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Remembering numbers is one of the most basic things we do from a young age - early on, a combination lock or a phone number and later any number of things such as ATM codes, social security numbers, and more.In Western cultures, children learn to place numbers on a mental number line - smaller numbers to the left and spaced further apart than the larger numbers on the right. Then the number line changes to become more linear, with small and large numbers the same distance apart. Children whose number line has made this change are better at remembering numbers, according to a new study published in Psychological Science.

To physicists, nothing is really a coincidence.   Even cats in quantum boxes can be explained in mathematical terms, not to mention roulette or the success or failure of an attack in Dungeons&Dragons, but researchers at the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Light in Erlangen say they have constructed a device that is truly random and generates random numbers that cannot be predicted in advance.The researchers exploit the fact that measurements based on quantum physics can only produce a special result with a certain degree of probability, that is, randomly. True random numbers are needed for the secure encryption of data and to enable the reliable simulation of economic processes and changes in the climate. 

Paleontologists have released details about Concavenator corcovatus, a carnivorous humpbacked dinosaur discovered in Spain - and it oddly had both feathers and scales.Concavenator corcovatus was a theropod dinosaur that lived during the Cretaceous period, about 130 million years ago.   Concavenator corcovatus translates to 'hump-backed predator from Cuenca', where it was discovered. 

"We hear a lot about bioterrorism and pandemics," says Sheldon H. Jacobson, a professor of computer science and pediatrics at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,"but the fact of the matter is, the threat to routine immunization is one of the greatest threats we face.   If we had problems with our vaccine supply chain, it would have the potential to cause more deaths than any of those other issues."

A million dollars is difficult to imagine but if someone is charging $2 instead of one, that gets attention.   Likewise, a quote attributed to communist USSR despot Joesph Stalin is "A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic."(1)  And he should know, being responsible for 20 million deaths (starting with competitor Leon Trotsky) and so nestled comfortably between Mao and Hitler in world history, but is regarded favorably by some on left whereas a serial killer of a few is reviled by everyone.A group says they have validated that large-scale tragedies don't connect people emotionally the same way smaller tragedies do, called a "scope-severity paradox".

Tuberculosis (TB)  is a contagious disease of the lungs and other organs caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis (or M. tuberculosis) and which infects roughly a third of the world's population.  5-10% of those in the infected population become sick or infectious at some point during their lifetime. 

NGC 300 is one of the closest and most prominent spiral galaxies in the southern skies,  about six million light-years away and bright enough it can be seen with binoculars. NGC 300 lies in the constellation of Sculptor with only a few bright stars, but is home to a collection of nearby galaxies that form the Sculptor Group, though recent distance measurements show that NGC 300 lies significantly closer to us than many of the other galaxies in the group and may be only loosely associated with them. Compared to other galaxies, NGC 300 is remarkably normal, making it an ideal specimen for astronomers studying the structure and content of spiral galaxies such as our own.

Current battery design and implementation is not optimal, but it's cheap.  A new effort seeks to make conventional battery systems more standardized and increase interoperability of battery and charger parts, which creates energy waste, extra costs and operational inefficiencies.  But it's not for the casual user.It's called the Intelligent Battery system and it also isn't cheap - the charger is about 20 percent more expensive than alternatives but the developers say the extra initial investment is recuperated in the medium and long term through prolonged battery life and better performance and the system provides real time information on the health and charge level of their batteries.

An important enzyme that acts in the nervous system may lead to new treatments for conditions such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.Our cells contain a network of tubes known as microtubules that are made of protein and serve as tracks for the shuttling of materials from one part of the cell to another.   Microtubules in parts of neurons in the brain that send signals, for example, are loaded with chemical additions called acetylation marks. Microtubules in parts of neurons that receive signals, on the other hand, have few. 

Gossiping has benefits, according to research conducted by Dr. Jennifer Cole and Hannah Scrivener from Staffordshire University, who presented preliminary results at the British Psychological Society Social Psychology Section annual conference at the University of Winchester.And praising someone in gossip may even lead to a short-term boost in gossipers' self-esteem.

Science can make you a better dancer - or at least improve your chances of not looking stupid to the opposite sex, say a group of evolutionary psychologists who used 3D motion-capture technology to create uniform avatar figures and identified the key movement areas of the male dancer’s body that influence female perceptions of whether their dance skills are “good” or “bad”. Apparently it all comes down to neck, trunk, left shoulder and wrist, the variability of movement size of the neck, trunk and left wrist, and the speed of movement of the right knee.Sounds simple, right?  Read on.

We want to know some things in science are absolute yet we accept that a lot is relative.    The speed of light is absolute and so the same with respect to any observer in empty space but sound is relative, like when a train whistle goes from high to low as it passes the observer.  A longstanding quest in physics has been to determine whether chaos, in which tiny events lead to very large changes in the time evolution of a system, such as the universe, is absolute or relative in systems governed by general relativity, where the time itself is relative. Like right after the Big Bang.