtained with the United Kingdom Infra-Red Telescope (UKIRT), astronomers have found convincing evidence that galaxies which look old early in the history of the Universe ...

April 8, 2008

MIT Develops Advanced Humanlike Robot - Scientist continue to push the boundaries of artificial intelligence, deploying robots and computer AIs into increasingly complex and varied situations.

Brain Damage Can Be Repaired - Scientists in the Laboratoire de Neurobiologie des Processus Adaptatifs have shown that it is possible to repair an injured brain by creating a small number of new, specifically-targeted innervations, rather than a larger number of non-specific connections.

Magnetic Substorms From Ground And Space - One of the most dynamic events in the interaction between the Sun and the Earth is a ‘substorm’, an explosive reshaping of the Earth’s outer magnetic field.

April 7, 2008

Computer Recognizes Attractiveness In Women - "Beauty," goes the old saying, "is in the eye of the beholder." But does the beholder have to be human?

Brain DNA 'Remodeled' In Alcoholism - Reshaping of the DNA scaffolding that supports and controls the expression of genes in the brain may play a major role in the alcohol withdrawal symptoms, particularly anxiety, that make it so difficult for alcoholics to stop using alcohol.

Black Hole Discovered In Center Of Enigmatic Omega Centauri - A new discovery has resolved some of the mystery surrounding Omega Centauri, the largest and brightest globular cluster in the sky.

April 4, 2008

New Views On The Sun's Startling Magnetic Fountains - Astronomers have known for decades that the Sun has a very dynamic atmosphere. Huge fountains of hot gas erupt in the atmosphere, or corona, every few minutes, travelling at tens of thousands of km per hour and reaching great heights.

Good Sexual Intercourse Lasts Minutes, Not Hours - Satisfactory sexual intercourse for couples lasts from 3 to 13 minutes, contrary to popular fantasy about the need for hours of sexual activity, according to a survey of U.S. and Canadian sex therapists.

Insomnia May Perpetuate Depression In Some Elderly Patients - In addition to being a risk factor for a depressive episode, persistent insomnia may perpetuate the illness in some elderly patients, and especially in those receiving standard care for depression in primary care settings, according to a new study.