New research suggests that some birds may know who their human friends are, as they are able to recognize people's faces and differentiate between human voices.

Being able to identify a friend or potential foe could be key to the bird's ability to survive.

Category: Science & Technology

A multi-national team led by USC with researchers hailing from the U.S., China, Pakistan and Israel has developed a system of transmitting data using twisted beams of light at ultra-high speeds -- up to 2.56 terabits per second.

To put that in perspective, broadband cable (which you probably used to download this) supports up to about 30 megabits per second. The twisted-light system transmits more than 85,000 times more data per second.

Category: Science & Technology

Since the end of the last ice age 21,000 years ago, our planet has seen ocean levels rise by 120 meters to reach their current levels. This increase has not been constant, rather punctuated by rapid accelerations, linked to massive outburst floods from the ice caps. The largest increase, known by paleoclimatologists as 'Melt-Water Pulse 1A', proved to be enigmatic in many respects. A study recently published in Nature by a team from the CEREGE laboratory in collaboration with the universities of Tokyo and Oxford has revealed the mysteries of this event, without doubt one of the most important in the last deglaciation.

Category: Science & Technology

A new way of analyzing the social networks that link individual animals to each other has been tested on wild great tits by Oxford University researchers.

How animals associate in groups can have important consequences in terms of the health and survival of both individuals and whole populations; influencing factors such as the spread of disease and the ability to find food or mates.

Category: Science & Technology

The front of a leaf is different from the back of a leaf and the tip is different from the base. However, a leaf from a tomato or an Arabidopsis plant superficially appears to be bilaterally symmetrical, or the same on the left and right sides. Don't let its appearance fool you; there is an underlying asymmetry between the left and right sides of such leaves -- it just took a while for scientists to discover it. The story begins with the mechanism by which leaves form along a stem. In broad-leafed plants, dicots, leaves form from the meristem, an actively dividing tissue at the top of the plant, so that as you look down the stem, the oldest leaves are at the bottom.

Category: Science & Technology

A protein required to regrow injured peripheral nerves has been identified by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

The finding, in mice, has implications for improving recovery after nerve injury in the extremities. It also opens new avenues of investigation toward triggering nerve regeneration in the central nervous system, notorious for its inability to heal.

Category: Science & Technology

Imagine the money you'd save if you bought a roll of duct tape and could use it over and over again without having to toss it in the garbage after one use. Wall-climbing robots, bioadhesives or other sticky substances can benefit greatly from a recent discovery about the self-cleaning and reuse abilities of a gecko's foot hair by a University of Akron graduate student-researcher and his partners.

Their work was published in the June 13 edition of Interface, the Journal of the Royal Society.

The sticky yet clean attribute of this discovery is the gecko toe pad and its ability to repeatedly attach and detach to a surface.

Category: Science & Technology

The vegetables in salads are chock-full of important vitamins and nutrients, but you won't get much benefit without the right type and amount of salad dressing, a Purdue University study shows.

In a human trial, researchers fed subjects salads topped off with saturated, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fat-based dressings and tested their blood for absorption of fat-soluble carotenoids -- compounds such as lutein, lycopene, beta-carotene and zeaxanthin. Those carotenoids are associated with reduced risk of several chronic and degenerative diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular disease and macular degeneration.

Category: Science & Technology

What do fireflies, nanorods, and Christmas lights have in common? Someday, consumers may be able to purchase multicolor strings of light that don't need electricity or batteries to glow. Scientists at Syracuse University found a new way to harness the natural light produced by fireflies (called bioluminescence) using nanoscience. Their breakthrough produces a system that is 20 to 30 times more efficient than those produced during previous experiments.

Category: Science & Technology