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I think step to the left, you think step to the east

Medicine & Health / Psychology & Psychiatry

created Dec 14, 2009 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (5) | comments 1

Even the way people remember dance moves depends on the culture they come from, according to a report in the December 14th issue of Current Biology. Whereas a German or other Westerner might think in terms of "step to the ...


Tool use in an invertebrate: The coconut-carrying octopus

Biology / Plants & Animals

created Dec 14, 2009 | popularity 5 / 5 (3) | comments 0

Scientists once thought of tool use as a defining feature of humans. That's until examples of tool use came in from other primates, along with birds and an array of other mammals. Now, a report in the December 14th issue ...


New Study Turns Up the Heat on Soot's Role in Himalayan Warming (w/ Video)

New Study Turns Up the Heat on Soot's Role in Himalayan Warming (w/ Video)

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Dec 14, 2009 | popularity 5 / 5 (2) | comments 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- Soot from fire in an unventilated fireplace wafts into a home and settles on the surfaces of floors and furniture. But with a quick fix to the chimney flue and some dusting, it bears no impact ...


Flies like us: They can act like addicts, too

Biology / Cell & Microbiology

created Dec 10, 2009 | popularity 5 / 5 (1) | comments 0

When given the chance to consume alcohol at will, fruit flies behave in ways that look an awful lot like human alcoholism. That's according to a study published online on December 10th in Current Biology that is one of the ...


Understanding ocean climate

Understanding ocean climate

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Dec 10, 2009 | popularity not rated yet | comments 0

High-resolution computer simulations performed by scientists at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (NOCS) are helping to understand the inflow of North Atlantic water to the Arctic Ocean and how ...


Sylvia atricapilla (Blackcap)

By feeding the birds, you could change their evolutionary fate

Biology / Plants & Animals

created Dec 03, 2009 | popularity 4.2 / 5 (6) | comments 5

Feeding birds in winter is a most innocent human activity, but it can nonetheless have profound effects on the evolutionary future of a species, and those changes can be seen in the very near term. That's ...


Bigger not necessarily better, when it comes to brains

Bigger not necessarily better, when it comes to brains

Biology / Plants & Animals

created Nov 17, 2009 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (19) | comments 12

(PhysOrg.com) -- Tiny insects could be as intelligent as much bigger animals, despite only having a brain the size of a pinhead, say scientists at Queen Mary, University of London.


AKROD Knee Device

Robotic Devices Providing Home-Care Rehabilitation (w/ Video)

Electronics / Robotics

created Nov 13, 2009 | popularity 5 / 5 (4) | comments 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- A group of researchers, at Northeastern University, have developed several portable robotic devices to aid in the rehabilitation process of stroke victims. These devices are small enough for ...


Dopamine enhances expectation of pleasure in humans

Dopamine enhances expectation of pleasure in humans

Medicine & Health / Neuroscience

created Nov 12, 2009 | popularity 4.2 / 5 (10) | comments 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- Enhancing the effects of the brain chemical dopamine influences how people make life choices by affecting expectations of pleasure, according to new research from the UCL Institute of Neurology.


It's all in your head. No, really: How mental imagery training aids perceptual learning

It's all in your head. No, really: How mental imagery training aids perceptual learning

Medicine & Health / Psychology & Psychiatry

created Dec 03, 2009 | popularity 4 / 5 (1) | comments 0

Practice makes perfect. But imaginary practice? Elisa Tartaglia of the Laboratory of Psychophysics at Switzerland's Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) and team show that perceptual learning—learning ...


Brain

Brain represents tools as temporary body parts, study confirms

Medicine & Health / Research

created Jun 22, 2009 | popularity 4.4 / 5 (16) | comments 8

Researchers have what they say is the first direct proof of a very old idea: that when we use a tool—even for just a few minutes—it changes the way our brain represents the size of our body. In other words, ...


Physicists Measure Elusive 'Persistent Current' That Flows Forever

Physicists Measure Elusive 'Persistent Current' That Flows Forever

Physics / General Physics

created Oct 08, 2009 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (58) | comments 16

(PhysOrg.com) -- Physicists at Yale University have made the first definitive measurements of "persistent current," a small but perpetual electric current that flows naturally through tiny rings of metal wire ...


New clues to the Falklands wolf mystery

New clues to the Falklands wolf mystery

Biology / Plants & Animals

created Nov 02, 2009 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (3) | comments 0

Ever since the Falklands wolf was described by Darwin himself, the origin of this now-extinct canid found only on the Falkland Islands far off the east coast of Argentina has remained a mystery. Now, researchers ...


Venomous bite: Harmless digestive enzyme evolved into venom in two species

Venomous bite: Harmless digestive enzyme evolved into venom in two species

Biology / Plants & Animals

created Oct 29, 2009 | popularity not rated yet | comments 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- Biologists have shown that independent but similar molecular changes turned a harmless digestive enzyme into a toxin in two unrelated species -- a shrew and a lizard -- giving each a venomous ...


Carbon nanotubes could make efficient solar cells

Carbon nanotubes could make efficient solar cells

Nanotechnology / Nanomaterials

created Sep 10, 2009 | popularity 5 / 5 (21) | comments 13

(PhysOrg.com) -- Cornell researchers fabricated, tested and measured a simple solar cell called a photodiode, formed from an individual carbon nanotube.