Science Trends

Do you know why people tilt their head to the right rather than to the left when kissing or hugging? There is some science to it. According to the researchers, when touching others in a social context, for example kissing or hugging, people often have a lateral preference. The team headed by Associate Professor Sebastian Ocklenburg and Julian Packheiser from the Department of Biopsychology from Ruhr-University Bochum in Germany said the handedness does play a role but so does the emotional context. “In  general , the population at large has a preference of tilting the head to the right when kissing, to initiate a hug with the right hand, and to cradle a baby in the left arm,” elaborated Packheiser. “With regard to kissing and hugging, the assumption is that people have a dominant hand which they use to initiate the motion. According to the theory, the dominant hand is kept unoccupied when cradling a child so that it can be used to perform other tasks,” Packheiser...

IMAGE: The world's first bio-brick made using human urine was unveiled this week. (Supplied: University Of Cape Town) Researchers have found a way to grow bricks sustainably from human urine. Key points: The bio-bricks' strength can be scaled up and down depending on how long the bacteria is allowed to grow The bulk of bricks made worldwide produce copious amounts of carbon-dioxide The process of making bio-bricks produces zero waste The "bio-brick" is made by mixing sand with a bacteria that produces urase — an enzyme that breaks down the urea in urine while at the same time producing calcium carbonate. When mixed, the result is a brick that is on-par with limestone bricks. But what's different is that the bio-bricks' strength can be scaled up and down depending on how long the bacteria is allowed to grow. "The longer you allow the little bacteria to make the cement, the stronger the product is going to be. We can optimise th...

Photo Credit: JAXA Japan's space agency on Monday launched a rocket carrying a satellite that will monitor greenhouse gases, as well as the first satellite built entirely in the United Arab Emirates. The nation's H-IIA rocket lifted off Monday afternoon at 1:08 pm (0308 GMT) from the Tanegashima Space Centre, according to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). About 16 minutes later, it sent a Japanese satellite nicknamed Ibuki-2 into orbit. The satellite is officially named GOSAT-2, short for "greenhouse gases observing satellite-2", and is intended to provide data that will help Japan create and publish "emission inventories" of the CO2 output of various countries, as outlined in the Paris climate accord. The satellite will also make precision observations of methane and other gases. The Japanese rocket also released "KhalifaSat", the first satellite built entirely in the UAE by local engineers. "The launch of...

HIGHLIGHTS Spending long periods in space has lasting effects on the brain Study was led by a team from University of Antwerp and LMU of Munich Seven months later, the effects were partly reversed but detectable Spending long periods in space not only leads to muscle atrophy and reductions in bone density, it also has lasting effects on the brain, suggests a study. The study, led by a team of neuroscientists from the University of Antwerp in Belgium and Ludwig-Maximilians-University (LMU) of Munich, showed that differential changes in the three main tissue volumes of the brain remain detectable for at least half a year after the end of their last mission. "Our results point to prolonged changes in the pattern of cerebrospinal fluid circulation over a period of at least seven months following the return to Earth," said professor Peter zu Eulenburg from the LMU. "However, whether or not the extensive alterations shown in the grey and the white matter...

A new structure in human cells has been discovered by researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden in collaboration with colleagues in the UK. The structure is a new type of protein complex that the cell uses to attach to its surroundings and proves to play a key part in cell division. The study is published in the journal  Nature Cell Biology . The cells in a tissue are surrounded by a net-like structure called the extracellular matrix. To attach itself to the matrix the cells have receptor molecules on their surfaces, which control the assembly of large protein complexes inside them. These so-called adhesion complexes connect the outside to the cell interior and also signal to the cell about its immediate environment, which affects its properties and behaviour. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have now discovered a new type of adhesion complex with a unique molecular composition that sets it apart from those already known about. The discovery has been made in colla...

Cannabis use is riding high on a decade-long wave of decriminalization, legalization and unregulated synthetic substitutes. As society examines the impact, an interesting disparity has become apparent: the risks are different in females than in males. A new review of animal studies says that sex differences in response to cannabis are not just socio-cultural, but biological too. Published in  Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience , it examines the influence of sex hormones like testosterone, estradiol (estrogen) and progesterone on the endocannabinoid system: networks of brain cells which communicate using the same family of chemicals found in cannabis, called 'cannabinoids'. Animal studies "It has been pretty hard to get laboratory animals to self-administer cannabinoids like human cannabis users," says study co-author Dr Liana Fattore, Senior Researcher at the National Research Council of Italy and President of the Mediterranean Society of Neuroscience. ...

The way we breathe may affect how well our memories are consolidated (i.e. reinforced and stabilised). If we breathe through the nose rather than the mouth after trying to learn a set of smells, we remember them better, researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden report in  The Journal of Neuroscience . People who breathe through their noses consolidate their memories better. Research into how breathing affects the brain has become an ever-more popular field in recent years and new methodologies have enabled more studies, many of which have concentrated on the memory. Researchers from Karolinska Institutet now show that participants who breathe through the nose consolidate their memories better. "Our study shows that we remember smells better if we breathe through the nose when the memory is being consolidated -- the process that takes place between learning and memory retrieval," says Artin Arshamian, researcher at the Department of Clinical Neurosci...

The cerebellum can't get no respect. Located inconveniently on the underside of the brain and initially thought to be limited to controlling movement, the cerebellum has long been treated like an afterthought by researchers studying higher brain functions. But researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis say overlooking the cerebellum is a mistake. Their findings, published Oct. 25 in  Neuron , suggest that the cerebellum has a hand in every aspect of higher brain functions -- not just movement, but attention, thinking, planning and decision-making. "The biggest surprise to me was the discovery that 80 percent of the cerebellum is devoted to the smart stuff," said senior author Nico Dosenbach, MD, PhD, an assistant professor of neurology, of occupational therapy and of pediatrics. "Everyone thought the cerebellum was about movement. If your cerebellum is damaged, you can't move smoothly -- your hand jerks around when you try to reac...

Return of a Legend Titanic II has captured the world’s imagination since Professor Palmer announced that his shipping company, Blue Star Line, would recreate the famous ship in honour of the 100 year anniversary of the launch and untimely fate of The Titanic. While every bit as luxurious as her namesake, Titanic II will have every modern amenity along with 21st century technology and the latest navigation and safety systems.

Lua is a scripting language born in Brazil and is quite special.  Lua , compared to the well-known programming languages such as PHP, Perl, Python and Ruby, stands out for its extreme compactness, speed and a strong emphasis on the description and management of data. In addition, from the beginning, it was designed and built to be embedded (embedded) within applications written in C / C ++, D, Pascal, Ada. In this way, it is possible to extend and modify an already completed application and distributed to customers without having the source code and above all using such a small and simple language that you learn in one day! Lua is not just an extension language, it is also a general purpose language for writing a wide variety of applications. Said in challenging terms, you can write in Lua everything you can write in Python or Ruby with a considerable gain in terms of speed of application execution. The Lua language Lua is a very small and flexible dynamic scrip...

What started as a simple bug bite on a young man's knee soon turned life-threatening when the itchy bump developed into an infection with "flesh-eating" bacteria, according to a new report of the case. The 21-year-old man went to the emergency room after his right knee became swollen and painful, and he had trouble walking, according to the report, published in the November issue of the American Journal of Emergency Medicine. He told doctors that he had not injured his knee, but that he had gotten a bug bite there three days earlier. "I was really surprised to see that this otherwise young and healthy guy could barely walk," said Dr. Jacqueline Paulis, an emergency-medicine physician at New York University School of Medicine, who treated the patient and is the lead author of the report. (Paulis treated the patient at a different New York City hospital before working at NYU.) [5 Weird Effects of Bug Bites] An exam revealed that he had a bump on his kn...

Meet the real-life "chicken of the sea": a strange, pinkish-red creature with a body like a plump-breasted and decapitated chicken, earning the creature the name "headless chicken monster." In truth, it is neither a chicken nor a monster. It's the swimming sea cucumber  Enypniastes eximia , and scientists recently captured video of this bizarre, hen-mimicking swimmer in the Southern Ocean near eastern Antarctica, where it has never been seen before. Footage shows the colorful sea cucumber drifting through the water; fins at the top and bottom of its tubby, translucent body almost resemble the stubby wings and legs on plucked, pink poultry ready for the pot. If you squint, you might think you're looking at the result of an ill-fated tryst between a chicken and Aquaman. [In Photos: Spooky Deep-Sea Creatures] Not everyone recognizes the gelatinous sea cucumber's similarity to a chicken, though its appearance is undeniably peculiar. Photos of the c...