Unlike Star Wars’ Tatooine, the planet is cold, gaseous and not thought to harbor life, but its discovery demonstrates the diversity of planets in our galaxy. Previous research has hinted at the existence of circumbinary planets, but clear confirmation proved elusive. Kepler detected such a planet, known as Kepler-16b, by observing transits, where the brightness of a parent star dims from the planet crossing in front of it... [more]
Source : Nasa
Kepler 16b The World With Two Suns Like Tatooine
South Pole's Dog-sized Dinosaurs
Dog-sized dinosaurs that lived near the South Pole, sometimes in the dark for months at a time, had bone tissue very similar to dinosaurs that lived everywhere on the planet, that surprising fact falsifies a 13-year-old study and may help explain why dinosaurs were able to dominate the planet for 160 million years... [more]
Source : Montana State University
The mother of all polar bears come from British Isles
Scientists have traced the maternal ancestry of modern polar bears to a female brown bear that lived in the vicinity of Britain and Ireland prior to the peak of the last ice age when polar bears and brown bears probably interbred regularly... [more]
Source : Independent
Charles Darwin's Insectivorous Plants Returned 122 Years Later to Library
A stamp inside the first edition copy showed that the book had been borrowed more than a century ago, on January 30, 1889. Investigations have found that the book had been in a private collection for 50 years before being handed to a local university, whose employees passed it back to the library... [more]
Source : Telegraph
Carbon dioxide buildup in atmosphere wouldn't spark abrupt climate change
New research lends support to evidence from numerous recent studies that suggest abrupt climate change appears to be the result of alterations in ocean circulation uniquely associated with ice ages. There might be other mechanisms by which greenhouse gases may cause an abrupt climate change, but we know of no such mechanism from the geological record... [more]
Source : University of Washington
Water’s surface is not totally wet
A new study narrows the boundary to just one quarter of water molecules in the uppermost layer - those that happen to have one hydrogen atom in water and the other vibrating freely above. Air and water meet over most of the earth’s surface, but exactly where one ends and the other begins turns out to be a surprisingly subtle question... [more]
Source : University of Southern California
Global Warming Stimulate Capacity of Trees to Store Carbon
For the first time in a field experiment, that warmer temperatures stimulate the gain of carbon stored in trees as woody tissue, partially offsetting the soil carbon loss to the atmosphere. The carbon gains in trees, the scientists found, is due to more nitrogen being made available to the trees with warmer soil... [more]
Source : Marine Biological Laboratory
Human brain’s cells astrocytes cultivated in lab dish
Long considered to be little more than putty in the brain and spinal cord, the star-shaped astrocyte has found new respect among neuroscientists who have begun to recognize its many functions in the brain, not to mention its role in a range of disorders of the central nervous system... [more]
Source : University of Wisconsin-Madison
Mathematical technique to detect trees on extrasolar planets
In the search for life on other planets, scientists are looking beyond single-celled organisms and are developing techniques that would help them detect multicellular life, when observing planets outside the solar system, scientists would be able to identify a planet with forests by the characteristics of the light that it reflects, even if it looks like just a dot in the viewing lens... [more]
Source : Astrobiology Magazine
When pain disappear depression and anxiety too disappears in the brain
It likely comes as no surprise that low back pain is the most common form of chronic pain among adults. Lesser known is the fact that those with chronic pain also experience cognitive impairments and reduced gray matter in parts of the brain associated with pain processing and the emotional components of pain, like depression and anxiety... [more]
Source : McGill University
Sleep Deprivation Affects Memory With Increased Levels Of Adenosine
Researchers have found the part of the brain and the neurochemical basis for sleep deprivation’s effects on memory. For a long time, researchers have known that sleep deprivation results in increased levels of adenosine in the brain, and has this effect from fruit flies to mice to humans. There is accumulating evidence that this adenosine is really the source of a number of the deficits and impact of sleep deprivation, including memory loss and attention deficits. One thing that underscores that evidence is that caffeine is a drug that blocks the effects of adenosine... [more]
Source : University of Pennsylvania
The iron in melting Antarctic icebergs fertilize ocean
Icebergs calving off of Antarctica are shedding substantial iron — the equivalent of a growth-boosting vitamin — into waters starved of the mineral, a new set of studies demonstrates. This iron is fertilizing the growth of microscopic plants and algae, transforming the waters adjacent to ice floes into teeming communities of everything from tiny shrimplike krill to fish, birds and sometimes mammals... [more]
Source : Science News
Sunlight turns jets pollute into toxic particles
In the first on-tarmac measurements of their kind, researchers have shown that oil droplets spewed by idling jet engines can turn into particles tiny enough to readily penetrate the lungs and brain. As pollution from cars, trucks and most smokestacks has fallen, airport emissions have tended to climb... [more]
Source : Science News
Shortening school skirts stir debate in South Korea
A row over how to respond to ever-shortening school skirts is brewing in South Korea. In one survey, quoted in a local paper, school hemlines have reportedly risen 10-15cm in the last decade... [more]
Source : BBC
Hydrogen sulphide as erectile dysfunction impotence treatments
Researchers have discovered that a liquified form of hydrogen sulphide, the gas with the smell of rotten eggs, could help men with erectile dysfunction — it might even prove an alternative to the popular impotence drug Viagra... [more]
Source : Daily Mail
Synthetic Cow Blood Saved A Woman's Life
Professor Mark Fitzgerald, faced with losing a patient who was unable to accept human blood transfusions due to religious beliefs had to get a blood substitute from the United States... [more]
Source : ABC Melbourne
Seeing Overweight People Can Thwart Diet
Seeing overweight people can cause you to choose unhealthy foods and to eat more of them unless you consciously focus on your health goals, according to new research... [more]
Source : MSN
Elizabeth Blackburn a commercial genetic testing biological age
Telomere Nobelist: Selling a 'biological age' test. Elizabeth Blackburn is launching a commercial genetic test that measures DNA markers of ageing... [more]
Source : New Scientist
Primordial Black Holes Pre-Date The Big Bang
If the Universe expands and contracts in cycles of Big Bangs and Crunches, some black holes may survive from one era to the next, according to a new analysis, primordial black holes that cosmologists think must have formed in a different way. These are essentially leftovers from the hugely dense ball of stuff from which the universe expanded... [more]
Source : Technology Review
Cocaine leave similar mark on brain as nicotine
Effects of nicotine upon brain regions involved in addiction mirror those of cocaine, according to new neuroscience research. A single 15-minute exposure to nicotine caused a long-term increase in the excitability of neurons involved in reward... [more]
Source : e Science News
Paper Predicting in 2009 Had Calculated That 81% Chance Osama Was in Abbottabad
Could Osama bin Laden have been found faster if the CIA had followed the advice of ecosystem geographers from the University of California, Los Angeles? Probably not, but the predictions of UCLA geographer Thomas Gillespie, who, along with colleague John Agnew and a class of undergraduates, authored a 2009 paper predicting the terrorist’s whereabouts, were none too shabby. According to a probabilistic model they created, there was an 80.9% chance that bin Laden was hiding out in Abbottabad, Pakistan... [more] & [more]
Source : Science Aaas & The News Pointer
Changes in sleep duration in middle aged adults affect cognitive function in later life
A study describes how changes in sleep that occur over a five-year period in late middle age affect cognitive function in later life. The findings suggest that women and men who begin sleeping more or less than 6 to 8 hours per night are subject to an accelerated cognitive decline that is equivalent to four to seven years of aging... [more]
Source : Medicalxpress
Bursts of sleep among infants associated with growth spurts in body length
A study is the first to show that increased bursts of sleep among infants are significantly associated with growth spurts in body length. The results demonstrate empirically that growth spurts not only occur during sleep but are significantly influenced by sleep... [more] & [more] & [more]
Source : American academy of sleep medicine & Healthday & Medical xpress
Coca production in Colombia leads to deforestation thanks to U.S. drug use
A recent study shows the linkage between the illegal production of coca and the continuing destruction of Colombia's rainforest. New plots of coca between 2002 and 2007 accounted for the direct destruction of 890 square kilometers of rainforest. That's roughly 6 percent of total rainforest lost in that period, which totaled to 14,000 square kilometers, or an area slightly larger than Jamaica... [more]
Source : Scientific American
There is a higher risk of unfaithfulness in people in positions of power including women
It is a commonly accepted notion that men simply are more likely to cheat than women. However, study looks at the role that power, rather than gender, plays in infidelity. People often assume that powerful men may be more likely to cheat because they have risk-taking personalities or because of distance, such as frequent business trips that many powerful people go on... [more]
Source : Aps
Lower Levels of Vitamin D Linked to Higher Diabetes Risk
Lower levels of vitamin D circulating in the bloodstream are tied to a higher risk of developing diabetes in a new study, It's hard to know what exactly the link between vitamin D and diabetes... [more]
Source : Fox News
The Making of a Fly by Peter Lawrence The $23 Million Textbook on Amazon.com
The Making of a Fly, by Peter Lawrence of the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, is a classic in the field of developmental biology. But is a single copy really worth $23,698,655, the price one seller was asking on Amazon.com? No—but that's what happens when a mindless algorithm sets the price... [more]
Source : Aaas Science
Cheap anti-depressant drug lithium stop progression of Alzheimer's
Lithium helps slow the progression of memory loss - raising the possibility it could be used to prevent dementia. The naturally occurring element has long been prescribed to treat mood swings and bipolar disorder... [more]
Source : Daily Mail
Cotinine compound derived from tobacco cure to Alzheimer’s disease
Cotinine, a compound derived from tobacco, reduced plaques associated with dementia and prevented memory loss in a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease, a study led by researchers, While the current drugs for Alzheimer’s may help delay the onset of symptoms, none halt or reverse the processes of Alzheimer’s disease. In addition, existing drugs may have undesirable side effects... [more]
Source : University of South Florida
Super twisty beam of light distinguish between left and right-handed molecules
Molecules often come in mirror images that can have different properties, and researchers take advantage of this "chirality" to design new drugs. They sort left from right versions using circularly polarised light, whose electric field corkscrews through space in a left or right-handed direction. A super twisty beam of light has been created that can distinguish between left and right-handed molecules with unprecedented precision... [more]
Source : New Scientist
ARTAS System the robot that transplant hair after harvesting flesh
Dubbed the ARTAS System, this automated robot images your head to single out a follicular unit, and then uses its robotic arm to make 1 mm-diameter “dermal punches” into your scalp. It continues extracting hair follicles from parts of your head that have sufficient amounts of hair, ARTAS can only identify and extract straight black or brown hair. So any balding blondies still have a convenient excuse to not pay ARTAS a visit... [more]
Source : Discover Magazine
Fog harvesting drinking the fog to make water available
A fog-harvesting device consists of a fence-like mesh panel, which attracts droplets, connected to receptacles into which water drips. What nature has developed, Shreerang Chhatre wants to refine, to help the world’s poor. Chhatre is an engineer and aspiring entrepreneur at MIT who works on fog harvesting, the deployment of devices that, like the beetle, attract water droplets and corral the runoff. This way, poor villagers could collect clean water near their homes, instead of spending hours carrying water from distant wells or streams... [more]
Source : MIT news
Undernourished Skinny Mothers During Pregnancy Can Produce Fat Baby Obese Adults
When the German army cut off food supplies to western Holland, researchers found that people born to mothers who were pregnant during the famine were more likely to be obese as adults. One possible explanation is that the moms are somehow programming their children to live in a food-scarce world by increasing their appetites and ability to store fat—and if the children grow up with plenty to eat, they become overweight... [more]
Source : Science AAAS
Ile aux Aigrettes ebony forest saved by Aldabra tortoises a successful rewilding
Giant tortoises have rescued the ecology of a tropical island devastated by deforestation in a successful example of 'rewilding'. The tortoises, which can reach a length of almost 4ft and weigh 500lb, were re-introduced in 2000 to eat the fruit of the ebony tree and disperse the seeds in their faeces... [more]
Source : Daily Mail
Maca aphrodisiac Lepidium meyenii improve sexual desire
Italian researchers gave either a placebo or maca (2400 mg/day) to 50 men complaining of mild erectile dysfunction. After 12 weeks, both groups reported significant benefits, but the maca group experienced greater improvement... [more]
Source : Psychology Today
Attractive women less likely to be recruited if employer is female
Researchers found that job applications containing an attractive picture received roughly a quarter of the responses of one with a plain picture or no picture at all, if the recruiter was a woman. The research by Israeli economists Bradley Ruffle and Ze’ev Shtudiner to be presented at the Royal Economic Society’s 2011 annual conference, sent more than 5,000 job resumes to over 2,500 advertised job openings... [more]
Source : Telegraph
Low Frequency Array or LOFAR to Detect Alien Planets
Auroras are flares of ultraviolet light in the upper atmosphere of planets. Scientists at the University of Leicester in England have shown that emissions from the radio aurora of planets such as Jupiter and Saturn could be detectable by radio telescopes such as the European Low Frequency Array, or LOFAR... [more]
Source : Space.com
Foul language swearing can relieve pain
Swearing can relieve pain – but only for people who swear infrequently. Previous research conducted by Dr Stephens and Claudia Umland from Keele University found that swearing can reduce the feeling of pain... [more]
Source : Keele University
Vegetarian diet lower heart attack risk by a third cuts risk of diabetes
Vegetarians are a third less likely to suffer heart problems, diabetes or stroke than meat eaters. The results come from a small study that looked at how different dietary patterns related to the prevalence of metabolic syndrome... [more]
Source : NHS
Dictionary of Nuumte Oote the last two speakers of Ayapaneco
There are just two people left who can speak it fluently – but they refuse to talk to each other. Manuel Segovia, 75, and Isidro Velazquez, 69, live 500 metres apart in the village of Ayapa in the tropical lowlands of the southern state of Tabasco. It is not clear whether there is a long-buried argument behind their mutual avoidance, but people who know them say they have never really enjoyed each other's company... [more] & [more]
Source : Guardian & Daily Mail
GABRA2 gene associated with alcoholism, impulsive behavior craving and anxiety
Researchers have uncovered a new link between genetic variations associated with alcoholism, impulsive behavior and a region of the brain involved in craving and anxiety, GABRA2 gene contribute to the risk of alcoholism by influencing impulsive behaviors, at least in part through a portion of the cerebral cortex known as the insula... [more]
Source : University of Michigan Health System
KinnowLS the seedless orange or with almost no seeds
Experts have developed a new variety which contains as little as two or three seeds in each fruit, compared to the usual 15 to 30. The new variety is known as the KinnowLS - the LS stands for low seeded... [more]
Source : Daily Mail
European continent going under Africa
Beneath the Mediterranean Sea, the cold, dense rock at the extreme north of the African plate has virtually all sunk under the Eurasian plate on which Europe sits. But the African landmass is too light to follow suit and descend... [more]
Source : BBC
To be bilingual boost brain power
Research suggests that the growing numbers of bilingual speakers may have an advantage that goes beyond communication: It turns out that being bilingual is also good for your brain. For a bilingual who really has two good languages that they use, both of them are always active, in other words, no matter what language a person is speaking at the moment, both languages are active in the brain. Ellen Bialystok, a psychologist from York University in Toronto, says the reason lies in the way the bilingual mind uses language... [more]
Source : NPR
Aaron Hoover how to build a Möbius gear
The entire mechanism essentially boils down to an oddly configured set of planetary gears. One can think of the black portion in the image as the ring with a fixed zero input velocity. A single blue gear is a planet, and the white strip is the sun. Output can be taken either from the sun or the planets... [more] & [more] & [more]
Source : Berkeley Robotics & Wired
Growing eyeballs with embryonic stem cells
Embryonic stem cells growing in a dish can spontaneously form complex structures resembling the retina, a clump of mouse embryonic stem cells can self-organize into three-dimensional structures reminiscent of the retina in the early stages of embryonic development... [more] & [more]
Source : Technology Review & Nature
Jill Tarter SETT Search for Extraterrestrial Technology
Rather than looking for aliens who use interstellar radio signals an alternative search strategy is simply to spy on any mega-engineering projects that an advanced civilization might be undertaking. Veteran SETI astronomer Jill Tarter calls this strategy "SETT" -- the Search for Extraterrestrial Technology... [more]
Source : Discovery News
Zhuchengtyrannus magnus lost cousin of T. rex
Scientists have identified a new species of gigantic theropod dinosaur, a close relative of T. rex, from fossil skull and jaw bones discovered in China. Comparable in size and scale to the legendary T. rex, this new dinosaur is one of the largest theropod carnivorous dinosaurs... [more]
Source : University College Dublin
Electrical wave blaster a new way to extinguish fires
Scientists described a discovery that could underpin a new genre of fire-fighting device a sprinkler systems that suppress fires not with water, but with zaps of electric current, without soaking and irreparably damaging the contents of a home, business, or other structure... [more]
Source : American Chemical Society
Pioglitazone Actos prevents type 2 diabetes
Pill taken once a day in the morning prevented type 2 diabetes in more than 70 percent of individuals whose obesity, ethnicity and other markers put them at highest risk for the disease, Dr. DeFronzo led the trial of pioglitazone, which is marketed as Actos® by Takeda Pharmaceutical... [more]
Source : University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio
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