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What number is halfway between 1 and 9? Is it 5 — or 3?
Freezing water droplets form sharp ice peaks
BPA’s Real Threat May Be After It Has Metabolized
Researchers Show Relationship With Working Dogs Protect Handlers From PTSD
Plants adapt their defenses to the local pest community
Pacemaker could help more heart failure patients
How order arises in the cosmos
Researchers Reveal How Solvent Mixtures Affect Organic Solar Cell Structure
Researchers Find Ancient Carbon Resurfacing in Lakes
TMT Will Take Discoveries of Stars Orbiting the Milky Way's Monster Black Hole to the Next Level
Ancient mollusk tells a contrary story
Scientists explain how ketamine vanquishes depression within hours
Researchers Create a Universal Map of Vision in the Human Brain
BPA linked to thyroid hormone changes in pregnant women, newborns
Compassion meditation may boost neural basis of empathy
Newborn mice depend on mom's signature scent
New human neurons from adult cells right there in the brain
First images of Landau levels revealed

What number is halfway between 1 and 9? Is it 5 — or 3?

Posted: 05 Oct 2012 06:40 AM PDT

Ask adults from the industrialized world what number is halfway between 1 and 9, and most will say 5. But pose the same question to small children, or people living in some traditional societies, and they're likely to answer 3.

Freezing water droplets form sharp ice peaks

Posted: 05 Oct 2012 06:33 AM PDT

Researchers at the University of Twente, in the Netherlands, placed water droplets on a plate chilled to -20 degrees Celsius and captured images as a freezing front traveled up the droplet.

BPA’s Real Threat May Be After It Has Metabolized

Posted: 05 Oct 2012 05:06 AM PDT

Bisphenol A or BPA is a synthetic chemical widely used in the making of plastic products ranging from bottles and food can linings to toys and water supply lines. When these plastics degrade, BPA is released into the environment and routinely ingested.

Contacts between the ends (red) of estradiol and the estrogen receptor are critical for biological activity. BPA is too short to have both contacts; MBP is longer and can mimic the sex hormone estradiol in the estrogen receptor.

Researchers Show Relationship With Working Dogs Protect Handlers From PTSD

Posted: 05 Oct 2012 04:44 AM PDT

Anyone who has had a pet instinctively knows what several physical and mental health studies have shown: people who have a companion animal have lower levels of stress, anxiety and depression than the general population. But with love comes the possibility of loss; when pets fall ill, are hurt or die, their owners bear the psychological burden of increased risk of depression and other ailments.

Plants adapt their defenses to the local pest community

Posted: 05 Oct 2012 04:37 AM PDT

Populations of the same plant species produce specific defenses that are effective against the predominant local pest community. Variation in the local pest community can therefore maintain genetic variation in plants across large geographical scales. Ecologists from the University of Zurich used controlled experiments coupled with observations on natural plant populations and their pests to demonstrate how genetic variation in plant defenses is maintained. The results could be used to develop customized seeds that are more resistant to the local pest community.

Pacemaker could help more heart failure patients

Posted: 05 Oct 2012 04:33 AM PDT

A new study from Karolinska Institutet demonstrates that a change in the ECG wave called the QRS prolongation is associated with a higher rate of heart-failure mortality. According to the team that carried out the study, which is published in the scientific periodical The European Heart Journal, the discovery suggests that more heart-failure cases than the most serious could be helped by pacemakers.

How order arises in the cosmos

Posted: 04 Oct 2012 03:47 PM PDT

One of the unsolved mysteries of contemporary science is how highly organized structures can emerge from the random motion of particles. This applies to many situations ranging from astrophysical objects that extend over millions of light years to the birth of life on Earth.

Researchers Reveal How Solvent Mixtures Affect Organic Solar Cell Structure

Posted: 04 Oct 2012 12:39 PM PDT

Controlling “mixing” between acceptor and donor layers, or solar cell domains, in polymer-based solar cells could increase their efficiency, according to a team of researchers that included physicists from North Carolina State University. Their findings shed light on the inner workings of these solar cells, and could lead to further improvements in efficiency.

Researchers Find Ancient Carbon Resurfacing in Lakes

Posted: 04 Oct 2012 12:23 PM PDT

A new study reveals that a significant amount of carbon released into the atmosphere from lakes and rivers in Southern Québec, Canada, is very old – approximately 1,000 to 3,000 years old – challenging the current models of long-term carbon storage in lakes and rivers.

TMT Will Take Discoveries of Stars Orbiting the Milky Way's Monster Black Hole to the Next Level

Posted: 04 Oct 2012 12:17 PM PDT

Researchers have discovered a star that whips around the giant black hole at the center of our galaxy in record time, completing an orbit every 11.5 years. The finding, appearing today in the journal Science, points ahead to groundbreaking experiments involving Einstein's general theory of relativity. Those tests will be fully enabled by the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), slated to begin observations next decade.

Ancient mollusk tells a contrary story

Posted: 04 Oct 2012 12:09 PM PDT

A fossil unearthed in Great Britain may end a long-running debate about the mollusks, one of life’s most diverse invertebrate groups: Which evolved first, shelled forms like clams and snails, or their shell-less, worm-like relatives?

The small new fossil, found in marine rocks along the English-Welsh border, provides the best fossil evidence yet that the simpler worm-like mollusks evolved from their more anatomically complex shelled brethren, rather than the other way around.

Scientists explain how ketamine vanquishes depression within hours

Posted: 04 Oct 2012 12:03 PM PDT

Many chronically depressed and treatment-resistant patients experience immediate relief from symptoms after taking small amounts of the drug ketamine. For a decade, scientists have been trying to explain the observation first made at Yale University.

Today, current evidence suggests that the pediatric anesthetic helps regenerate synaptic connections between brain cells damaged by stress and depression, according to a review of scientific research written by Yale School of Medicine researchers and published in the Oct. 5 issue of the journal Science.

Researchers Create a Universal Map of Vision in the Human Brain

Posted: 04 Oct 2012 11:45 AM PDT

Nearly 100 years after a British neurologist first mapped the blind spots caused by missile wounds to the brains of soldiers, Perelman School of Medicine researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have perfected his map using modern-day technology. Their results create a map of vision in the brain based upon an individual's brain structure, even for people who cannot see. Their result can, among other things, guide efforts to restore vision using a neural prosthesis that stimulates the surface of the brain.

BPA linked to thyroid hormone changes in pregnant women, newborns

Posted: 04 Oct 2012 10:33 AM PDT

Bisphenol A (BPA), an estrogen-like compound that has drawn increased scrutiny in recent years, has been linked to changes in thyroid hormone levels in pregnant women and newborn boys, according to a new study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley.

Compassion meditation may boost neural basis of empathy

Posted: 04 Oct 2012 10:21 AM PDT

A compassion-based meditation program can significantly improve a person’s ability to read the facial expressions of others, finds a study published by Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. This boost in empathic accuracy was detected through both behavioral testing of the study participants and through functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans of their brain activity.

Newborn mice depend on mom's signature scent

Posted: 04 Oct 2012 10:00 AM PDT

For newborn mice to suckle for the very first time and survive, they depend on a signature blend of scents that is unique to their mothers. The findings, published online on October 4 in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, reveal that mom's natural perfume consists of odors emitted from the amniotic fluid, which served to nourish and protect those young mice before they were born.

New human neurons from adult cells right there in the brain

Posted: 04 Oct 2012 09:00 AM PDT

Researchers have discovered a way to generate new human neurons from another type of adult cell found in our brains. The discovery, reported in the October 5th issue of Cell Stem Cell, a Cell Press publication, is one step toward cell-based therapies for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

First images of Landau levels revealed

Posted: 04 Oct 2012 07:42 AM PDT

Physicists have directly imaged Landau Levels – the quantum levels that determine electron behaviour in a strong magnetic field – for the first time since they were theoretically conceived of by Nobel prize winner Lev Landau in 1930.

Using scanning tunnelling spectroscopy - a spatially resolved probe that interacts directly with the electrons - scientists at institutions including the University of Warwick and Tohoku University have revealed the internal ring-like structure of these Landau Levels at the surface of a semiconductor.