ScienceDaily: Strange Science News

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• Neuroscientists watch imagination happening in the brain
• Quantum physics enables revolutionary imaging method
• Paleontology: Oldest representative of a weird arthropod group
• From nose to knee: Engineered cartilage regenerates joints
• Nanodiamonds are forever: Did comet collision leave layer of nanodiamonds across Earth?
• A touching story: Ancient conversation between plants, fungi and bacteria
• Junk food makes rats lose appetite for balanced diet
• Rubber meets the road with new carbon, battery technologies
• More wolf spiders feasting on American toads due to invasive grass, study shows
• Marijuana compound may offer treatment for Alzheimer's disease, study suggests
• Orion rocks! Pebble-size particles may jump-start planet formation
• Photosynthesis: Researchers observe protein quake
• Thunder god vine, with assists by nanotechnology, could shake up future cancer treatment

Neuroscientists watch imagination happening in the brain Posted: 28 Aug 2014 08:09 AM PDT By showing people their own photos during MRI sessions, neuroscientists distinguished between brain activity that is specific to memory and activity that is specific to imagination.

Quantum physics enables revolutionary imaging method Posted: 28 Aug 2014 08:08 AM PDT Researchers have developed a fundamentally new quantum imaging technique with strikingly counter-intuitive features. For the first time, an image has been obtained without ever detecting the light that was used to illuminate the imaged object, while the light revealing the image never touches the imaged object.

Paleontology: Oldest representative of a weird arthropod group Posted: 28 Aug 2014 06:14 AM PDT Biologists have assigned a number of 435-million-year-old fossils to a new genus of predatory arthropods. These animals lived in shallow marine habitats and were far less eye-catching than related forms found in Jurassic strata.

From nose to knee: Engineered cartilage regenerates joints Posted: 28 Aug 2014 06:02 AM PDT Human articular cartilage defects can be treated with nasal septum cells. Researchers now report that cells taken from the nasal septum are able to adapt to the environment of the knee joint and can thus repair articular cartilage defects. The nasal cartilage cells' ability to self-renew and adapt to the joint environment is associated with the expression of so-called HOX genes.

Nanodiamonds are forever: Did comet collision leave layer of nanodiamonds across Earth? Posted: 27 Aug 2014 01:34 PM PDT A comet collision with Earth caused abrupt environmental stress and degradation that contributed to the extinction of most large animal species then inhabiting the Americas, a group of scientists suggests. The catastrophic impact and the subsequent climate change also led to the disappearance of the prehistoric Clovis culture, and to human population decline. Now focus has turned to the character and distribution of nanodiamonds, one type of material produced during such an extraterrestrial collision. The researchers found an abundance of these tiny diamonds distributed over 50 million square kilometers across the Northern Hemisphere.

A touching story: Ancient conversation between plants, fungi and bacteria Posted: 27 Aug 2014 01:33 PM PDT The mechanical force that a single fungal cell or bacterial colony exerts on a plant cell may seem vanishingly small, but it plays a heavy role in setting up some of the most fundamental symbiotic relationships in biology, according to a new study. It's known that disease-causing fungi build a structure to break through the plant cell wall, "but there is growing evidence that fungi and also bacteria in symbiotic associations use a mechanical stimulation to indicate their presence," says one researcher. "They are knocking on the door, but not breaking it down."

Junk food makes rats lose appetite for balanced diet Posted: 27 Aug 2014 12:17 PM PDT A diet of junk food not only makes rats fat, but also reduces their appetite for novel foods, a preference that normally drives them to seek a balanced diet, reports a study. "The interesting thing about this finding is that if the same thing happens in humans, eating junk food may change our responses to signals associated with food rewards," says an author. "It's like you've just had ice cream for lunch, yet you still go and eat more when you hear the ice cream van come by."

Rubber meets the road with new carbon, battery technologies Posted: 27 Aug 2014 12:16 PM PDT Recycled tires could see new life in lithium-ion batteries that provide power to plug-in electric vehicles and store energy produced by wind and solar, say researchers. By modifying the microstructural characteristics of carbon black, a substance recovered from discarded tires, a team is developing a better anode for lithium-ion batteries.

More wolf spiders feasting on American toads due to invasive grass, study shows Posted: 27 Aug 2014 10:18 AM PDT An invasive grass species frequently found in forests has created a thriving habitat for wolf spiders, who then feed on American toads, a new study has found. Japanese stiltgrass, which was accidentally introduced to the US in the early 1900s, is one of the most pervasive invasive species. Typically found along roads and in forests, it has been found to impact native plant species, invertebrate populations and soil nutrients.

Marijuana compound may offer treatment for Alzheimer's disease, study suggests Posted: 27 Aug 2014 10:18 AM PDT Extremely low levels of the compound in marijuana known as delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, may slow or halt the progression of Alzheimer's disease, a recent study from neuroscientists suggests.

Orion rocks! Pebble-size particles may jump-start planet formation Posted: 27 Aug 2014 08:18 AM PDT Astronomers have discovered that filaments of star-forming gas near the Orion Nebula may be brimming with pebble-size particles -- planetary building blocks 100 to 1,000 times larger than the dust grains typically found around protostars.

Photosynthesis: Researchers observe protein quake Posted: 27 Aug 2014 06:19 AM PDT One of nature's mysteries is how plants survive impact by the huge amounts of energy contained in the sun's rays, while using this energy for photosynthesis. The hypothesis is that the light-absorbing proteins in the plant's blades quickly dissipate the energy throughout the entire protein molecule through so-called protein quakes. Researchers have now managed to successfully 'film' this process.

Thunder god vine, with assists by nanotechnology, could shake up future cancer treatment Posted: 27 Aug 2014 06:19 AM PDT Hepatocellular carcinoma is the second leading cause of cancer-associated death worldwide. These regrettably poor prognoses are due to the difficulty in treating this cancer using conventional chemo drugs, which are not able to reach in a sufficient concentration the liver tumor cells safely. Now a team of scientists has screened a library containing hundreds of natural products against a panel of HCC cells to search a better drug candidate. The screen uncovered a compound named triptolide, a traditional Chinese medicine isolated from the thunder god vine (Tripterygium wilfordii (Latin) or lei gong teng (Chinese)).

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