ScienceDaily: Top Science News

Nano-antioxidants prove their potential Posted: 09 Feb 2015 02:13 PM PST Injectable nanoparticles that could protect an injured person from further damage due to oxidative stress have proven to be astoundingly effective in tests to study their mechanism.

F-bombs notwithstanding, all languages skew toward happiness: Universal human bias for positive words Posted: 09 Feb 2015 01:11 PM PST Arabic movie subtitles, Korean tweets, Russian novels, Chinese websites, English lyrics, and even the war-torn pages of the New York Times -- research examining billions of words, shows that these sources -- and all human language -- skews toward the use of happy words. This Big Data study confirms the 1969 Pollyanna Hypothesis that there is a universal human tendency to "look on and talk about the bright side of life."

Swimming reptiles make their mark in the Early Triassic Posted: 09 Feb 2015 11:35 AM PST Vertebrate tracks provide valuable information about animal behavior and environments. Swim tracks are a unique type of vertebrate track because they are produced underwater by buoyant trackmakers, and specific factors are required for their production and subsequent preservation. Early Triassic deposits contain the highest number of fossil swim track occurrences worldwide compared to other epochs, and this number becomes even greater when epoch duration and rock outcrop area are taken into account.

Electricity from biomass with carbon capture could make western US carbon-negative Posted: 09 Feb 2015 10:07 AM PST Biomass conversion to electricity combined with technologies for capturing and storing carbon, which should become viable within 35 years, could result in a carbon-negative power grid in the western US by 2050. That prediction comes from an analysis of various fuel scenarios. Bioenergy with carbon capture and sequestration may be a better use of plant feedstocks than making biofuels.

Earth's surprise inside: Geologists unlock mysteries of the planet's inner core Posted: 09 Feb 2015 08:32 AM PST Seismic waves are helping scientists to plumb the world's deepest mystery: the planet's inner core. Thanks to a novel application of earthquake-reading technology, researchers have found that the Earth's inner core has an inner core of its own, which has surprising properties that could reveal information about our planet.

Evidence for dark matter in the inner Milky Way Posted: 09 Feb 2015 08:30 AM PST A new study is providing evidence for the presence of dark matter in the innermost part of the Milky Way, including in our own cosmic neighborhood and the Earth's location. The study demonstrates that large amounts of dark matter exist around us, and also between us and the Galactic center. The result constitutes a fundamental step forward in the quest for the nature of dark matter.

Stellar partnership doomed to end in catastrophe Posted: 09 Feb 2015 08:30 AM PST Astronomers have identified two surprisingly massive stars at the heart of the planetary nebula Henize 2-428. As they orbit each other the two stars are expected to slowly get closer and closer, and when they merge, about 700 million years from now, they will contain enough material to ignite a vast supernova explosion.

3-D vaccine spontaneously assembles to pack a powerful punch against cancer, infectious diseases Posted: 09 Feb 2015 06:48 AM PST Researchers have developed a novel 3-D vaccine that could provide a more effective way to harness the immune system to fight cancer as well as infectious diseases. The vaccine spontaneously assembles into a scaffold once injected under the skin and is capable of recruiting, housing, and manipulating immune cells to generate a powerful immune response. The vaccine was recently found to be effective in delaying tumor growth in mice.

In the quantum world, the future affects the past: Hindsight and foresight together more accurately 'predict' a quantum system’s state Posted: 09 Feb 2015 05:30 AM PST In the quantum world, the future predicts the past. Playing a guessing game with a superconducting circuit called a qubit, a physicist has discovered a way to narrow the odds of correctly guessing the state of a two-state system. By combining information about the qubit's evolution after a target time with information about its evolution up to that time, the lab was able to narrow the odds from 50-50 to 90-10.