ScienceDaily: Most Popular News

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• How a versatile gut bacterium helps us get our daily dietary fiber
• Get used to heat waves: Extreme El Nino events to double
• Distant quasar illuminates a filament of the cosmic web
• Solar-power device would use heat to enhance efficiency
• Overexpression of splicing protein in skin repair causes early changes seen in skin cancer
• Water cycle amplifies abrupt climate change
• Decoded: DNA of blood-sucking worm that infects world's poor
• Harnessing randomness to improve lasers

How a versatile gut bacterium helps us get our daily dietary fiber Posted: 19 Jan 2014 11:25 AM PST Researchers have discovered the genetic machinery that turns a common gut bacterium into the Swiss Army knife of the digestive tract -- helping us metabolize a main component of dietary fiber from the cell walls of fruits and vegetables.

Get used to heat waves: Extreme El Nino events to double Posted: 19 Jan 2014 11:24 AM PST Extreme weather events fueled by unusually strong El Ninos, such as the 1983 heatwave that led to the Ash Wednesday bushfires in Australia, are likely to double in number as our planet warms.

Distant quasar illuminates a filament of the cosmic web Posted: 19 Jan 2014 11:24 AM PST Astronomers have discovered a distant quasar illuminating a vast nebula of diffuse gas, revealing for the first time part of the network of filaments thought to connect galaxies in a cosmic web. Using the 10-meter Keck I Telescope at the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, researchers detected a very large, luminous nebula of gas extending about 2 million light-years across intergalactic space.

Solar-power device would use heat to enhance efficiency Posted: 19 Jan 2014 11:24 AM PST A new approach to harvesting solar energy could improve efficiency by using sunlight to heat a high-temperature material whose infrared radiation would then be collected by a conventional photovoltaic cell. This technique could also make it easier to store the energy for later use, the researchers say.

Overexpression of splicing protein in skin repair causes early changes seen in skin cancer Posted: 19 Jan 2014 11:24 AM PST In a paper published, a team reports that a protein they show is normally involved in healing wounds and maintaining homeostasis in skin tissue is also, under certain conditions, a promoter of invasive and metastatic skin cancers.

Water cycle amplifies abrupt climate change Posted: 19 Jan 2014 11:24 AM PST During the abrupt cooling at the onset of the so-called Younger Dryas period 12680 years ago, changes in the water cycle were the main drivers of widespread environmental change in western Europe. Thus, the regional impacts of future climate changes can be largely driven by hydrological changes, not only in the monsoonal areas of the world, but also in temperate areas.

Decoded: DNA of blood-sucking worm that infects world's poor Posted: 19 Jan 2014 11:23 AM PST Researchers have decoded the genome of the hookworm, Necator americanus, finding clues to how it infects and survives in humans and to aid in development of new therapies to combat hookworm disease.

Harnessing randomness to improve lasers Posted: 18 Jan 2014 09:24 AM PST The first electrically pumped random lasers for mid-infrared radiation are set to enable applications in sensing and imaging.

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