ScienceDaily: Top Science News

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• Star is discovered to be a close neighbor of the Sun and the coldest of its kind
• Reconstructed ancient ocean reveals secrets about the origin of life
• Traces of recent water on Mars: Liquid water on Mars as recently as 200,000 years ago
• Chernobyl's birds adapting to ionizing radiation
• Increasing consumption of coffee associated with reduced risk of type 2 diabetes, study finds
• Controlling brain waves to improve vision

Star is discovered to be a close neighbor of the Sun and the coldest of its kind Posted: 25 Apr 2014 01:23 PM PDT A 'brown dwarf' star that appears to be the coldest of its kind -- as frosty as Earth's North Pole -- has been discovered by astronomers. The object's distance at 7.2 light-years away, making it the fourth closest system to our Sun.

Reconstructed ancient ocean reveals secrets about the origin of life Posted: 25 Apr 2014 04:52 AM PDT Researchers have published details about how the first organisms on Earth could have become metabolically active. The results permit scientists to speculate how primitive cells learned to synthesize their organic components -- the molecules that form RNA, lipids and amino acids. The findings also suggest an order for the sequence of events that led to the origin of life.

Traces of recent water on Mars: Liquid water on Mars as recently as 200,000 years ago Posted: 25 Apr 2014 04:50 AM PDT New research has shown that there was liquid water on Mars as recently as 200,000 years ago. The southern hemisphere of Mars is home to a crater that contains very well-preserved gullies and debris flow deposits. The geomorphological attributes of these landforms provide evidence that they were formed by the action of liquid water in geologically recent time.

Chernobyl's birds adapting to ionizing radiation Posted: 24 Apr 2014 07:30 PM PDT Birds in the exclusion zone around Chernobyl are adapting to -- and may even be benefiting from -- long-term exposure to radiation, ecologists have found. The study is the first evidence that wild animals adapt to ionizing radiation, and the first to show that birds which produce most pheomelanin, a pigment in feathers, have greatest problems coping with radiation exposure.

Increasing consumption of coffee associated with reduced risk of type 2 diabetes, study finds Posted: 24 Apr 2014 04:05 PM PDT Increasing coffee consumption by on average one and half cups per day over a four-year period reduces the risk of type 2 diabetes by 11 percent, research shows. Coffee and tea consumption has been associated with a lower type 2 diabetes risk but little is known about how changes in coffee and tea consumption influence subsequent type 2 diabetes risk, until now.

Controlling brain waves to improve vision Posted: 24 Apr 2014 02:05 PM PDT A novel technique to test brain waves is being used to see how the brain processes external stimuli that do and don't reach our awareness. "When we have different things competing for our attention, we can only be aware of so much of what we see," said a researcher on the study. "For example, when you're driving, you might really be concentrating on obeying traffic signals." But say there's an unexpected event: an emergency vehicle, a pedestrian -- will you actually see the unexpected, or will you be so focused on your initial task that you don't notice?

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