ScienceDaily: Top Science News

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• Does obesity reshape our sense of taste?
• Black hole birth captured: Biggest, brightest to happen in at least 20 years
• How flu evolves to escape immunity
• Improve learning by taming instructional complexity
• The era of neutrino astronomy has begun
• Two Y genes can replace the entire Y chromosome for assisted reproduction in mice
• Monster gamma-ray burst in our cosmic neighborhood
• Will 2-D tin be the next super material?
• Genomic variant associated with sun sensitivity, freckles identified
• Newborn babies have built-in body awareness ability
• Oldest large body of ancient seawater identified under Chesapeake Bay
• Captive breeding for thousands of years has impaired olfactory functions in silkmoths
• Infant galaxies merging near 'cosmic dawn'
• Playing computer games together makes brains feel and think alike
• 'Undruggable' mutation meets its match
• Quantifying Earth's worth to public health

Does obesity reshape our sense of taste? Posted: 21 Nov 2013 12:49 PM PST Obesity may alter the way we taste at the most fundamental level: by changing how our tongues react to different foods. Biologists report that being severely overweight impaired the ability of mice to detect sweets.

Black hole birth captured: Biggest, brightest to happen in at least 20 years Posted: 21 Nov 2013 11:23 AM PST Intelligent telescopes designed by Los Alamos National Laboratory got a front row seat recently for an unusual birth. "This was the burst of the century," said James Wren, one of the scientists involved in the discovery. "It's the biggest, brightest one to happen in at least 20 years, and maybe even longer than that."

How flu evolves to escape immunity Posted: 21 Nov 2013 11:23 AM PST Scientists have identified a potential way to improve future flu vaccines after discovering that seasonal flu typically escapes immunity from vaccines with as little as a single amino acid substitution.

Improve learning by taming instructional complexity Posted: 21 Nov 2013 11:23 AM PST From using concrete or abstract materials to giving immediate or delayed feedback, there are rampant debates over the best teaching strategies to use. But, in reality, improving education is not as simple as choosing one technique over another. Carnegie Mellon University and Temple University researchers scoured the educational research landscape and found that because improved learning depends on many different factors, there are actually more than 205 trillion instructional options available.

The era of neutrino astronomy has begun Posted: 21 Nov 2013 11:22 AM PST Astrophysicists using a telescope embedded in Antarctic ice have detected the mysterious phenomena known as cosmic neutrinos -- nearly massless particles streaming to Earth at the speed of light from outside our solar system, striking in a powerful burst of energy. Researchers now will try to detect the cosmic neutrinos' source.

Two Y genes can replace the entire Y chromosome for assisted reproduction in mice Posted: 21 Nov 2013 11:22 AM PST Live mouse offspring can be generated with assisted reproduction using germ cells from males with the Y chromosome contribution limited to only two genes: the testis determinant factor Sry and the spermatogonial proliferation factor Eif2s3y.

Monster gamma-ray burst in our cosmic neighborhood Posted: 21 Nov 2013 11:22 AM PST Gamma-ray bursts are violent bursts of gamma radiation associated with exploding massive stars. For the first time ever, researchers have observed an unusually powerful gamma-ray burst in the relatively nearby universe -- a monster gamma-ray burst.

Will 2-D tin be the next super material? Posted: 21 Nov 2013 10:56 AM PST A single layer of tin atoms could be the world's first material to conduct electricity with 100 percent efficiency at the temperatures that computer chips operate, according to theoretical physicists.

Genomic variant associated with sun sensitivity, freckles identified Posted: 21 Nov 2013 10:00 AM PST Researchers have identified a genomic variant strongly associated with sensitivity to the sun, brown hair, blue eyes -- and freckles.

Newborn babies have built-in body awareness ability Posted: 21 Nov 2013 09:58 AM PST The ability to differentiate your own body from others is a fundamental skill, critical for humans' ability to interact with their environments and the people in them. Now, researchers provide some of the first evidence that newborn babies enter the world with the essential mechanisms for this kind of body awareness already in place.

Oldest large body of ancient seawater identified under Chesapeake Bay Posted: 21 Nov 2013 08:49 AM PST USGS scientists have determined that high-salinity groundwater found more than 1,000 meters (0.6 mi.) deep under the Chesapeake Bay is actually remnant water from the Early Cretaceous North Atlantic Sea and is probably 100-145 million years old. This is the oldest sizeable body of seawater to be identified worldwide.

Captive breeding for thousands of years has impaired olfactory functions in silkmoths Posted: 21 Nov 2013 07:38 AM PST Domesticated silkmoths Bombyx mori have a much more limited perception of environmental odors compared to their wild relatives. A new study on silkmoths revealed that the insects' ability to perceive environmental odours has been reduced after about 5000 years of domestication by humans. Scientists compared olfactory functions in Bombyx mori and in their wild ancestors. Perception of the pheromone bombykol, however, remained highly sensitive in domesticated males.

Infant galaxies merging near 'cosmic dawn' Posted: 21 Nov 2013 07:36 AM PST Astronomers using the combined power of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope and NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have discovered a far-flung trio of primitive galaxies nestled inside an enormous blob of primordial gas nearly 13 billion light-years from Earth.

Playing computer games together makes brains feel and think alike Posted: 21 Nov 2013 06:14 AM PST Scientists have discovered that playing computer games can bring players' emotional responses and brain activity into unison. By measuring the activity of facial muscles and imaging the brain while gaming, the group found out that people go through similar emotions and display matching brainwaves.

'Undruggable' mutation meets its match Posted: 20 Nov 2013 10:34 AM PST Researchers have identified and exploited a newfound "Achilles heel" in K-Ras, the most commonly mutated oncogene in human cancers. K-Ras has earned a reputation as being "undruggable" because scientific researchers have failed to design a drug that successfully targets the mutant gene. The weak point is a newly discovered "pocket," or binding site, identified a team that has designed a chemical compound that fits inside this pocket and inhibits the normal activity of mutant K-Ras, but leaves the normal protein untouched.

Quantifying Earth's worth to public health Posted: 19 Nov 2013 11:19 AM PST A new paper delineates a new branch of environmental health that focuses on the public health risks of human-caused changes to Earth's natural systems.

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