67769107
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sciencehabit writes:
New analyses of the hundreds of thousands of technical manuscripts submitted to arXiv, the repository of digital preprint articles, are offering some intriguing insights into the consequences—and geography—of scientific plagiarism. It appears that copying text from other papers is more common in some nations than others, but the outcome is generally the same for authors who copy extensively: Their papers don’t get cited much.
67734171
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sciencehabit writes:
Researchers today unveiled a new solid phase of ice that’s the lowest density version known. Known as ice XVI, the 17th solid phase of ice discovered to date, it has a cagelike structure that can trap other molecules. Such ice cages, known as clathrates, are known to store enormous quantities of methane on the deep ocean floor. The new clathrate, by contrast, is empty, though it didn’t start that way. The cagelike structure originally formed surrounding neon atoms. The neon was then leached out of the clathrate through rings of water molecules. The new form of ice may help researchers better understand clathrates in general, and perhaps ease the flow of oil and gas through pipelines at low temperatures.
67733683
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sciencehabit writes:
More than 5 trillion plastic particles weighing 268,940 tons are estimated to be floating in Earth’s oceans. The new estimate, published today in PLOS ONE, is based on models of floating plastics data gathered from a series of 680 surface net tows and 891 visual surveys from oceans around the world. Currents and winds push the plastics around the world’s oceans, concentrating many of the pieces in five massive midocean gyres in the northern and southern Atlantic, the northern and southern Pacific, and the Indian Ocean. Despite having fewer inputs—due to smaller coastal populations—the amount of plastic in the gyres in the Southern Hemisphere was of similar magnitude to that in the north. That hints that ocean currents may redistribute material between the gyres more easily than thought—or that the most abundant particles, called microplastics (less than 4.75 millimeters), disappear from the sea surface more quickly in the Northern Hemisphere, the researchers found.
67733619
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sciencehabit writes:
he wandering spider boasts one of the world’s most sensitive vibration detectors: It can pick up the slightest rustling of a leaf from several meters away. Now, scientists have developed similar sensors that can detect simple human speech. The technology could lead to wearable electronics for speech recognition, health monitoring, and more.
67733587
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sciencehabit writes:
For an agency regularly called "adrift" without a mission, NASA will at least float through next year with a boatload of money for its science programs. Yesterday Congress reached agreement on a spending deal for fiscal year 2015 that boosts the budget of the agency’s science mission by nearly 2% to $5.24 billion. The big winner within the division is planetary sciences, which received $160 million more than the president’s 2015 request in March. Legislators also maintained support for an infrared telescope mounted on a Boeing 747, a project that the White House had proposed grounding. NASA’s overall budget also rose by 2%, to $18 billion. That’s an increase of $364 million over 2014 levels, and half a billion dollars beyond the agency’s request.
67687403
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sciencehabit writes:
Near the end of the 13th century, the emperor Kublai Khan and his Mongol Empire were gearing up to invade China. They had more boats, more men, and had already conquered a large part of China; but according to Japanese legend, massive typhoons powered by the divine Kamikaze winds smashed the Mongolian fleet in 1274 and again in 1281. Researchers report this month in Geology that they’ve discovered evidence in a lakebed on Japan’s Amakusa Island that suggests the fabled storms may have been real.
67638969
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sciencehabit writes:
A high-powered laser in the Czech Republic has now provided provocative evidence that the hellish conditions produced when an asteroid or comet slams into Earth could have created some key building blocks of life on Earth. In a lab experiment intended to duplicate the high temperatures and pressures of such an impact, researchers used the laser to simultaneously make adenine, guanine, cytosine, and uracil, the four organic compounds in RNA, which many believe to have been the first molecule to encode genetic information.
67636203
submission
sciencehabit writes:
Massive dunes, some of them 100 meters tall and a kilometer or more wide at their base, cover about one-eighth of Titan’s surface. And they take an exceptionally long time to form, according to a new study. Using radar data gleaned by the Cassini probe when it occasionally swooped past Saturn’s haze-shrouded moon, researchers conclude that it would take about 3000 Saturn years (or 88,200 Earth years) to shift Titan’s dunes to the extent seen in the images. A similar phenomenon has taken place on Earth, the researchers note: The overall patterns in many large dune fields in the southwestern Sahara and the southwestern United States, shaped by the winds that blew during the most recent ice age more than 10,000 years ago, remain largely unaffected by modern winds that now blow in a different direction.
67522355
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sciencehabit writes:
Researchers have discovered comet dust preserved in the ice and snow of Antarctica, the first time such particles have been found on Earth’s surface. The discovery unlocks a promising new source of this material. The oldest astronomical particles available for study, comet dust can offer clues about how our solar system formed.
67476481
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sciencehabit writes:
Electric eels produce the most powerful shocks of any fish. They can zap prey with up to 600 volts of electricity, enough to hurt even a human. But the serpentlike fish have an even more amazing trick up their sleeve, new research reveals. The eels can shock their prey from meters away--even controlling their movements to some extent, like a remote controlled taser.
67476409
submission
sciencehabit writes:
If cancer, heart disease, and emphysema weren’t bad enough, male smokers may have another thing to worry about: losing their Y chromosomes. Researchers have found that smokers are up to four times more likely to have blood cells with no Y chromosome than nonsmokers. That’s worrisome, they say, because a recent study found an association between Y chromosome loss and a shorter life span, as well as a higher risk of multiple cancers.
67476227
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sciencehabit writes:
Our solar system’s asteroid belt, which lies between Mars and Jupiter, may contain a few hundred thousand objects. But much farther away, in regions long presumed to be the realm of comets and other icy bodies, there could be billions of rocky orbs circling the sun, a new study suggests. Previous observations suggest that the Oort cloud contains about 200 billion comets, the researchers note. If that’s correct, the new results suggest that those comets are accompanied by about 8 billion asteroids. If one of those objects ever fell toward Earth, it would be tougher to spot than a comet (being much darker) and more difficult to divert than the typical near-Earth asteroid (as it would be traveling much faster).
67476161
submission
sciencehabit writes:
Advocates of “legal personhood” to chimpanzees have lost another battle. This morning, a New York appellate court rejected a lawsuit by the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) to free a chimp named Tommy from captivity. The group had argued that the chimpanzee deserved the human right of bodily liberty. Despite the loss, the NhRP is pursuing more cases in the hopes of conferring legal rights to a variety of animals, from elephants to dolphins.
67398307
submission
sciencehabit writes:
To fend off predators, the black-saddled pufferfish famously inflates its body with water, much like a person puffing up his cheeks and holding his breath. But unlike the blue-faced human—and in contrast with scientists' expectations—the pufferfish does not actually stop breathing, researchers report. In fact, compared with resting rates, the fish’s respiration increased close to fivefold during the inflation process. Even if they don’t stop breathing, the defense strategy is energetically taxing for the pufferfish; after the test, most took hours to return to resting respiration rates.
67398289
submission
sciencehabit writes:
Geckos are renowned for their ability to scurry up walls, clinging to surfaces with the help of tiny rows of hair on their toes that generate a subtle electrical attraction known as the van der Waals force. But scientists don't know whether the lizard actively controls its clinging ability using fine muscle movements in its feet or whether its feet are just intrinsically sticky. To decide the issue, biologists at the University of California, Riverside, tested the clinging force of five tokay geckos before and immediately after the lizards were sacrificed. To the scientists’ surprise, a dead gecko's foot held to the surface just as tightly as a live gecko's foot.
