ScienceDaily: Top Science News

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• What singing fruit flies can tell us about quick decisions
• Plankton make scents for seabirds and a cooler planet
• Scientists find mechanism to reset body clock
• Computers see through faked expressions of pain better than people
• Animals losing migratory routes? Devasting consequences of scarcity of 'knowledgeable elders'
• Moon of Saturn: Surface of Titan sea is mirror smooth
• Oldest fossil evidence of modern African venomous snakes found in Tanzania
• Genes play key role in parenting: Children also shape parents' behavior
• Engineering materials for super-efficient nanoelectronics: Potential way to make graphene superconducting
• Amphibians and dinosaurs were the new large predators after the mass extinction
• Eyes are windows to the soul -- and evolution
• Tiny transistors for extreme environs: Engineers shrink plasma devices to resist radiation
• Loblolly pine genome is largest ever sequenced: Seven times bigger than the human genome
• Fake laughter doesn't fool the brain, research reveals
• Stem cells from muscle can repair nerve damage after injury
• Nanopores underlie our ability to tune in to a single voice: Inner-ear membrane uses tiny pores to mechanically separate sounds

What singing fruit flies can tell us about quick decisions Posted: 20 Mar 2014 10:14 AM PDT The pitch and tempo of the male fruit fly's mating song is based on environmental cues rather than a stereotyped pattern, researchers have discovered. These findings could be substantial for understanding rapid decision-making in more advanced beings such as humans.

Plankton make scents for seabirds and a cooler planet Posted: 20 Mar 2014 09:55 AM PDT The top predators of the Southern Ocean, far-ranging seabirds, are tied both to the health of the ocean ecosystem and to global climate regulation through a mutual relationship with phytoplankton, according to newly published work from the University of California, Davis.

Scientists find mechanism to reset body clock Posted: 20 Mar 2014 09:19 AM PDT Researchers have discovered a new mechanism that governs how body clocks react to changes in the environment. The discovery could provide a solution for alleviating the detrimental effects of chronic shift work and jet-lag.

Computers see through faked expressions of pain better than people Posted: 20 Mar 2014 09:19 AM PDT Scientists have found that a computer system spots real or faked expressions of pain more accurately than people can. Humans could not discriminate real from faked expressions of pain better than random chance -- and, even after training, only improved accuracy to a modest 55 percent. The computer system attains an 85 percent accuracy.

Animals losing migratory routes? Devasting consequences of scarcity of 'knowledgeable elders' Posted: 20 Mar 2014 08:19 AM PDT Small changes in a population may lead to dramatic consequences, like the disappearance of the migratory route of a species. Scientists have created a model of the behavior of a group of individuals on the move (like a school of fish, a herd of sheep or a flock of birds, etc.) which, by changing a few simple parameters, reproduces the collective behavior patterns observed in the wild.

Moon of Saturn: Surface of Titan sea is mirror smooth Posted: 20 Mar 2014 07:15 AM PDT The surface of Ligeia Mare, Titan's second largest sea, has a mirror-like smoothness, possibly due to a lack of winds, geophysicists say. As the only other solar system body with an Earth-like weather system, Titan could serve as a model for studying our own planet's early history.

Oldest fossil evidence of modern African venomous snakes found in Tanzania Posted: 20 Mar 2014 07:15 AM PDT Scientists have found the oldest definitive fossil evidence of modern, venomous snakes in Africa. The newly discovered fossils demonstrate that elapid snakes -- such as cobras, kraits and sea snakes -- were present in Africa as early as 25 million years ago. Elapids belong to a larger group of snakes known as colubroids, active foragers that use a variety of methods, including venom, to capture and kill prey.

Genes play key role in parenting: Children also shape parents' behavior Posted: 20 Mar 2014 07:15 AM PDT Scientists have presented the most conclusive evidence yet that genes play a significant role in parenting. The study sheds light on another misconception: that parenting is solely a top-down process from parent to child. While parents certainly seem to shape child behavior, parenting also is influenced by the child's behavior -- in other words, parenting is both a cause and a consequence of child behavior.

Engineering materials for super-efficient nanoelectronics: Potential way to make graphene superconducting Posted: 20 Mar 2014 07:13 AM PDT Scientists have discovered a potential way to make graphene -- a single layer of carbon atoms with great promise for future electronics -- superconducting, a state in which it would carry electricity with 100 percent efficiency.

Amphibians and dinosaurs were the new large predators after the mass extinction Posted: 20 Mar 2014 07:08 AM PDT Some 252 million years ago, the largest extinction event occurred at the end of the Permian age. It wiped out almost 90 percent of all life in water. So far researchers had assumed that the ecosystems gradually recovered from this catastrophe over a long stretch of eight to nine million years and that large predators at the uppermost end of the food chain were the last to reappear. Palaeontologists now show that the food nets during the Early Triassic did not recover in stages. Large predators like, for instance, crocodile-like amphibians and later the precursors of the known plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs went in search of prey in the oceans soon after the end of the mass extinction.

Eyes are windows to the soul -- and evolution Posted: 20 Mar 2014 07:06 AM PDT Why do we become saucer-eyed from fear and squint from disgust? These near-opposite facial expressions are rooted in emotional responses that exploit how our eyes gather and focus light to detect an unknown threat, according to a new study.

Tiny transistors for extreme environs: Engineers shrink plasma devices to resist radiation Posted: 20 Mar 2014 07:05 AM PDT Electrical engineers have fabricated the smallest plasma transistors that can withstand high temperatures and ionizing radiation found in a nuclear reactor. Such transistors someday might enable smartphones that take and collect medical X-rays on a battlefield, and devices to measure air quality in real time.

Loblolly pine genome is largest ever sequenced: Seven times bigger than the human genome Posted: 20 Mar 2014 07:05 AM PDT The massive genome of the loblolly pine -- around seven times bigger than the human genome -- is the largest genome sequenced to date and the most complete conifer genome sequence ever published. This achievement marks the first big test of a new analysis method that can speed up genome assembly by compressing the raw sequence data 100-fold.

Fake laughter doesn't fool the brain, research reveals Posted: 19 Mar 2014 07:25 PM PDT As the world celebrates International Day of Happiness today (Thursday, 20 March), can we tell whether people are truly happy just from their laugh? "During our study, when participants heard a laugh that was posed, they activated regions of the brain associated with mentalizing in an attempt to understand the other person's emotional and mental state," the authors state.

Stem cells from muscle can repair nerve damage after injury Posted: 18 Mar 2014 04:00 PM PDT Stem cells derived from human muscle tissue were able to repair nerve damage and restore function in an animal model of sciatic nerve injury. The findings suggest that cell therapy of certain nerve diseases, such as multiple sclerosis, might one day be feasible.

Nanopores underlie our ability to tune in to a single voice: Inner-ear membrane uses tiny pores to mechanically separate sounds Posted: 18 Mar 2014 08:37 AM PDT Even in a crowded room full of background noise, the human ear is remarkably adept at tuning in to a single voice -- a feat that has proved remarkably difficult for computers to match. A new analysis of the underlying mechanisms has provided insights that could ultimately lead to better machine hearing, and perhaps to better hearing aids as well.

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