In case you missed it: 2008's most interesting science news
by Kate Melville
11 December 2008
Brainier men have better sperm, suggests new study
UK researchers have found an unexpectedly close relationship between intelligence and sperm quality...
26 November 2008
Organic molecule hints at alien life
Scientists have detected glycolaldehyde (an organic sugar molecule that is directly linked to the origin of life) 26,000 light years from Earth in a region of our galaxy where habitable planets may exist...
24 November 2008
Genital birth defect blamed on hairspray
Pregnant women that are exposed to hairspray in the workplace have more than double the risk of having a son with the penile defect hypospadias, where the urinary opening is displaced to the underside of the penis...
13 November 2008
Ovulation triggers female risk-taking behavior
It has long been recognized that women's preferences for masculine men change throughout their menstrual cycle, but a new study from the Kinsey Institute pinpoints the areas of the brain that change around ovulation and reveals how these changes affect both sensory discrimination and risk processing...
7 November 2008
Social interactions alter gene expression
Our DNA determines a lot about who we are and how we relate to others, but recent animal studies show that the interaction between genes and behavior is more of a two-way street than most of us realize...
30 October 2008
Quake detection gets cheap and cheerful
In the same vein as the SETI@home project, the Quake Catcher Network aims to operate a massive seismic event detection network using the sudden-motion sensors that are incorporated into laptop computers to prevent hard disk damage...
20 October 2008
Slavery to blame for racial disparities in health?
Two new studies contend that poor nutrition and stress - stemming back to the days of slavery - could help explain modern-day black-white differences in cardiovascular health in the United States...
16 October 2008
Social skills predict future earnings better than test scores
Ten years after graduation, high-school students who had been rated as conscientious and cooperative by their teachers were earning more than classmates who had similar test scores but fewer social skills, a new study has found...
9 October 2008
DNA surname profiling mooted in UK
British researchers say there is a strong link between a person's surname and their Y chromosome type, suggesting that surname prediction from DNA alone may be feasible for forensic scientists in the future...
7 October 2008
Visible light data network under development
The next generation of wireless communications technology will use visible light instead of radio waves, with data piggybacking on interior lighting systems which researchers say will offer both greater speed and better security than today's radio networks...
22 September 2008
Academics question surge's success in Baghdad
By tracking the amount of light emitted by Baghdad neighborhoods at night, a team of geographers has uncovered evidence that the U.S. troop surge in Iraq may not have been as effective at improving security as the administration has suggested and that ethnic cleansing by rival Shiites may have been largely responsible for the decrease in violence for which the U.S. military has claimed credit...
13 August 2008
Contraceptive Pill Threatening Genetic Diversity?
British researchers have found that the contraceptive pill appears to disrupt women's natural ability to choose a partner genetically dissimilar to themselves...
8 August 2008
Testosterone Key In Disease Transmission
It's been known for some time that testosterone makes males more susceptible to disease, but new research indicates that high levels of testosterone in an individual can also spur the transmission of disease throughout a population...
7 August 2008
Quantum "Uncollapse" Muddies Definition Of Reality
Measuring (observing) a quantum object forces it to collapse from a waveform into one position. This collapse, according to quantum mechanics dogma, is what makes objects "real," but new verification of "collapse reversal" suggests that we can no longer assume that measurements alone create reality...
5 August 2008
The High Cost Of Intelligence
The metabolic changes responsible for the evolution of human cognitive abilities indicate that the brain may have been pushed to the limit of its capabilities and that schizophrenia may be one of the costly by-products of this evolutionary leap...
29 July 2008
9 Out Of 10 Americans Obese Or Overweight By 2030
Most adults in the United States will be overweight or obese by 2030, with related health care costs hitting nearly a trillion dollars, say the researchers involved in a new multi-institute study...
15 July 2008
Watermelon: The Fruit Of Lerve
Scientists have been taking a closer look at citrulline, one of the phyto-nutrients in watermelon, and have discovered that one of its effects on the body is to relax blood vessels, much like Viagra does...
20 June 2008
Take Two Rads And Call Me In The Morning
Radiation in high enough doses is lethal and chronic exposure is linked to the development of cancer, but one maverick professor believes that short-term controlled exposure to low doses of radiation may significantly improve our health...
19 June 2008
Microbe Colonies Show Sophisticated Learning Behaviors
A cross-disciplinary team of biologists and engineers investigating how simple biochemical networks can perform sophisticated computational tasks have observed bacterial colonies anticipating coming changes in their environment and adjusting their behaviors accordingly...
18 June 2008
Male Homosexuality Placed In Darwinian Context
Italian researchers say that male homosexuality in humans can be explained by a model based on sexually antagonistic selection; where genetic factors spread in the population by giving a reproductive advantage to one sex while disadvantaging the other...
16 June 2008
DNA Precursors In Meteorite Confirmed As Extraterrestrial
Scientists examining pieces of the Murchison meteorite, which crashed in Australia in 1969, say that the nucleobases found in the fragments are almost certainly extraterrestrial in origin, leading them to believe that these important building blocks for DNA and RNA may be common throughout the cosmos...
13 June 2008
Physicists Create Quantum-Entangled Images
Using a technique known as "four-wave mixing," researchers at the Joint Quantum Institute and the University of Maryland have created "quantum images," pairs of information-rich visual patterns whose features are entangled so that changes in one image are instantaneously replicated in the other image, regardless of the distance separating them...
11 June 2008
Omega-6 Intake Can Determine Offspring Gender In Sheep
Researchers at the University of Missouri have established that maternal diet can influence the gender of offspring in sheep, and a diet enriched with omega-6 fats offers a significantly higher chance of male offspring...
5 June 2008
Line-Of-Sight SETI Revamp Proposed
Earth-based astronomers can detect extrasolar planets as they transit across the face of distant stars, so alien astronomers should be able to detect the Earth as it moves across the face of our sun. That's the logic behind a novel proposal to search for extraterrestrial radio signals in a tiny segment of the sky called the ecliptic band...
27 May 2008
Drink-Up For Superior Sperm
Men who drink alcohol regularly are more likely to have better semen quality while men in certain occupations are more likely to have poor semen quality, says a new wide-ranging fertility study carried out by scientists in the UK...
13 May 2008
Cell Phones More Expensive Than Hubble Space Comms
A British space scientist has calculated that cell phone texting is at least four times more expensive than receiving scientific data from the Hubble Space Telescope...
9 May 2008
Folding Proteins For Fun And Profit
A new computer game, called Foldit, turns protein folding into a competitive sport for anyone with a computer. Its creators say Foldit capitalizes on people's natural 3-D problem-solving skills and they hope to get a significant fraction of the world's population working on solving critical health problems...
20 April 2008
Harnessing The Coriolis Force
Created by the rotation of the Earth, the force that causes whirlpools to form in bathtubs could soon be used to boost traditional hydroelectric power generation by 27 percent, says the inventor of a new turbine...
17 April 2008
ETs Very Unlikely, New Calculations Suggest
The chance of intelligent life emerging on another planet is very low - less than 0.01 per cent over four billion years, according to a new mathematical model...
2 April 2008
Paranoia As Common As Depression, Anxiety
A virtual reality subway ride has been used by researchers to reveal the extent that paranoia occurs in the general public...
27 March 2008
Brain Has Sixth Sense For Calories
New research suggests that the brain can "sense" the calories in food, independent of our normal tasting mechanism...
10 March 2008
Brits Invite ET Over For Corn Chips
Snack food company Doritos is sponsoring a competition to beam a user-created advertisement (using a 2-billion watt transmitter) at a solar system 42 light years away from Earth...
5 March 2008
Expensive Placebo Works Better Than Cheap One
A 10-cent pill doesn't kill pain as well as a $2.50 pill, even when they are identical placebos, finds a new study...
4 March 2008
Bacterial Rainmakers Ubiquitous
Scientists have uncovered evidence linking airborne bacteria from plants to the cycle of precipitation, underscoring the complex interplay between our planet's climate and biosphere...
28 February 2008
This Is Your Brain On Jazz
Using fMRI, two scientists have discovered that when jazz musicians improvise, their brains turn off areas linked to self-censoring and inhibition, and turn on those that let self-expression flow...
5 February 2008
Climate "Tipping Points" Identified
An international team of researchers have described a number of small climatic changes that could have large long-term consequences for the planet...
24 January 2008
Liver Recipient Takes On Donor's Immune System
An Australian teenager who received a liver transplant has astonished medical experts by taking on her donor's immune system...
17 January 2008
Parasite Turns Ants Fruity
A newly discovered parasite dramatically changes its ant host into what appears to be a juicy red berry, thus boosting its chances of being eaten by a bird and spread further afield...
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