ScienceDaily: Strange Science News

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• Buy lunch, pay with your hand: Vein scanning technique
• David and Goliath: How a tiny spider catches much larger prey
• Going inside an ant raft: Researchers look to CT scan to visualize connectivity phenomenon
• Why Diplodocus did not put all her eggs in one basket
• Mining data archives yields haul of 'red nuggets' galaxies
• Weird 'magic' ingredient for quantum computing: Contextuality
• Preserving the Battle of Hastings from 'contamination'
• African Swallowtail butterfly: Genetic secrets of nature's master of mimicry unraveled
• The inflatable concrete dome: Better construction method

Buy lunch, pay with your hand: Vein scanning technique Posted: 12 Jun 2014 09:04 AM PDT Paying for a coffee or lunch by simply scanning your palm still sounds like science fiction to most of us. However, an engineering student in Sweden has made it happen -- making his the first known company in the world to install the vein scanning technique in stores and coffee shops.

David and Goliath: How a tiny spider catches much larger prey Posted: 12 Jun 2014 06:50 AM PDT In nature, it is very rare to find a proverbial much smaller David able to overpower and kill a Goliath for supper. This is exactly the modus operandi of a solitary tiny spider from the Negev desert in Israel that routinely kills ants up to almost four times its own size.

Going inside an ant raft: Researchers look to CT scan to visualize connectivity phenomenon Posted: 12 Jun 2014 05:59 AM PDT Researchers froze ant rafts and scanned them with a miniature CT scan machine to look at the strongest part of the structure -- the inside -- to discover how opaque ants connect, arrange and orient themselves with each other.

Why Diplodocus did not put all her eggs in one basket Posted: 12 Jun 2014 05:51 AM PDT If you thought the largest dinosaurs to have walked the earth produced the biggest eggs, you'd be mistaken. Scientists have discovered that both individual egg size and clutch size for the sauropods – which includes Diplodocus – were a lot smaller than might be expected for such enormous creatures.

Mining data archives yields haul of 'red nuggets' galaxies Posted: 11 Jun 2014 12:11 PM PDT The world of astronomy has changed. An astronomer used to have to travel to a remote location and endure long, cold nights, patiently guiding a telescope to collect precious photons of light. Now, a proliferation of online archives allows astronomers to make discoveries from the comfort of their own offices. By mining such archives, a team of astronomers has found a treasure trove of 'red nugget' galaxies.

Weird 'magic' ingredient for quantum computing: Contextuality Posted: 11 Jun 2014 10:18 AM PDT A form of quantum weirdness is a key ingredient for building quantum computers according to new research. Researchers have shown that a weird aspect of quantum theory called contextuality is a necessary resource to achieve the so-called magic required for universal quantum computation.

Preserving the Battle of Hastings from 'contamination' Posted: 11 Jun 2014 07:21 AM PDT The Battle of Hastings is regularly fought all over again by enthusiastic re-enactors, before large crowds of spectators. The problem is that they are depositing material that could compromise the archaeology of the historic site. But now one of the world's leading battlefield archaeologists is developing a unique project designed to unearth whatever genuine material survives from 1066.

African Swallowtail butterfly: Genetic secrets of nature's master of mimicry unraveled Posted: 11 Jun 2014 06:38 AM PDT Scientists investigating how one of the greatest shape shifters in the natural world is able to trick predators to avoid being eaten have identified the gene behind the fascinating feat. The African Swallowtail butterfly, also known as the 'Mocker Swallowtail' or the 'Flying Handkerchief,' can appear to change both color and shape.

The inflatable concrete dome: Better construction method Posted: 11 Jun 2014 06:34 AM PDT Large shell structures made of concrete or stone are hardly ever built any more. The reason is that their construction requires large, expensive supporting structures. A completely new construction method has been developed, which does not require any timber structures at all: a flat concrete slab hardens on the ground, and then an air cushion below the plate is inflated, bending the concrete and quickly forming a sustainable shell. Even large event halls could be built this way.

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