Strange & Offbeat News -- ScienceDaily

Creative genius driven by distraction Posted: 03 Mar 2015 12:32 PM PST The literary great Marcel Proust wore ear-stoppers because he was unable to filter out irrelevant noise -- and lined his bedroom with cork to attenuate sound. Now new research suggests why the inability to shut out competing sensory information while focusing on the creative project at hand might have been so acute for geniuses such as Proust, Franz Kafka, Charles Darwin, Anton Chekhov and many others.

Far from home: Wayward star cluster is both tiny and distant Posted: 03 Mar 2015 12:32 PM PST Like the lost little puppy that wanders too far from home, astronomers have found an unusually small and distant group of stars that seems oddly out of place. The cluster, made of only a handful of stars, is located far away, in the Milky Way's 'suburbs.' It is located where astronomers have never spotted such a small cluster of stars before.

3-D printed parts provide low-cost, custom alternatives for lab equipment Posted: 03 Mar 2015 09:39 AM PST The 3-D printing scene, a growing favorite of do-it-yourselfers, has spread to the study of plasma physics. With a series of experiments, researchers have found that 3-D printers can be an important tool in laboratory environments.

Cloudy, with a wisp of liquid rock: Clouds around exoplanets analyzed Posted: 03 Mar 2015 08:17 AM PST Meteorologists sometimes struggle to accurately predict the weather here on Earth, but now we can find out how cloudy it is on planets outside our solar system, thanks to new research.

Nice to sniff you: Handshakes may engage our sense of smell Posted: 03 Mar 2015 07:59 AM PST Why do people shake hands? A new study suggests one of the reasons for this ancient custom may be to check out each other's odors. Even if we are not consciously aware of this, handshaking may provide people with a socially acceptable way of communicating via the sense of smell. People sniff their hands twice as much after a handshake.

Modeling chimp behavior? Try using laws that govern matter Posted: 03 Mar 2015 07:55 AM PST To simulate chimp behavior, scientists created a computer model based on equations normally used to describe the movement of atoms and molecules in a confined space. An interdisciplinary research team has turned to the physical laws that govern matter to explore one facet of the question of climate change: how the animals will cluster and travel through their territory as the terrain they share with other members of their species shrinks.

In hot and cold water: The private lives of 'Hoff' crabs revealed Posted: 03 Mar 2015 04:54 AM PST Researchers have shed light on the private life of a new species of deep-sea crab, previously nicknamed the 'Hoff' crab because of its hairy chest.

Giant virus revealed in 3-D using X-ray laser Posted: 02 Mar 2015 03:17 PM PST For the first time, researchers have produced a 3-D image revealing part of the inner structure of an intact, infectious virus, using a unique X-ray laser. The virus, called Mimivirus, is in a curious class of “giant viruses” discovered just over a decade ago.

Black phosphorus is new 'wonder material' for improving optical communication Posted: 02 Mar 2015 10:07 AM PST In a new study, researchers used an ultrathin black phosphorus film -- only 20 layers of atoms -- to demonstrate high-speed data communication on nanoscale optical circuits. The devices showed vast improvement in efficiency over comparable devices using the earlier "wonder material" graphene.

Scientists crack piece of neural code for learning, memory Posted: 02 Mar 2015 09:31 AM PST Researchers describe how postmortem brain slices can be 'read' to determine how a rat was trained to behave in response to specific sounds, a new article suggests. The work provides one of the first examples of how specific changes in the activity of individual neurons encode particular acts of learning and memory in the brain.