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Big feet preference in rural Indonesia defies one-size-fits-all theory of attractiveness

By Guest PostJuly 2, 2013Scienceanthropologist, big feet preference, brazil, cambodia, cultural transmission, culture, genetics, geoff kushnick, human evolution, India, indonesian island, iran, journal human nature, karo batak, lithuania, mate attractive, northern part, papua new guinea, recent evolution, rural indonesia, sexual selection, sumatra, Tanzania, theory of attractiveness, united states, university of washington, urban ecology, villages, western media

People in most cultures view women with small feet as attractive. Like smooth skin or an hourglass figure, petite feet signal a potential mate’s youth and fertility.

Because they signal reproductive potential, a preference for mates with these qualities may have evolved in the brains of our Pleistocene ancestors and are viewed by evolutionary psychologists as evidence that the preference is hard-wired into our genetic makeup. (more…)

NASA’s Voyager 1 Explores Final Frontier of Our ‘Solar Bubble’

By Guest PostJune 29, 2013Sciencecharged particles, cosmic ray, depletion region, ed stone, energetic particle data, final frontier, heliosphere, interstellar arrival, interstellar space, johns hopkins university, jupiter, leonard burlaga, magnetic field, magnetosphere, Milky Way, NASA, solar bubble, solar originating particles, stamatios krimigis, twin spacecraft, voyager 1, voyager project scientist

PASADENA, Calif. — Data from Voyager 1, now more than 11 billion miles (18 billion kilometers) from the sun, suggest the spacecraft is closer to becoming the first human-made object to reach interstellar space.

Research using Voyager 1 data and published in the journal Science today provides new detail on the last region the spacecraft will cross before it leaves the heliosphere, or the bubble around our sun, and enters interstellar space. Three papers describe how Voyager 1’s entry into a region called the magnetic highway resulted in simultaneous observations of the highest rate so far of charged particles from outside heliosphere and the disappearance of charged particles from inside the heliosphere. (more…)

Spiral galaxies like Milky Way bigger than thought, says CU-Boulder study

By Guest PostJune 28, 2013Scienceboulder, brian keeney, casa, charles danforth, circumgalactic gas, cos, cos on hubble, cosmic origins spectrograph, diameter, galaxy evolution, higgs centre, Hubble Space Telescope, intergalactic interactions, james green, john stocke, light year, michael shull, Milky Way, missing link, scotland, spiral galaxy, supermassive black holes, theoretical physics, university of colorado, university of edinburgh

Let’s all fist bump: Spiral galaxies like our own Milky Way appear to be much larger and more massive than previously believed, according to a new University of Colorado Boulder study by researchers using the Hubble Space Telescope.

CU-Boulder Professor John Stocke, study leader, said new observations with Hubble’s $70 million Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, or COS, designed by CU-Boulder show that normal spiral galaxies are surrounded by halos of gas that can extend to over 1 million light-years in diameter. The current estimated diameter of the Milky Way, for example, is about 100,000 light-years. One light-year is roughly 6 trillion miles. (more…)

All for One: What Makes an Individual

By Guest PostJune 27, 2013Scienceall for one, arizona, bacterial colony, chromosomes in cells, david shahnooshi, deborah shelton, environmental stress, erik hanschen, evolutionary process, genes in chromosomes, genomes, germ cells, hierarchy of life, individual, individual organism, Japan, Johannesburg, michods lab, molecular biology, morphology, multicellular colonies, NASA, patrick ferris, pierre durand, primate colony, rega like genes, richard michod, rick michod, somatic cell functions, somatic cells, South Africa, south america, university of arizona, university of the witwatersrand, volvocine algae, zachariah grochau wright

Life as we know it has certain properties that are consistent regardless whether you’re looking at a bacterial colony in a petri dish or a primate colony in South America. Rick Michod, UA professor and department head of ecology and evolutionary biology, has received $1.3 million from NASA to investigate what properties of biology define an individual organism.

Many things in life are not fair. But some things are at least consistent.

For example, all life as we know it has certain universal properties, which presumably define how life would be organized anywhere it evolved in the universe, said Richard Michod, professor and head of the department of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona. (more…)

‘Sweet Dreams (Are Made of Chemistry)’

By Guest PostJune 27, 2013Education, Sciencechemistry jock, made of chemistry, original Eurhythmics lyrics, rhyme for ozonolysis, solving retrosynthesis problems, sweet dreams, sweet sorrow

Professor Neil Garg’s students turn organic chemistry reactions into song

When Eurythmics recorded their hit song “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” in 1983, they somehow neglected to include chemical equations. Thirty years later, UCLA undergraduates Jessica Lee, Emily Chuang and Christine Nguyen have corrected the omission.
(more…)

Older males make better fathers says new research on beetles

By Guest PostJune 27, 2013Sciencebeetles, birds, blackbirds, hypothesis, infidelity, megan head, nerc, offspring, older males, paternal care, paternity, perception of paternity, robins, species, university of exeter, younger males

Researchers at the University of Exeter found that older male burying beetles make better fathers than their younger counterparts.

The study found that mature males, who had little chance of reproducing again, invested more effort in both mating and in parental care than younger males.

The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society of London – B, considered how the likelihood of paternity influenced the way that males cared for young. Older males were good fathers and looked after the young even when they were unsure whether the offspring were theirs. Younger males, who had a higher chance of reproducing again, tended to care less for offspring, particularly when they were uncertain of their paternity. (more…)

Roman Seawater Concrete Holds the Secret to Cutting Carbon Emissions

By Guest PostJune 24, 2013Scienceancient roman concrete, chemical attack, durability, modern concrete, roman recipe, roman seawater concrete, seawater concrete

Berkeley Lab scientists and their colleagues have discovered the properties that made ancient Roman concrete sustainable and durable

The chemical secrets of a concrete Roman breakwater that has spent the last 2,000 years submerged in the Mediterranean Sea have been uncovered by an international team of researchers led by Paulo Monteiro of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. (more…)

How did a third radiation belt appear in the Earth’s upper atmosphere?

By Guest PostJune 23, 2013Sciencehigh energy electrons, radiation belts, third radiation belt, third radiation ring, upper atmosphere, van allen, van allen probes

Since the discovery of the Van Allen radiation belts in in the Earth’s upper atmosphere in 1958, space scientists have believed that these belts consisted of two doughnut-shaped rings of highly charged particles — an inner ring of high-energy electrons and energetic positive ions, and an outer ring of high-energy electrons.
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