ScienceDaily: Top Science News

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• Evolution picks up hitchhikers: Pervasive genetic hitchhiking and clonal interference in evolving yeast populations
• NASA releases images of Earth by two interplanetary spacecraft
• Breastfed children are less likely to develop ADHD later in life, study suggests
• Ability to learn new words based on efficient communication between brain areas that control movement and hearing
• Most flammable boreal forests in North America become more so
• Microchips that mimic the brain: Novel microchips imitate the brain's information processing in real time
• Climate forecasts shown to warn of crop failures
• Geochemical 'fingerprints' leave evidence that megafloods eroded steep gorge
• Greening of the Earth pushed way back in time
• Sea level rise: New iceberg theory points to areas at risk of rapid disintegration
• Climate threatens food security of Pacific islands
• From obscurity to dominance: Tracking the rapid evolutionary rise of ray-finned fish
• Thin, flexible glass for energy storage
• Too many antioxidants? Resveratrol blocks many cardiovascular benefits of exercise
• Magnets make droplets dance: Reversible switching between static and dynamic self-assembly
• New Large Hadron Collider discovery: Measurement of predicted particle decay with implications for dark matter search

Evolution picks up hitchhikers: Pervasive genetic hitchhiking and clonal interference in evolving yeast populations Posted: 22 Jul 2013 05:30 PM PDT In a twist on "survival of the fittest," researchers have discovered that evolution is driven not by a single beneficial mutation but rather by a group of mutations, including ones called "genetic hitchhikers" that are simply along for the ride. These hitchhikers are mutations that do not appear to have a role in contributing to an organism's fitness and therefore its evolution, yet may play an important role down the road.

NASA releases images of Earth by two interplanetary spacecraft Posted: 22 Jul 2013 02:28 PM PDT Color and black-and-white images of Earth taken by two NASA interplanetary spacecraft on July 19 show our planet and its moon as bright beacons from millions of miles away in space. NASA's Cassini spacecraft captured the color images of Earth and the moon from its perch in the Saturn system nearly 900 million miles (1.5 billion kilometers) away. MESSENGER, the first probe to orbit Mercury, took a black-and-white image from a distance of 61 million miles (98 million kilometers) as part of a campaign to search for natural satellites of the planet.

Breastfed children are less likely to develop ADHD later in life, study suggests Posted: 22 Jul 2013 12:27 PM PDT Scientists have completed a study that finds a clear link between rates of breastfeeding and the likelihood of developing Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, even when typical risk factors were taken into consideration.

Ability to learn new words based on efficient communication between brain areas that control movement and hearing Posted: 22 Jul 2013 12:27 PM PDT For the first time scientists have identified how a pathway in the brain which is unique to humans allows us to learn new words.

Most flammable boreal forests in North America become more so Posted: 22 Jul 2013 12:27 PM PDT A 2,000-square-kilometer zone in the Yukon Flats of interior Alaska -- one of the most flammable high-latitude regions of the world, according to scientists -- has seen a dramatic increase in both the frequency and severity of fires in recent decades. Wildfire activity in this area is higher than at any other time in the past 10,000 years, the researchers report.

Microchips that mimic the brain: Novel microchips imitate the brain's information processing in real time Posted: 22 Jul 2013 12:27 PM PDT Neuroinformatics researchers have demonstrated how complex cognitive abilities can be incorporated into electronic systems made with so-called neuromorphic chips: They show how to assemble and configure these electronic systems to function in a way similar to an actual brain.

Climate forecasts shown to warn of crop failures Posted: 22 Jul 2013 12:12 PM PDT Climate data can help predict some crop failures several months before harvest, according to a new study from an international team. Scientists found that in about one-third of global cropland, temperature and soil moisture have strong relationships to the yield of wheat and rice at harvest. For those two key crops, a computer model could predict crop failures three months in advance for about 20 percent of global cropland, according to the study

Geochemical 'fingerprints' leave evidence that megafloods eroded steep gorge Posted: 22 Jul 2013 11:15 AM PDT For the first time, scientists have direct geochemical evidence that the 150-mile long Tsangpo Gorge, possibly the world's deepest, was the conduit by which megafloods from glacial lakes, perhaps half the volume of Lake Erie, drained catastrophically through the Himalayas when their ice dams failed during the last 2 million years.

Greening of the Earth pushed way back in time Posted: 22 Jul 2013 11:15 AM PDT Conventional scientific wisdom has it that plants and other creatures have only lived on land for about 500 million years, but a new study is pointing to evidence for life on land that is four times as old -- at 2.2 billion years ago and almost half way back to the inception of the planet.

Sea level rise: New iceberg theory points to areas at risk of rapid disintegration Posted: 22 Jul 2013 11:14 AM PDT In events that could exacerbate sea level rise over the coming decades, stretches of ice on the coasts of Antarctica and Greenland are at risk of rapidly cracking apart and falling into the ocean, according to new iceberg calving simulations.

Climate threatens food security of Pacific islands Posted: 22 Jul 2013 09:30 AM PDT Isolated in the middle of the ocean, Pacific islands rely closely on fishing for their economy and food security. But global warming could considerably reduce their accessible fish resources over the coming decades.

From obscurity to dominance: Tracking the rapid evolutionary rise of ray-finned fish Posted: 22 Jul 2013 07:35 AM PDT Mass extinctions, like lotteries, result in a multitude of losers and a few lucky winners. This is the story of one of the winners, a small, shell-crushing predatory fish called Fouldenia, which first appears in the fossil record a mere 11 million years after an extinction that wiped out more than 90 percent of the planet's vertebrate species.

Thin, flexible glass for energy storage Posted: 22 Jul 2013 07:35 AM PDT A new use for glass could make future hybrid-electric and plug-in electric vehicles more affordable and reliable.

Too many antioxidants? Resveratrol blocks many cardiovascular benefits of exercise Posted: 22 Jul 2013 04:19 AM PDT In older men, a natural antioxidant compound found in red grapes and other plants – called resveratrol – blocks many of the cardiovascular benefits of exercise, according to new research.

Magnets make droplets dance: Reversible switching between static and dynamic self-assembly Posted: 22 Jul 2013 04:19 AM PDT Researchers have placed water droplets containing magnetic nanoparticles on strong water repellent surfaces and have made them align in various static and dynamic structures using periodically oscillating magnetic fields. This is the first time researchers have demonstrated reversible switching between static and dynamic self-assembly.

New Large Hadron Collider discovery: Measurement of predicted particle decay with implications for dark matter search Posted: 19 Jul 2013 10:59 AM PDT Scientists have now observed B-sub-s meson decay as predicted by the Standard Model of Particle Physics. The discovery at the Large Hadron Collider will impact scientists' search for dark matter in the universe.

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