Hot Recent Science & Technology Articles (18)

Posted: 10/24/2015

1. Astronomers peer inside stars, finding giant magnets (“Astronomers have for the first time probed the magnetic fields in the ... inner regions of stars, finding they are strongly magnetized. Using a technique called asteroseismology, the scientists were able to calculate the magnetic field strengths in the fusion-powered hearts of dozens of red giants, stars that are evolved versions of our sun.”)
2. Crystals allow peek at picosecond DNA damage (“But a team led by University College Dublin’s Susan Quinn has now tracked the precise dynamics behind the very first electron transfer in a key DNA damage process.”)
3. http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2015/10/stuttering-mice-shed-light-human-speech-impediment (Good news for stutterers! “In humans, stuttering has long been linked to a mutation in the “housekeeping” gene Gnptab, which maintains basic levels of cellular function. To cement this curious genetic link, researchers decided to induce the Gnptab “stutter mutation” in mice. They suspected the change would trigger a mouse version of stammering. ... so researchers set up a computerized model to register stutters through a statistical analysis of vocalizations. ... boiled the verbal impediment down to two basic characteristics—fewer vocalizations in a given period of time and longer gaps in between each vocalization. ... Using these parameters to evaluate mouse vocalizations, researchers were able to identify stuttering mice over a 3.5-minute period. ... The findings not only supply evidence for Gnptab’s role in stuttering, but they also show that its function remains relatively consistent across multiple species.”)
4. New mathematical method reveals structure in neural activity in the brain (“The researchers measured the activity of place cells in the brains of rats during three different experimental conditions. They then analyzed the pairwise correlations of this activity—how the firing of each neuron was related to the firing of every other neuron.
   In the first condition, the rats were allowed to roam freely in their environment—a behavior where the activity of place cells is directly related to the location of the animal in its environment. They searched the data to find groups of neurons, or "cliques," in which the activity of all members of the clique was related to the activity of every other member. Their analysis of these cliques, using methods from algebraic topology, revealed an organized geometric structure. Surprisingly, the researchers found similar structure in the activities among place cells in the other two conditions they tested, wheel-running and sleep, where place cells are not expected to have geometric organization.”)
5. To infinity and beyond LIGHT GOES INFINITELY FAST WITH NEW ON-CHIP MATERIAL (“Researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have done just that, designing the first on-chip metamaterial with a refractive index of zero, meaning that the phase of light can travel infinitely fast.”)
6. Scientists build heat engine from a single atom
7. Can Female Mice Improve Autism Research? Researchers angling for government funds must now include both sexes in their animal studies—or explain why they don’t (This article goes well beyond autism. It explains why it is so important to study both sexes not only males in animal studies)
8. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/teeth-from-china-reveal-an-early-human-trek-out-of-africa1/
9. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-brain-effects-behind-runner-s-high/
10. Homosexuality may be caused by chemical modifications to DNA
11. Notoriously Durable Styrofoam Could Be Munched by Mealworms  Microbes in the beetle larvae's guts help break down polystyrene
12. And the time of death was? (“Scientists in Portugal have developed a tool to calculate the post-mortem interval (PMI) or ‘time of death’ of a cadaver from a blood sample.”)
13. (a) First Ancient African Genome Reveals Vast Eurasian Migration DNA from Ethiopian man predates the movement of Eurasian farmers "back to Africa"
    (b) http://news.sciencemag.org/evolution/2015/10/first-dna-extracted-ancient-african-skeleton-shows-widespread-mixing-eurasians
    (Human migration never has been a one way street.
14. http://phys.org/news/2015-10-topolariton-half-matter-half-light-particle.html
15. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/scientists-might-be-one-step-closer-male-birth-control-pill-180956851/
16. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/notoriously-durable-styrofoam-could-be-munched-mealworms-180956817/
17. New polymer creates safer fuels (Megasupramolecules were already invented over 30 years ago and could have prevented 9/11 to become such an inferno. This new additive was created by a female scientist. “"In the late 1970s and early 1980s, polymer scientists were very enthusiastic about adding ultralong polymers to fuel in order to make post-impact explosions of aircrafts less intense." The concept was tested in a full-scale crash test of an airplane in 1984. The plane was briefly engulfed in a fireball, generating negative headlines and causing ultralong polymers to quickly fall out of favor, ...)