Spotlight Science News. 05-06 December 2018.
Accessed on 06 December 2018, 0152 UTC.
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Comment: Here are today’s top science news from https://phys.org. Views expressed in this science news summary are those of the reporters and correspondents.
Thanks for joining us today.
Until next time,
Russ Roberts
https://hawaiisciencedigest.blogspot.com
Young aphids piggyback on adult aphids to get to safety faster
Young aphids may ride on the backs of adult aphids to get back to the safety of a host plant quicker, according to an article published in Frontiers in Zoology.
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Technique inspired by dolphin chirps could improve tests of soft materials
When you deform a soft material such as Silly Putty, its properties change depending on how fast you stretch and squeeze it. If you leave the putty in a small glass, it will eventually spread out like a liquid. If you pull …
Greenland ice sheet melt ‘off the charts’ compared with past four centuries
Surface melting across Greenland’s mile-thick ice sheet began increasing in the mid-19th century and then ramped up dramatically during the 20th and early 21st centuries, showing no signs of abating, according to new research …
A ToM-based human intention estimation algorithm for robotized warehouses
Soft tissue shows Jurassic ichthyosaur was warm-blooded, had blubber and camouflage
An ancient, dolphin-like marine reptile resembles its distant relative in more than appearance, according to an international team of researchers that includes scientists from North Carolina State University and Sweden’s …
Mantle neon illuminates Earth’s formation
The Earth formed relatively quickly from the cloud of dust and gas around the Sun, trapping water and gases in the planet’s mantle, according to research published Dec. 5 in the journal Nature. Apart from settling Earth’s …
New immunoassay technique measures extremely low concentrations of small molecules using single-molecule detection
As medical science has come to understand that the human body is controlled on the molecular level by various proteins, hormones, drugs, and other substances, technologies have developed to detect levels of these molecules …
Sea invertebrate sheds light on evolution of human blood, immune systems
Botryllus schlosseri, a marine invertebrate that lives in underwater colonies resembling fuzzy pinheads clinging to rocks, has a blood-forming system with uncanny similarities to that of humans, according to scientists at …
Bringing balance to the universe: New theory could explain missing 95 percent of the cosmos
Scientists at the University of Oxford may have solved one of the biggest questions in modern physics, with a new paper unifying dark matter and dark energy into a single phenomenon: a fluid which possesses ‘negative mass.” …
Friend or foe? Brain area that controls social memory also triggers aggression
Columbia scientists have identified a brain region that helps tell an animal when to attack an intruder and when to accept it into its home. This brain area, called CA2, is part of the hippocampus, a larger brain structure …
Scientists design way to track steps of cells’ development
Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have developed a new tool described as a “flight data recorder” for developing cells, illuminating the paths cells take as they progress from one type to …
SpaceX launches cargo, but fails to land rocket
SpaceX on Wednesday blasted off its unmanned Dragon cargo ship, loaded with supplies, science experiments and food for the astronauts living at the International Space Station but failed to successfully land its booster afterwards.
Unusual ultraluminous X-ray source discovered in the galaxy Messier 86
Galileo satellites prove Einstein’s Relativity Theory to highest accuracy yet
Europe’s Galileo satellite navigation system – already serving users globally – has now provided a historic service to the physics community worldwide, enabling the most accurate measurement ever made of how shifts in …
Infections in the young may be tied to risk for mental illness: study
Could an infection make your child or teen prone to mental health issues?
AI made them do it: Nvidia explores the what-if of training a model to draw new worlds
Here is a word string you can ponder: AI interactive graphics. Nvidia is the main act. The GPU brainiacs are fully behind a next chapter, “AI,” for the graphics industry. Awesome things happen when you bring a neural network …
A detailed look at the microorganisms that colonize, and degrade, a 400-year-old painting
What’s a feast for the human eye may be a literal feast for microorganisms that colonize works of art, according to a new study in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Elisabetta Caselli of the University of Ferrara, Italy, …
Recycle your old mobile phone to save gorilla populations
Are you among the 400 million people around the world who have relegated an old mobile phone to the top drawer in the past year?
Honeybee protein keeps stem cells youthful
An active protein component of royal jelly helps honeybees create new queens. Stanford researchers have identified a similar protein in mammals, which keeps cultured embryonic stem cells pluripotent.
Not too big, not too small—tree frogs choose pools that are just right
Frogs that raise their young in tiny pools of water that collect on plant leaves must make a delicate trade-off between the risk of drying out and the risk of being eaten, according to a study publishing December 5 in the …
Memory B cells in the lung may be important for more effective influenza vaccinations
Seasonal influenza vaccines are typically less than 50 percent effective, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studies. Research at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, published this week in Nature …
Wind power vulnerable to climate change in India
The warming of the Indian Ocean, caused by global climate change, may be causing a slow decline in wind power potential in India, according to a new study from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied …
Cereals use chemical defenses in a multifunctional manner against different herbivores
A team of scientists from the University of Bern (Switzerland) and the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology and their partners have characterized multiple functions of benzoxazinoids in wheat: The toxic form of the substances …
Distinguishing resistance from resilience to prolong antibiotic potency
Biomedical engineers at Duke University have shown experimentally that there is more than one flavor of antibiotic resistance and that it could—and should—be taken advantage of to keep first-line antibiotics in our medical …
COSINE-100 experiment investigates dark matter mystery
Astrophysical evidence suggests that the universe contains a large amount of non-luminous dark matter, but no definite signal has been observed despite concerted efforts by many experimental groups. One exception is the long-debated …
New study uncovers why Rift Valley fever is catastrophic to developing fetuses
Like Zika, infection with Rift Valley fever virus can go unnoticed during pregnancy, all the while doing irreparable—often lethal—harm to the fetus. The results of a new study, led by researchers at the University of …
World’s smallest wearable device warns of UV exposure, enables precision phototherapy
The world’s smallest wearable, battery-free device has been developed by Northwestern Medicine and Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering scientists to measure exposure to light across multiple wavelengths, from the …
Understanding how plants use sunlight
Plants rely on the energy in sunlight to produce the nutrients they need. But sometimes they absorb more energy than they can use, and that excess can damage critical proteins. To protect themselves, they convert the excess …
Strong growth in global CO2 emissions expected for 2018
Global carbon emissions are set to hit an all-time high in 2018—according to researchers at the University of East Anglia (UEA) and the Global Carbon Project.
Plasmonic quantum size effects in silver nanoparticles are dominated by interfaces and local environments
When metallic dimensions are reduced to the nanoscale, a phenomenon termed localized surface-plasmon resonance (LSPR) appears due to electron oscillations, resulting in distinct optical properties suited for advanced imaging …