Other Sciences News

Tanycyte cells reacting to a puff of the amino acid lysine. Scale bar - 20 μm. Image credit: Nicholas Dale / Greta Lazutkaite.

Researchers Identify Brain Cells that Control Our Appetite

Sep 29, 2017 by News Staff

Tanycytes — cells found in part of the brain that controls energy levels — detect two key amino acids in food and tell the brain directly that...

Based on various lines of geological and geophysical evidence, particularly those accumulated in the last two decades, Nick Mortimer et al argue that Zealandia is not a collection of partly submerged continental fragments but is a coherent 4.9 million km2 continent. NC - New Caledonia; WTP - West Torres Plateau; CT - Cato Trough; Cf - Chesterfield Islands; L - Lord Howe Island; N - Norfolk Island; K - Kermadec Islands; Ch - Chatham Islands; B - Bounty Islands; An - Antipodes Islands; Au - Auckland Islands; Ca - Campbell Island. Image credit: Nick Mortimer et al, doi: 10.1130/GSATG321A.1.

Zealandia: Researchers Return from Expedition to Earth’s Seventh Continent

Sep 28, 2017 by News Staff

Earlier this year, Zealandia was confirmed as Earth’s seventh continent, but little is known about it because it’s 94% submerged under water. After...

Easter Island is located some 3,512 km from Chile’s west coast and its nearest inhabited neighbor, Pitcairn Island, located some 2,075 km to the west. For reasons still unknown early Rapa Nui people began carving giant statues out of volcanic rock. Image credit: Marlene Hanssen.

Study: Easter Island May Have Had Population of 17,500 in Its Heyday

Sep 21, 2017 by News Staff

A new study published in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution examines the relationship between agricultural potential and population on Easter...

A study by Abramovitch et al is the first analysis of existing data on the link between IQ and OCD sufferers verses the general population. Image credit: AirPix.

New Study Debunks Myth that Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder is Associated with Higher IQ

Sep 20, 2017 by News Staff

According to a meta-analytic study published in the journal Neuropsychology Review, obsessive-compulsive disorder is not associated with a higher intelligence...

A ‘Blue Marble’ image of the Earth taken from the VIIRS instrument aboard NASA’s Earth-observing satellite Suomi NPP (named in honor of Verner E. Suomi of the University of Wisconsin). This composite image uses a number of swaths of the Earth’s surface taken on January 4, 2012. Image credit: NASA / NOAA / GSFC / Suomi NPP / VIIRS / Norman Kuring.

Researchers Produce Estimate of Earth’s Elemental Composition

Sep 20, 2017 by News Staff

A team of researchers at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia, has produced the most comprehensive estimate yet of Earth’s composition...

Papua New Guinea was likely a stepping stone for human migration from Asia to Australia. Bergstroem et al performed genome-wide single-nucleotide polymorphism genotyping on 381 individuals from 85 language groups in Papua New Guinea and found a sharp divide originating 10,000 to 20,000 years ago between lowland and highland groups and a lack of non-New Guinean admixture in the latter. This photo shows drummers and dancers from each village on the beach of Port Moresby, the capital and largest city of Papua New Guinea. Image credit: Steve Jurvetson / CC BY 2.0.

New Study Reveals Remarkable Genetic Diversity among Papuan New Guinean Peoples

Sep 19, 2017 by News Staff

An international team of researchers led by the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute has analyzed genome-wide data of 381 individuals from 85 language groups...

Ancient Indian Manuscript Contains Oldest Example of Mathematical Symbol ‘Zero’

Sep 18, 2017 by News Staff

The Bakhshali manuscript, an ancient Indian mathematical manuscript written on more than 70 leaves of birch bark, is notable for having a dot representing...

UC Berkeley psychologists Professor Dacher Keltner and Alan Cowen uncovered 27 varieties of emotional experience. Image credit: Alexandra.

Psychologists Identify Twenty Seven Distinct Categories of Emotion

Sep 11, 2017 by News Staff

Using sophisticated statistical models to analyze the responses of people to emotionally evocative short videos, University of California, Berkeley researchers...

According to the team, music listening can be easily integrated into daily life and may provide an innovative means to facilitate creative cognition in an efficient way in various scientific, educational and organizational settings when creative thinking is needed. Image credit: Gerd Altmann.

Happy Music Boosts Divergent Creative Thinking, New Study Finds

Sep 8, 2017 by News Staff

A new study published in the journal PLoS ONE has found that listening to ‘happy music’ (i.e. classical music that elicits positive mood and is high...

Schematic view of a large-scale quantum processor based upon phosphorus (31P) donors in silicon, operated and coupled through the use of an induced electric dipole. Idle qubits have electrons at the interface, leaving the 31P nucleus in the ultra-coherent ionized state. Electrons are partially shifted toward the donor for quantum operations. The sketch shows a possible architecture where a cluster of qubits is locally coupled via the electric dipole, and a subgroup thereof is further coupled to another cluster through interaction with a shared microwave cavity (aqua). Image credit: Guilherme Tosi, University of New South Wales.

Researchers Invent New Architecture for Quantum Computing

Sep 7, 2017 by News Staff

A new architecture, based on so-called ‘flip-flop’ qubits, allows for a silicon quantum processor that can be scaled up without the precise placement...

Zeolitic ice (left) and aeroice (right) are illustrated: their structure can be regarded as combinations of a couple of polyhedral building blocks. In molecular scale, each polygonal face of the polyhedra is made of water molecules (left bottom); yellow lines are hydrogen bonds. Image credit: Masakazu Matsumoto / CC BY 2.0.

Scientists Predict Existence of Ultralow-Density Ices: ‘Aeroices’

Sep 6, 2017 by News Staff

A research team at Okayama University in Japan has theoretically predicted a new class of ice phases, called aeroices, likely the most stable solid phases...

Migraines take a toll on around 1 billion people. This work by Baksa et al. indicates that individuals with certain gene variants in the CLOCK gene, which is involved in circadian rhythms, are at a higher risk of migraines when they are exposed to financial hardship. Image credit: Sasha Wolff / CC BY 2.0.

Study: Circadian Rhythm Gene Variants Increase Risk of Migraines from Financial Hardship

Sep 5, 2017 by Zvi Cramer

Researchers have shown that financial stress may cause more migraines in individuals with variants in the circadian rhythm gene CLOCK, suggesting that...

According to Rowley IV et al, cocoa compounds have beneficial effects on beta-cell function. Image credit: Pernilla Klockars.

Study: Cocoa Compounds Help Cells Release More Insulin

Sep 1, 2017 by News Staff

When a person has diabetes, their body either doesn’t produce enough insulin or doesn’t process blood sugar properly; at the root of that is the failure...

The Trachilos footprints were discovered by Dr. Gerard Gierlinski, a paleontologist at the Polish Geological Institute, by chance when he was on holiday on Crete in 2002. Dr. Gierlinski identified the footprints as those of a mammal. In 2010, he returned to the site together with Dr. Grzegorz Niedzwiedzki, a Polish paleontologist at Uppsala University, to study the footprints in detail. Together they came to the conclusion that the footprints were made by hominins. Image credit: Andrzej Boczarowski.

5.6-Million-Year-Old Hominin-Like Footprints in Crete Challenge Theories of Human Evolution

Sep 1, 2017 by News Staff

Researchers have found late Miocene footprints — which show hominin-like characteristics — near the village of Trachilos, west of Kissamos,...

Professor Adamson and co-authors demonstrated the use of an interfacial trapping technique to assemble laterally macroscopic films of pristine graphene that are up to 95% transparent. Image credit: Woltornist et al, doi: 10.1021/nn402371c.

U.S. Chemists Develop, Patent New Process for Synthesis of Pristine Graphene

Aug 30, 2017 by News Staff

A research team at the University of Connecticut, led by Professor Douglas Adamson, has developed and patented a one-of-a-kind process for exfoliating...

Eating both bland (left panel) and delicious (right panel) meals triggered significant opioid release in the brain. Image credit: University of Turku.

Eating Triggers Release of Endogenous Opioids in Human Brain, Study Reveals

Aug 29, 2017 by News Staff

A recent study conducted at the University of Turku, Finland, has revealed that eating leads to the widespread opioid release in the human brain, likely...

Chesapeake Bay near the Rappahannock River Mouth, VA. Image credit: University of Delaware.

Researchers Find ‘Acid Zone’ in Chesapeake Bay

Aug 28, 2017 by News Staff

A team of researchers led by University of Delaware Professor Wei-Jun Cai has discovered a ‘pH minimum zone’ that occurs at a depth of 30-50 feet (10-15...

The caffeine we habitually consume in coffee can inhibit the perception of sweet taste. Image credit: Felix Broennimann.

Caffeine Alters Perception of Sweet Taste, New Study Says

Aug 25, 2017 by News Staff

According to a new study published in the Journal of Food Science, caffeine tempers taste buds temporarily, making food and drink seem less sweet. The...

Plimpton 322, a 3,700-year-old Babylonian tablet held in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia University in New York.

Mathematicians Crack Mystery of Babylonian Clay Tablet ‘Plimpton 322’

Aug 25, 2017 by News Staff

Plimpton 322, the most famous of Old Babylonian tablets (1900-1600 BC), is the world’s oldest trigonometric table, possibly used by Babylonian scholars...