ScienceDaily: Most Popular News

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• Impact that doomed the dinosaurs helped the forests bloom
• First water-based nuclear battery can be used to generate electrical energy
• Scientists twist radio beams to send data: Transmissions reach speeds of 32 gigibits per second
• Ebola outbreak 'out of all proportion' and severity cannot be predicted, expert says
• Human faces are so variable because we evolved to look unique
• More cheese, please! News study shows dairy is good for your metabolic health
• 219 million stars: Astronomers release most detailed catalog ever made of the visible Milky Way
• Early Earth less 'Hellish' than previously thought
• Hitting the jackpot on a dig in Gernsheim: Long lost Roman fort discovered
• Environmental costs, health risks, and benefits of fracking examined
• Astronomers pinpoint 'Venus Zone' around stars

Impact that doomed the dinosaurs helped the forests bloom Posted: 16 Sep 2014 11:15 AM PDT Some 66 million years ago, a 10-km diameter chunk of rock hit the Yucatan peninsula with the force of 100 teratons of TNT. It left a crater more than 150 km across, and the resulting megatsunami, wildfires, global earthquakes and volcanism are widely accepted to have wiped out the dinosaurs and made way for the rise of the mammals. But what happened to the plants on which the dinosaurs fed?

First water-based nuclear battery can be used to generate electrical energy Posted: 16 Sep 2014 10:25 AM PDT For the first time using a water-based solution, researchers have created a long-lasting and more efficient nuclear battery that could be used for many applications such as a reliable energy source in automobiles and also in complicated applications such as space flight.

Scientists twist radio beams to send data: Transmissions reach speeds of 32 gigibits per second Posted: 16 Sep 2014 10:25 AM PDT Researchers twist four radio beams together to achieve high data transmission speeds. The researchers reached data transmission rates of 32 gigabits per second across 2.5 meters of free space in a basement lab. For reference, 32 gigabits per second is fast enough to transmit more than 10 hour-and-a-half-long HD movies in one second and is 30 times faster than LTE wireless.

Ebola outbreak 'out of all proportion' and severity cannot be predicted, expert says Posted: 16 Sep 2014 09:29 AM PDT A mathematical model that replicates Ebola outbreaks can no longer be used to ascertain the eventual scale of the current epidemic, finds new research.

Human faces are so variable because we evolved to look unique Posted: 16 Sep 2014 08:22 AM PDT Why are human faces so variable compared to other animals, from lizards and penguins to dogs and monkeys? Scientists analyzed human faces and the genes that code for facial features and found a high variability that could only be explained by selection for variable faces, probably because of the importance of social interactions in human relationships and the need for humans to be recognizable.

More cheese, please! News study shows dairy is good for your metabolic health Posted: 16 Sep 2014 06:27 AM PDT Researchers studied the dairy-eating habits of healthy French-Canadians' and monitored how dairy consumption may have an effect on their overall metabolic health. It's well known that dairy products contain calcium and minerals good for bones, but new research has shown that dairy consumption may also have beneficial effects on metabolic health and can reduce risk of metabolic diseases such as obesity and type 2 diabetes.

219 million stars: Astronomers release most detailed catalog ever made of the visible Milky Way Posted: 16 Sep 2014 05:48 AM PDT A new catalog of the visible part of the northern part of our home Galaxy, the Milky Way, includes no fewer than 219 million stars. From dark sky sites on Earth, the Milky Way appears as a glowing band stretching across the sky. To astronomers, it is the disk of our own galaxy, a system stretching across 100,000 light-years, seen edge-on from our vantage point orbiting the Sun. The disk contains the majority of the stars in the galaxy, including the Sun, and the densest concentrations of dust and gas.

Early Earth less 'Hellish' than previously thought Posted: 15 Sep 2014 11:09 AM PDT Conditions on Earth during its first 500 million years may have been cool enough to form oceans of water instead of being too hot for life to form. This alternate view of Earth's first geologic eon, called the Hadean, has gained substantial new support from the first detailed comparison of zircon crystals that formed more than 4 billion years ago with those formed contemporaneously in Iceland, which has been proposed as a possible geological analog for early Earth.

Hitting the jackpot on a dig in Gernsheim: Long lost Roman fort discovered Posted: 15 Sep 2014 05:37 AM PDT In the course of an educational dig in Gernsheim in the Hessian Ried, archaeologists have discovered a long lost Roman fort: A troop unit made up out of approximately 500 soldiers (known as a cohort)  was stationed there between 70/80 and 110/120 AD. Over the past weeks, the archaeologists found two V-shaped ditches, typical of this type of fort, and the post holes of a wooden defensive tower as well as other evidence from the time after the fort was abandoned.

Environmental costs, health risks, and benefits of fracking examined Posted: 12 Sep 2014 08:25 AM PDT Rising supplies of natural gas could benefit the environment by replacing coal as a fuel for electricity, but hydraulic fracturing poses dangers for people living near the wells, a new analysis finds.

Astronomers pinpoint 'Venus Zone' around stars Posted: 10 Sep 2014 06:41 PM PDT Astronomers have defined the 'Venus Zone,' the area around a star in which a planet is likely to exhibit the unlivable conditions found on the planet Venus. The research will aid Kepler astronomers searching for exoplanets, helping them determine which are likely to be similar to Earth and which are more likely to resemble Venus.

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