ScienceDaily: Strange Science News

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• Direction decided by rate of coin flip in quantum world
• Touch and taste? It's all in the tentacles
• Study of ancient dog DNA traces canine diversity to the Ice Age
• Denisovan DNA in the genome of early East Asians
• Asteroid Ryugu shaken by Hayabusa2's impactor
• Buzz kill: Ogre-faced spiders 'hear' airborne prey with their legs
• Where were Jupiter and Saturn born?
• Boo! How do Mexican cavefish escape predators?
• Shining a (UV) light on the glow-in-the-dark platypus
• Measuring the expansion of the universe: Researchers focus on velocity
• Black soldier fly larvae as protein alternative for hungry humans
• Black hole 'family portrait' is most detailed to date
• Ancient marine predator had a built-in float
• A drop in temperature
• Giant lizards learnt to fly over millions of years
• Toward ultrafast computer chips that retain data even when there is no power
• Stay focused: Algae-inspired polymers light the way for enhanced night vision
• 3D printing the first ever biomimetic tongue surface

Direction decided by rate of coin flip in quantum world Posted: 29 Oct 2020 11:20 AM PDT Flip a coin. Heads? Take a step to the left. Tails? Take a step to the right. In the quantum world? Go in both directions at once, like a wave spreading out. Called the walker analogy, this random process can be applied in both classical and quantum algorithms used in state-of-the-art technologies such as artificial intelligence and data search processes. However, the randomness also makes the walk difficult to control, making it more difficult to precisely design systems.

Touch and taste? It's all in the tentacles Posted: 29 Oct 2020 11:20 AM PDT Scientists identified a novel family of sensors in the first layer of cells inside the suction cups that have adapted to react and detect molecules that don't dissolve well in water. The research suggests these sensors, called chemotactile receptors, use these molecules to help the animal figure out what it's touching and whether that object is prey.

Study of ancient dog DNA traces canine diversity to the Ice Age Posted: 29 Oct 2020 11:19 AM PDT A global study of ancient dog DNA presents evidence that there were different types of dogs more than 11,000 years ago in the period immediately following the Ice Age.

Denisovan DNA in the genome of early East Asians Posted: 29 Oct 2020 11:17 AM PDT Researchers analyzed the genome of the oldest human fossil found in Mongolia to date and show that the 34,000-year-old woman inherited around 25 percent of her DNA from western Eurasians, demonstrating that people moved across the Eurasian continent shortly after it had first been settled by the ancestors of present-day populations. This individual and a 40,000-year-old individual from China also carried DNA from Denisovans, an extinct form of hominins that inhabited Asia before modern humans arrived.

Asteroid Ryugu shaken by Hayabusa2's impactor Posted: 29 Oct 2020 09:29 AM PDT Hayabusa2 mission members discovered more than 200 boulders, which either newly appeared or moved as a result of the artificial impact crater created by the Japanese spacecraft's Small Carry-on Impactor. Boulders were disturbed within a 30m radius from the impact crater center- providing important insight into asteroids' resurfacing processes.

Buzz kill: Ogre-faced spiders 'hear' airborne prey with their legs Posted: 29 Oct 2020 08:58 AM PDT In the dark of night, ogre-faced spiders with dominating big eyes dangle from a silk frame to cast a web and capture their ground prey. But these spiders also can capture insects flying behind them with precision, and scientists have now confirmed how.

Where were Jupiter and Saturn born? Posted: 29 Oct 2020 08:58 AM PDT New work reveals the likely original locations of Saturn and Jupiter. These findings refine our understanding of the forces that determined our Solar System's unusual architecture, including the ejection of an additional planet between Saturn and Uranus, ensuring that only small, rocky planets, like Earth, formed inward of Jupiter.

Boo! How do Mexican cavefish escape predators? Posted: 29 Oct 2020 07:51 AM PDT When startled, do all fish respond the same way? A few fish, like Mexican cavefish, have evolved in unique environments without any predators. To see how this lack of predation impacts escape responses that are highly stereotyped across fish species, scientists explored this tiny fish to determine if there are evolved differences in them. Findings reveal that the dramatic ecological differences between cave and river environments contribute to differences in escape behavior in blind cavefish and river-dwelling surface cavefish.

Shining a (UV) light on the glow-in-the-dark platypus Posted: 29 Oct 2020 07:50 AM PDT The fur of the platypus - an Australian species threatened with extinction - glows green under ultraviolet light, a new study finds. This is the first observation of biofluorescence in an egg-laying mammal (monotreme), suggesting this extraordinary trait may not be as rare as previously thought.

Measuring the expansion of the universe: Researchers focus on velocity Posted: 29 Oct 2020 07:49 AM PDT There seems to be a discrepancy between measurement of the expansion of the Universe using radiation in the early Universe and using nearby objects. Researchers have now contributed to this debate by focusing on velocity.

Black soldier fly larvae as protein alternative for hungry humans Posted: 29 Oct 2020 07:49 AM PDT Black soldier fly larvae contains more zinc and iron than lean meat and its calcium content is higher than milk. Less than half a hectare of black soldier fly larvae can produce more protein than cattle grazing on around 1200 hectares, or 52 hectares of soybeans. New research has identified the barriers for introducing fly protein into Western human diets as a sustainable, healthy alternative to both meat and plant proteins.

Black hole 'family portrait' is most detailed to date Posted: 28 Oct 2020 05:32 PM PDT Astronomers have produced the most detailed family portrait of black holes to date, offering new clues as to how black holes form. An intense analysis of the most recent gravitational-wave data available led to the rich portrait as well as multiple tests of Einstein's theory of general relativity. (The theory passed each test.) The observations could be a key piece in solving the many mysteries of exactly how binary stars interact.

Ancient marine predator had a built-in float Posted: 28 Oct 2020 04:56 PM PDT About 240 million years ago, when reptiles ruled the ocean, a small lizard-like predator floated near the bottom of the edges in shallow water, picking off prey with fang-like teeth. A short and flat tail, used for balance, helps identify it as a new species, according to new research.

A drop in temperature Posted: 28 Oct 2020 02:14 PM PDT In the nearly two centuries since 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit (37.0 degrees Celsius) was established as the standard 'normal' body temperature, it has been used as the measure by which fevers have been assessed. Over time, however, lower body temperatures have been widely reported in healthy adults -- for example, in recent studies in the UK and the US. Researchers have now found a similar decrease among the Tsimane, an indigenous population of forager-horticulturists in the Bolivian Amazon.

Giant lizards learnt to fly over millions of years Posted: 28 Oct 2020 09:45 AM PDT Most detailed every study into how animals evolve to better suit their environments shows that pterosaurs become more efficient at flying over millions of years before going extinct with the dinosaurs.

Toward ultrafast computer chips that retain data even when there is no power Posted: 28 Oct 2020 09:45 AM PDT An international team of researchers has created a new technique for magnetization switching -- the process used to 'write' information into magnetic memory -- that is nearly 100 times faster than state-of-the-art spintronic devices. The advance could lead to the development of ultrafast magnetic memory for computer chips that would retain data even when there is no power.

Stay focused: Algae-inspired polymers light the way for enhanced night vision Posted: 27 Oct 2020 06:22 AM PDT Researchers processed sulfur, and algae and plant compounds, into an elastic lens that maintains substantial variable focus in infrared imaging. This development will be useful in policing, firefighting, ecology, and many other applications where it's critical to see detail at variable distances in dark environments, such as at night or through smoke.

3D printing the first ever biomimetic tongue surface Posted: 26 Oct 2020 07:06 PM PDT Scientists have created synthetic soft surfaces with tongue-like textures for the first time using 3D printing, opening new possibilities for testing oral processing properties of food, nutritional technologies, pharmaceutics and dry mouth therapies.

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