Mammals Took Their Sweet Time to Flourish
• NY TimesThe mass extinction that wiped out dinosaurs and other life 65 million years ago apparently did not, contrary to conventional wisdom, immediately clear the way for the rise of today’s mammals.
Contents Pages by Subject
Science, Medicine and Technology
In the Marmoset Family, Things Really Do Appear to Be All Relative
• NY Times“Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle” has now taken on a new meaning. Scientists studying marmosets have discovered that over half the males carry their brother’s sperm.
Rare Semi-Identical Twins Discovered
• LiveScience.comTwins can be identical, fraternal and apparently semi-identical, scientists now report. Researchers discovered twins who are identical on their mom's side of the equation but share only half their genes from dad. Here's how it happened:
Scientists bend liquid with power of light
• AFPThe French and American physicists used a laser beam to produce a surprisingly long and steady jet of soapy liquid that was narrower than a human hair. When directed at a different angle, it pushed the liquid into a hump-like shape.
Ancient Lizard Missing Front Limbs
• LiveScience.comRemains from a 95-million-year-old marine creature with nubs for legs is clarifying how some lizards shed their limbs as they crept through evolutionary time and morphed into slinky snakes.
Plasma Converter turns all waste into clean energy
• Popular ScienceThe Plasma Converter consumes any type of waste—from dirty diapers to chemical weapons—it disintegrates trash into its constituent elements by tearing apart molecular bonds. The only by-products are an obsidian-like glass and ultimately hydrogen.
Sweet New Battery Runs on Sugar
• LiveScience.comIn the near future, longer-lasting batteries could run on virtually anything sugary, including tree sap or flat soda pop. Scientists say these sweet new batteries could operate three to four times longer than the conventional lithium ion batteries
Brain-damaged people give insights into morality
• ReutersEarlier research had pegged this area -- one of the more recently evolved parts of the human brain -- as playing a role in generating social emotions. In fact, the people with damage in this region due to stroke or other causes experienced severely d
Spiders Love to Snuggle
• LiveScience.comWhile not usually considered paragons of tender, familial love, some spiders do have a touchy-feely side. Scientists have discovered two arachnids that caress their young and snuggle together.
Burrowing dinosaurs ... a first
• AFP[It has always bothered me that no evidence of burrowing dinos existed.] Fossil hunters have found the remains of small dinosaurs that made their home in a burrow, a finding the reptiles could exploit a much wider habitat than thought.
Ancient Lizard Glided on Stretched Ribs
• LiveScience.comAn ancient arboreal lizard coasted through the air using a wing-like membrane stretched across elongated ribs, a new fossil reveals.
The universe is a string-net liquid
• New ScientistThe first hint that a new type of matter may exist came in 1983. "Twenty five years ago we thought we understood everything about how matter changes phase," says Wen. "Then along came an experiment that opened up a whole new world.
Scientists Make Ice Hotter Than Boiling Water
• LiveScience.comScientists have turned water into ice in nanoseconds, which means really, really fast. That's not the most interesting part, though. The ice is hotter than boiling water. The experiment was done at the Sandia National Laboratories' huge Z mac
Odd little critter sheds light on mammal evolution
• ReutersScientists have unearthed a fossil of a mammal the size of a chipmunk that skittered around with the dinosaurs, with a key feature in the evolution of mammals -- the middle ear bones -- fabulously preserved.
Mouse tests show stem cells treat brain disease
• ReutersHuman stem cells taken from both embryos and fetuses delayed a fatal brain and nerve disease in mice, moving throughout the brain to take on the jobs of damaged neurons, scientists reported.
Pubic lice and gorillas redux
• NY Times[fascinating speculation] One of the more embarrassing mysteries of human evolution is that people are host to no fewer than three kinds of louse while most species have just one.
Dino Bones Reveal DNA Surprise
• LiveScience.comThe shorter genomes of birds originated in saurischian dinosaurs, the group of dinosaurs from which birds evolved and that includes Tyrannosaurus rex. So rather than being a characteristic of birds or flying animals, short genomes should be thought o
Gorillas Gave Humans 'The Crabs'
• LiveScience.com[misleading] Humans caught pubic lice, aka "the crabs," from gorillas roughly three million years ago. Rather than close encounters of the intimate kind, humans most likely got the lice from sleeping in gorilla nests or eating the apes.
Rock scientists to make map of the world
• ReutersRock scientists from across the world will start next week to put together the first geological map of earth in a bid to better understand the planet.
Far more mutations than thought involved in cancer
• ReutersA painstaking scan of the DNA of tumor cells shows hundreds of previously unsuspected genes are involved in cancer. They found more than 1,000 different mutations in just one family of genes taken from 200 samples of breast, stomach, colorectal and o
Missing: a huge chunk of the earth's crust
• ReutersA team of British scientists has set sail on a voyage to examine why a huge chunk of the earth's crust is missing, deep under the Atlantic Ocean -- a phenomenon that challenges conventional ideas about how the earth works.
Scientists Discover 'Natural Barrier' to HIV
• Health DayResearchers have discovered that cells in the mucosal lining of human genitalia produce a protein that "eats up" invading HIV -- possibly keeping the spread of the AIDS more contained than it might otherwise be.
Spiky oddball prowled ocean half billion years ago
• ReutersA spectacularly quirky creature with long, curved spines protruding from its armored body prowled the ocean floor half a billion years ago near the dawn of complex life forms on Earth, scientists said.
Sea Squirt Regrows Entire Body from One Blood Vessel
• LiveScience.comOur closest invertebrate relative, the humble sea squirt, can regenerate its entire body from just tiny blood vessel fragments, scientists now report.
HPV infections seen in over quarter of U.S. women
• ReutersMore than a quarter of U.S. girls and women ages 14 to 59 are infected with the sexually transmitted human wart virus, which causes most cases of cervical cancer, U.S. health officials estimated.
Practical Fusion, or Just a Bubble?
• NY TimesWith the flip of another switch, powerful up-and-down vibrations, 50 a second, started shaking the cylinder. A bubble floating in the liquid — phosphoric acid — started to shine, brightening into an intense ball of light like a miniature star.
Choreographer of Northern Lights Revealed
• Space.comThe gracefully flitting symphony of lights that color polar skies have their very own high-energy choreographer.
New Zealand fishermen land massive squid
• ReutersNew Zealand fishermen may have caught the largest Colossal squid ever found -- weighing 992 pounds and with rings the size of tires. Was caught by fishermen long lining for toothfish in deep ocean off Antarctica,
Medieval Muslims made stunning math breakthrough
• ReutersMagnificently sophisticated geometric patterns in medieval Islamic architecture indicate their designers achieved a mathematical breakthrough 500 years earlier than Western scholars, scientists said.
Japanese scientists grow teeth from single cells
• ReutersJapanese researchers said they had grown normal-looking teeth from single cells in lab dishes, and transplanted them into mice. They used primitive cells, not quite as early as stem cells, and injected them into a framework of collagen, the material
Watch Streaming Broadcast Live:
LRN.fm
DLive
Live Chat
Telegram
Telegram
