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Mantis Shrimp: Cool Eyes, And Stronger Than Airplanes

Mantis Shrimp: Cool Eyes, And Stronger Than Airplanes

Inspired by the fist-like club of a mantis shrimp, researchers have developed a design structure for composite materials that is more impact resistant and tougher than the standard used in airplanes.
The peacock mantis shrimp, or stomatopod, is a 4- to 6-inch-long rainbow-colored crustacean with a fist-like club that accelerates underwater faster than a 22-caliber bullet. Researchers, led by Kisailus, an associate professor of chemical engineering, are interested in the club because it can strike prey thousands of times without breaking.

32 Percent Of Canadian Adults Say They Were Abused As Kids

32 Percent Of Canadian Adults Say They Were Abused As Kids

Canadians may seem polite to outsiders, that maple leaf on a backpack says pacificism all over the world, but they are apparently quite hard on their kids.
A
Canadian Medical Association Journal articles says that almost one-third of adults in Canada have experienced sexual abuse, child abuse or been exposed to intimate partner violence, such as parental, step-parental or guardian violence in their home. Child abuse has been linked to mental disorders and suicidal ideation (thoughts) or suicide attempts.

A Crack In The Cosmic Egg - What Does The Cosmic Inflation Discovery Really Mean?

A Crack In The Cosmic Egg - What Does The Cosmic Inflation Discovery Really Mean?

Last month, scientists announced the first hard evidence for cosmic inflation, the process by which the infant universe swelled from microscopic to cosmic size in an instant.
While this almost unimaginably fast expansion was theorized more than three decades ago, there had been no evidence. Then researchers from the BICEP2 collaboration announced the first direct evidence for cosmic inflation and the first images of gravitational waves, or ripples in space-time, described as the "first tremors of the Big Bang."

Pain Curbs Sex Drive In Female Mice, But Not In Males

Pain Curbs Sex Drive In Female Mice, But Not In Males

"Not tonight, dear, I have a headache." Generally speaking, that line is attributed to the wife in a couple, implying that women's sexual desire is more affected by pain than men's.
Now, researchers from McGill University and Concordia University in Montreal have investigated, possibly for the first time in any species, the direct impact of pain on sexual behaviour in mice. Their study, published in the April 23 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, found that pain from inflammation greatly reduced sexual motivation in female mice in heat -- but had no such effect on male mice.

Researchers Identify Link Between Fetal Growth And Risk Of Stillbirth

Researchers Identify Link Between Fetal Growth And Risk Of Stillbirth

Researchers from the University of Texas Medical Branch and the Stillbirth Collaborative Research Network have identified a link between stillbirth and either restricted or excessive fetal growth. Findings from the study are online in the April 22 issue of PLOS Medicine.
Using a new approach developed by the network to estimate gestational age in stillborn babies, Dr. Radek Bukowski, lead researcher and professor of obstetrics and gynecology at UTMB, and his colleagues evaluated 663 stillbirths and 1932 live births that occurred over a two-and-a-half year period at 59 hospitals in five U.S. regions.

New Electric Knifefish Species Discovered In Brazil's Rio Negro

New Electric Knifefish Species Discovered In Brazil's Rio Negro

Researchers report that they have discovered a new genus and species of electric knifefish in several tributaries of the Negro River in the Amazonia State of Brazil.
Professor Cristina Cox Fernandes at UMass Amherst, with Adília Nogueira and José Antônio Alves-Gomes of INPA, describe the new bluntnose knifefish in the current issue of the journal Proceedings of the Natural Sciences of Philadelphia and detail the new genus and species' anatomy, range, relationship to other fish, salient features of its skeleton, coloration, electric organs and patterns of electric organ discharge (EOD).
True to their name, these fish produce electric discharges in distinct pulses that can be detected by some other fish. 

The Impact Of A False-Positive Mammogram On Women's Well-being

The Impact Of A False-Positive Mammogram On Women's Well-being

Anywhere from 40 to 60 percent of women who undergo routine screening mammography during a ten-year period will experience a false-positive mammogram.
They then suffer anxiety while they undergo additional testing, sometimes involving a biopsy, to confirm that cancer is not present.
Researchers have suspected that increased anxiety, pain, and the bother of additional tests might adversely affect the quality of life for women who experience false-positive screening mammograms. In a new paper, Dartmouth scholars used data collected by the Digital Mammographic Imaging Screening Trial (DMIST), which was conducted by the American College of Radiology Imaging Network (ACRIN), to study the impact a false-positive mammogram has on women's lives.

Speed-Reading Apps Impair Reading Comprehension

Speed-Reading Apps Impair Reading Comprehension

Are you on the go a lot? Is your time so limited even moving your eyeballs is putting you behind?
If so, there is an app for that. If not, app developers are looking to create a market for that kind of personalized optimization, so they have devised speed-reading software that eliminates the time we supposedly waste by moving our eyes as we read.
Are eyes just passive conduits getting in the way of the modern world with their ancient biological mechanism? 
A paper in Psychological Science argues that eye movements we make during reading actually play a critical role in our ability to understand what we've just read.

'Tween' Programming : Is Disney Promoting Stereotypes Or Creating What Kids Want To Watch?

'Tween' Programming : Is Disney Promoting Stereotypes Or Creating What Kids Want To Watch?

The term "tween" is a marketing colloquialism for a child who is between the ages of 8 and 12 -not quite a little kid but not yet a teenager. A pre-adolescent.
This demographic watches more television than any other age group and is thus considered a lucrative market for advertisers. Tween television programming often consists of the following: "teen scene" and "action-adventure" , which a pair of academics say is shaping stereotypes in tweens rather than reflecting what kids want to watch.

Earth Day: Is The Temperature A Symptom Of Climate Change?

Earth Day: Is The Temperature A Symptom Of Climate Change?

77% of Americans prefer summer over winter and while we know what temperatures actually were this past winter, what people think they were in a recent Harris Poll is something else. When it came to the temperature, 88 percent of Midwesterners and 84 percent of Easterners say it was colder than normal. 71 percent believe it was while only 18 percent felt it was colder than normal. 45% in the West believe it was warmer than normal.When it came to precipitation, 77 percent of those in the Midwest, 73 percent in the East and 49 percent say there was more rain or snow in their area. In the West, 62% say they had less rain or snow this winter.Was the snow due to climate change?

Compassionate Behavior Towards Dying Mate Observed In Monkey

Compassionate Behavior Towards Dying Mate Observed In Monkey

Dr. Bruna Bezerra from the University of Bristol and colleagues have captured video of a wild male marmoset embracing and caring for his dying partner after she accidentally fell from a tree in the Atlantic Forest in the Northeast of Brazil, the first time that compassionate care-taking behavior towards a dying adult group member has been observed in monkeys. Previously, such behavior was believed to be unique to humans and chimpanzees.

Cow Manure Harbors Diverse New Antibiotic Resistance Genes

Cow Manure Harbors Diverse New Antibiotic Resistance Genes

Manure from dairy cows, which is commonly used as a farm soil fertilizer, contains a surprising number of newly identified antibiotic resistance genes from the cows' gut bacteria. The findings, reported in mBio® the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology, hints that cow manure is a potential source of new types of antibiotic resistance genes that transfer to bacteria in the soils where food is grown.
Thousands of antibiotic resistance (AR) genes have already been identified, but the vast majority of them don't pose a problem when found in harmless bacteria. The real worry is when these genes appear in the types of pathogenic bacteria that cause food-borne illnesses or hospital infections.