Mars rover finds conditions once suited for life

An analysis of a rock sample collected by NASA’s Curiosity rover indicates ancient Mars could have supported microbes.  Scientists identified some of the key chemical ingredients for life in the powder Curiosity drilled out of a sedimentary rock near an ancient stream bed in Gale Crater on the Red Planet last month.

Earliest Image Of The Cosmos

The most accurate map ever made of the oldest light in the universe is out and it reveals some “strange” features along with other new information.  The results suggest the universe is expanding more slowly than had been thought, and that it’s 13.8 billion years old, 100 million years older than previous estimates.  The data show there is less “dark energy” and more matter, both normal and “dark matter,” in the universe than previously known.

Migrating planets caused meteor storm

Migration of giant gas planets such as Jupiter created the biggest meteor storm in our solar system's history, according to a new study.

Unconscious brain can predict decisions

Scientists have found that unconscious brain activity can predict a person's decisions, seconds before they are even aware of having made a choice.

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Blogger Note: This has already been shown by the work of Benjamin Libet years ago.

Study links rat brains together electronically

Researchers say they have electronically linked the brains of pairs of rats, enabling them to communicate directly to solve simple puzzles. A further test successfully linked the brains of two animals thousands of miles apart, according to the researchers. The results, they add, suggest the future potential for linking multiple brains to form an “organic computer,” which could allow sharing of information among groups of animals.

Third-Closest Star System Discovered

Both stars in the new binary system are brown dwarfs — stars too lightweight to become hot enough to burn through the nuclear process of hydrogen fusion. As a result, they are cool and dim, resembling a giant planet like Jupiter more than a bright star like the Sun.

Flowers buzz bees with electricity

Flowers may be silent, but scientists have just discovered that electric fields allow them to communicate with bumblebees and possibly other species, including humans.

Tiny planet Kepler-37b found

Astronomers have made what they say are the first observations of a planet outside our solar system smaller than Mercury, the smallest planet orbiting our sun.  Identified by studying nearly three years of high-precision data from NASA’s Kepler spacecraft, the planet is estimated as being about the size of the Earth’s moon. It is one of three planets orbiting a star designated Kepler-37 in the Cygnus-Lyra region of the Milky Way.

The ev­o­lu­tion­ary or­i­gin of the head

Researchers found that the same genes that control head development in higher animals govern the development of the front end of the swimming larva, or juvenile form, of a simple, brainless sea anemone. This front end becomes the so-called “foot” of the adult animal.

Higgs data indicate finite life of universe

Scientists are still sorting out the details of last year's discovery of the Higgs boson particle, but add up the numbers and it's not looking good for the future of the universe.

Tooth decay bacteria evolved as diet changed

Mesolithic hunter-gatherers living on a meat-dominated, grain-free diet had much healthier mouths that we have today, with almost no cavities and gum disease-associated bacteria.

Earliest Common Ancestor Of Placental Mammals

A small, four-legged insect-eating animal was the earliest common ancestor of placental mammals, according to the most detailed exploration of the mammalian 'tree of life' to date.

Fossil leaves uncover mass plant extinction

A previously unknown mass extinction of plants occurred around a million years ago in the southeast corner of Australia, an analysis of fossilised leaves shows.

Evolution of Spoken Language Decrypted and Reconstructed by Computer Algorithm

Archaeologists will gain a powerful new tool in their quest to recover ancestral, disappeared languages: Connecting machine learning algorithms with Big Data in this field proved successful and will automate a process that until now took decades. Spoken language changes continuously, and ancient languages eventually die out and disappear - but only apparently, since even modern languages still contain the roots of those proto-languages.

Neanderthal extinction earlier than thought

Neanderthals may have become extinct in Europe some ten thousand years earlier than scientists currently think, a new radiocarbon dating study suggests.

Intermediate-Luminosity Red Transients

Strange red glowing lights in deep space may be caused by pairs of stars getting so close to each other they share atmospheres.

Evidence of ancient Martian lake found

A US spacecraft orbiting Mars has provided evidence of an ancient crater lake fed by groundwater, adding further support to theories that the Red Planet may once have hosted life. Spectrometer data from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) shows traces of carbonate and clay minerals usually formed in the presence of water at the bottom of the 2.2 kilometre deep McLaughlin Crater.

Making teleportation 'fuel-efficient'

Teleportation may have come a small step closer. Over the past decade, scientists have shown that the powerful connections generated between particles through the quantum law of 'entanglement' could allow information to be teleported.

Chimps possess a sense of 'fairness'

Chimpanzees, in a test of their willingness to share with other chimps, displayed a surprising sense of fairness, scientists say, debunking the idea that only humans boast that quality.

Blogger's Note: Contrary to the claims in the article, this has previously been demonstrated not only for chimps, but also, I believe, for orang utans and certainly for (some species of) monkeys.  A sense of un/fairness is probably a feature of all social species.

First land animals shuffled like seals

The assumptions implicit in the world's first 3D reconstruction of a four-legged animal backbone suggest that the first animals on land moved like mudskippers or seals. One of the studied animals was the Ichthyostega which lived 374 to 359 million years ago and was a transitional species between fish and terrestrial animals. Ichthyostega is thought to have navigated through shallow water in swamps, probably lured by food.

“Epigenetics” proposed to underlie homosexuality

A key factor behind homosexuality may be not genetics, but epigenetics—the way temporary “switches” in our cells influence gene activity.  New research suggests homosexuality can occur when sex–specific forms of these switches — normally “erased” between generations—escape erasure.

Ancient bird’s elaborate teeth

A newly discovered bird of the dinosaur age, identified from a fossil, had some of the most elaborate teeth ever seen in a bird, at a time when other bird species had already begun an evolutionary journey toward toothlessness.

Swimming Dinosaurs

Dozens of little dinosaurs, swimming in shallow river waters, left a group of track marks which suggest certain ornithopods—plant-eating dinosaurs whose name means “bird-footed”—liked to get around by swimming or wading, perhaps using river currents for help.

Astronomers identify structure so huge it disrupts cosmic uniformity

Astronomers have found a clump of bright galaxies so huge, it jolts their longstanding belief that the universe is pretty uniform on large scales.

The weta has ears similar to those of a whale

Like other vocal insects, wetas have ears on their legs. This is to enable the small creatures to separate their ears wide enough to use their hearing as a locating device.

Hubble spies galaxies from early universe

Astronomers have found seven galaxies that formed relatively soon after the universe's birth some 13.7 billion years ago. One of the objects may be the oldest galaxy yet found, dating back to a time when the universe was just 380 million years old.

Lizards 'nearly wiped out' with dinosaurs

Contrary to previous understanding, lizards and snakes were nearly wiped out along with the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

Nyasasaurus parringtoni

Fossilised bones unearthed by a British palaeontologist in colonial Tanzania in the 1930s may be those of the oldest dinosaur ever found.  A denizen of the Middle Triassic around 243 million years ago, the creature predates all previous dinosaur finds by 10 to 15 million years. The specimen also points to the possible birthplace of these enigmatic species in Pangaea.

Yet Another Tool-Making Species

A parrot determined to grab an out-of-reach pebble has figured out how to make tools to get it — even though parrots aren’t known to make tools in the wild.

"Bigger Brains" Gave Us Cooking

New da­ta sup­port a the­o­ry that the in­ven­tion of cook­ing trig­gered a great in­crease in hu­man brain size.

New Human Gene Emerged From Non-Coding DNA

A gene called miR-941 seems to have played a crucial role in brain development and may shed light on how we learned to use tools and language. It's the first time a new gene, carried only by humans and not by the other apes, has been shown to have a specific function in the body.

Stray stars may haunt vastness between galaxies

Stray stars floating far beyond the edges of galaxies may be the cause for a mysterious glow of infrared light seen across the entire sky.

New type of exploding star may be a dud

A type of oddly dim, exploding star is probably a sort of dud—one the could nonetheless throw light on the nature of the mysterious “dark energy” pervading space.  The seemingly failed outbursts are said to come from variants of exploding stars called type Ia supernovae, which are found by the thousands.

Parrots' mimicking talent may be for addressing individuals

A study indicates that at least some parrots' talent for mimicking sounds, which underlies their “talking” skill, functions in nature to let them communicate with individual parrots they encounter.

Dogs may link words to object sizes rather than shapes

Dogs relate words to objects very differently than humans do, new research claims: whereas we relate words for objects primarily to their shapes, dogs relate these words to sizes and textures.

Ancient tree-wombat behaved like a koala

The rainforests of Australia were once inhabited by a 70-kilogram tree-dwelling wombat that hugged trees like a koala.

Midlife crisis strikes chimps and orang utans

A new study has found that chimpanzees and orangutans, too, often experience a midlife crisis, suggesting the causes are inherent in primate biology and not specific to human society.

Ancient dung heaps are genetic time capsules

DNA extract from ancient latrines has "opened the door" to identifying the plants and animals that existed in northern Australia's remote Pilbara region more than 30,000 years ago.

New mark for oldest, furthest galaxy

Astronomers have caught a glimpse of a galaxy that sets a new record for the furthest, and thus oldest, yet discovered - 13.3 billion light years from Earth.

Prenatal learning demonstrated in birds

Superb fairy wren mothers teach a "password" to their young while they are still in the egg as a means of identifying them when they want to be fed and stopping home invasion.

Bs meson observed to decay into a muon and an anti-muon

CERN researchers say they have spotted a particle reshaping into two others in the Large Hadron Collider, a breakthrough that could be crucial in exploring physics frontiers.  The mutation was predicted under the so-called Standard Model (SM) of physics, but until now scientists had never seen it.

Brain function fragments under general anæsthetic

The unconscious brain is fragmented into tiny regions that are 'awake' but unable to talk to each other, according to a study looking at the effects of general anaesthetic.

Tone deaf shed light on origin of language

A study involving 'tone deaf' people supports Darwin's idea that music and language evolved from the same emotional "musical protolanguage".

Scientists unearth 'ostrich' dinosaurs

Ostrich-like dinosaurs roamed the Earth millions of years ago using feathers to attract a mate or protect offspring rather than for flight, according to a new study.

Meteor sheds light on watery solar system

Liquid water existed over a far wider area of the solar system than originally thought, a new study confirms.

Crows Test Human Intelligence

Researchers still do not understand what cognitive processes are used by the birds to solve problems set by humans.

Earth-sized world found next door

Scientists have found an Earth-sized planet circling a neighbour star just four light-years away.

Scientists measure cosmic “exit door”

Researchers have for the first time measured the closest distance at which matter can approach before being irretrievably pulled into the black hole at the centre of a distant galaxy. The finding could shed light on how galaxies evolve and on the correctness of Einstein’s theories.

Slave ant “rebellions” found to be common

Ants held as slaves in nests of other ant species often damage their oppressors through acts of sabotage.

Giant black holes from chaotic early era coming to light

Cutting-edge sky surveys have revealed a previously unseen group of giant, fast-growing black holes from a violent early period in cosmic history.  The findings could have special significance because they shed light on how huge black holes and galaxies shaped each other’s early development.

Fossil said to be earliest to show complex brain

A remarkably well-preserved fossil of an extinct, worm-like animal reveals that anatomically complex brains evolved earlier than previously thought.  Found in rock formed from mud deposits during the Cambrian period 520 million years ago, the roughly 7cm fossil represents a primitive arthropod.

DNA 'half life'

Reconstructing dinosaurs from ancient DNA has been dealt a blow with a new study finding genetic material can only last one million years.  An international team of researchers reached the finding after analysing DNA extracted from bones of the extinct New Zealand moa. They found that while short fragments of DNA could possibly survive up to one million years, sequences of 30 base pairs or more would only have a 'half-life' of around 158,000 years under certain conditions.

Racing star could confirm Einstein's theory

Astronomers have found evidence of a star racing tightly around the monstrous black hole at the heart of our galaxy - the closest ever found near the matter-sucking body.

Trails help slime moulds to navigate

Slime moulds leave a gooey trail behind them to remember where they've been.  The findings suggest early life forms developed such externalised spatial "memory" to navigate, long before the evolution of brains.

Frogs hit high notes to ward off competition

Male orange-eyed tree frogs trill to advertise their size not to prospective mates, but to other males.

Khoe-San first to split from other humans

Southern Africa's bushmen, and their relatives the Khoe, veered off on their own path of genetic development 100,000 years ago, according to a new study.  The split, gleaned from an analysis of genetic data, is the earliest divergence scientists have discovered in the evolution of modern humans.

The vampire squid is neither a squid nor an octopus

Biologists say they have unlocked secrets about the vampire squid, a mysterious creature that feeds on the decaying dead in the unlit depths.