ScienceDaily: Top Science News

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• Planet-sized space weather explosions at Venus
• Legal harvest of marine turtles tops 42,000 each year
• Extreme weather caused by climate change decides distribution of insects, study shows
• Premature infants benefit from adult talk, study shows
• Previous rapid thinning of Pine Island Glacier sheds light on future Antarctic ice loss
• Powerful artificial muscles made from fishing line and sewing thread
• Climate change: Unstable Atlantic deep ocean circulation may hasten 'tipping point'
• Molecular 'cocktail' transforms skin cells into beating heart cells
• Sound-sensing cells regenerated in ears of mice with hearing damage
• Human and dog brains both have dedicated 'voice areas'
• Rise of the compliant machines: Sociable humanoids could help advance human-robot interaction
• Closing the 'free will' loophole: Using distant quasars to test Bell's theorem
• High cost of fruits, vegetables linked to higher body fat in young children
• Astronomers find solar storms behave like supernovae
• A new laser for a faster Internet
• Rocks around the clock: Asteroids pound tiny star
• Mechanism behind activation of dormant memory cells discovered
• Iron deficiency may increase stroke risk through sticky blood
• First biological marker for major depression could enable better diagnosis, treatment

Planet-sized space weather explosions at Venus Posted: 20 Feb 2014 04:40 PM PST Researchers recently discovered that a common space weather phenomenon on the outskirts of Earth's magnetic bubble, the magnetosphere, has much larger repercussions for Venus. The giant explosions, called hot flow anomalies, can be so large at Venus that they're bigger than the entire planet and they can happen multiple times a day.

Legal harvest of marine turtles tops 42,000 each year Posted: 20 Feb 2014 04:35 PM PST A new study has found that 42 countries or territories around the world permit the harvest of marine turtles -- and estimates that more than 42,000 turtles are caught each year by these fisheries. All seven marine turtle species are currently listed on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. The direct take of turtles has continued legally in many regions and countries, often for traditional coastal communities to support themselves or small-scale fisheries supplying local markets with meat, and sometimes shell. The fisheries are an important source of finance, protein and cultural identity, but information can be scarce on their status -- despite often being listed as one of the major threats to turtle populations.

Extreme weather caused by climate change decides distribution of insects, study shows Posted: 20 Feb 2014 01:13 PM PST Extreme weather caused by climate change in the coming decades is likely to have profound implications for distributions of insects and other invertebrates. This is suggested by a new study of insects in tropical and temperate regions of Australia. "Our predictions are that some species would disappear entirely in the next few decades, even when they have a fairly wide distribution that currently covers hundreds of kilometers", the researchers conclude.

Premature infants benefit from adult talk, study shows Posted: 20 Feb 2014 01:13 PM PST Premature babies benefit from being exposed to adult talk as early as possible, new research concludes. The goal of the study was to test the association of the amount of talking that a baby was exposed to at what would have been 32 and 36 weeks gestation if a baby had been born full term. It was hypothesized that preterm infants exposed to higher word counts would have higher cognitive and language scores at seven and 18 months corrected age. The results showed the hypothesis to be true.

Previous rapid thinning of Pine Island Glacier sheds light on future Antarctic ice loss Posted: 20 Feb 2014 11:17 AM PST The largest single contributor to global sea level rise, a glacier of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, may continue thinning for decades to come, new research suggests. Geologists found that Pine Island Glacier, which is rapidly accelerating, thinning and retreating, has thinned rapidly before. The team say their findings demonstrate the potential for current ice loss to continue for several decades yet.

Powerful artificial muscles made from fishing line and sewing thread Posted: 20 Feb 2014 11:17 AM PST Scientists have discovered that ordinary fishing line and sewing thread can be cheaply converted to powerful artificial muscles. The new muscles can lift a hundred times more weight and generate a hundred times higher mechanical power than the same length and weight of human muscle. Per weight, they can generate 7.1 horsepower per kilogram, about the same mechanical power as a jet engine.

Climate change: Unstable Atlantic deep ocean circulation may hasten 'tipping point' Posted: 20 Feb 2014 11:16 AM PST A new study looking at past climate change asks if these changes in the future will be spasmodic and abrupt rather than a more gradual increase in the temperature. Today, deep waters formed in the northern North Atlantic fill approximately half of the deep ocean globally. In the process, this helps moderate the effects of global warming. Changes in this circulation mode are considered a potential tipping point in future climate change that could have widespread and long-lasting impacts. Until now, this pattern of circulation has been considered relatively stable during warm climate states such as those projected for the end of the century. A new study suggests that Atlantic deep water formation may be much more fragile than previously realized.

Molecular 'cocktail' transforms skin cells into beating heart cells Posted: 20 Feb 2014 10:22 AM PST A new method has been devised that allows for the more efficient -- and, importantly, more complete -- reprogramming of skin cells into cells that are virtually indistinguishable from heart muscle cells. These findings, based on animal models, offer new-found optimism in the hunt for a way to regenerate muscle lost in a heart attack. Heart disease is the world's leading cause of death, but recent advances in science and medicine have improved the chances of surviving a heart attack. In the United States alone, nearly 1 million people have survived an attack, but are living with heart failure—a chronic condition in which the heart, having lost muscle during the attack, does not beat at full capacity. So, scientists have begun to look toward cellular reprogramming as a way to regenerate this damaged heart muscle.

Sound-sensing cells regenerated in ears of mice with hearing damage Posted: 20 Feb 2014 10:21 AM PST For years, scientists have thought that sound-sensing hair cells in the inner ear are not replaced once they're lost, but new research reveals that supporting cells in the ear can turn into hair cells in newborn mice. If the findings can be applied to older animals, they may lead to ways to help stimulate cell replacement in adults and to the design of treatment strategies for people suffering from deafness due to hair cell loss.

Human and dog brains both have dedicated 'voice areas' Posted: 20 Feb 2014 10:21 AM PST The first study to compare brain function between humans and any non-primate animal shows that dogs have dedicated voice areas in their brains, just as people do. Dog brains, like those of people, are also sensitive to acoustic cues of emotion, according to a new study.

Rise of the compliant machines: Sociable humanoids could help advance human-robot interaction Posted: 20 Feb 2014 08:35 AM PST Are we on the brink of a robotics revolution? That's what numerous media outlets asked last December when Google acquired eight robotics companies that specialize in such innovations as manipulation, vision, and humanoid robots.

Closing the 'free will' loophole: Using distant quasars to test Bell's theorem Posted: 20 Feb 2014 08:25 AM PST Astronomers propose an experiment that may close the last major loophole of Bell's inequality -- a 50-year-old theorem that, if violated by experiments, would mean that our universe is based not on the textbook laws of classical physics, but on the less-tangible probabilities of quantum mechanics. Such a quantum view would allow for seemingly counterintuitive phenomena such as entanglement, in which the measurement of one particle instantly affects another, even if those entangled particles are at opposite ends of the universe. Among other things, entanglement -- a quantum feature Albert Einstein skeptically referred to as "spooky action at a distance" -- seems to suggest that entangled particles can affect each other instantly, faster than the speed of light.

High cost of fruits, vegetables linked to higher body fat in young children Posted: 20 Feb 2014 07:29 AM PST High prices for fresh fruits and vegetables are associated with higher Body Mass Index in young children in low- and middle-income households, according new research. Research showed that when the prices of fruits and vegetables go up, families may buy less of them and substitute cheaper foods that may not be as healthy and have more calories. The study also identified a small association between higher-priced soft drinks and a lower likelihood of obesity among young children.

Astronomers find solar storms behave like supernovae Posted: 20 Feb 2014 07:29 AM PST Researchers have studied the behavior of the Sun's coronal mass ejections, explaining for the first time the details of how these huge eruptions behave as they fall back onto the Sun's surface. In the process, they have discovered that coronal mass ejections have a surprising twin in the depths of space: the tendrils of gas in the Crab Nebula, which lie 6500 light-years away and are millions of times larger.

A new laser for a faster Internet Posted: 20 Feb 2014 06:50 AM PST A new laser holds the potential to increase by orders of magnitude the rate of data transmission in the optical-fiber network -- the backbone of the Internet. Light is capable of carrying vast amounts of information—approximately 10,000 times more bandwidth than microwaves, the earlier carrier of long-distance communications. But to utilize this potential, the laser light needs to be as spectrally pure -- as close to a single frequency -- as possible. The purer the tone, the more information it can carry, and for decades researchers have been trying to develop a laser that comes as close as possible to emitting just one frequency.

Rocks around the clock: Asteroids pound tiny star Posted: 20 Feb 2014 06:50 AM PST Scientists have found evidence that a tiny star called PSR J0738-4042 is being pounded by asteroids -- large lumps of rock from space. The environment around this star is especially harsh, full of radiation and violent winds of particles.

Mechanism behind activation of dormant memory cells discovered Posted: 20 Feb 2014 05:31 AM PST The electrical stimulation of the hippocampus in in-vivo experiments activates precisely the same receptor complexes as learning or memory recall. This has been discovered for the first time. The latest findings very much form part of the highly controversial subject of "cognitive enhancement." Scientists are currently discussing the possibility of improving mental capacity through the use of drugs -- including in healthy subjects of all age groups, but especially in patients with age-related impairments of cognitive processes.

Iron deficiency may increase stroke risk through sticky blood Posted: 19 Feb 2014 02:32 PM PST Iron deficiency may increase stroke risk by making the blood more sticky, scientists have discovered. Every year, 15 million people worldwide suffer a stroke. Nearly six million die and another five million are left permanently disabled. The most common type, ischaemic stroke, occurs because the blood supply to the brain is interrupted by small clots. In the last few years, several studies have shown that iron deficiency, which affects around two billion people worldwide, may be a risk factor for ischaemic stroke in adults and in children.

First biological marker for major depression could enable better diagnosis, treatment Posted: 17 Feb 2014 01:11 PM PST Teenage boys who show a combination of depressive symptoms and elevated levels of the 'stress hormone' cortisol are up to fourteen times more likely to develop major depression than those who show neither trait, according to research. Major, or clinical, depression is a debilitating mental health problem that will affect one in six people at some point in their lives. However, until now there have been no biomarkers for major depression; this is believed to be, in part, because both the causes and the symptoms can be so varied.

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