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Bouncing Philae Takes Award for Breakthrough of the Year

Medicine & Technology It’s no big surprise that this year when reporters and editors of the journal Physics World came together to award the top-10 revolutionary breakthroughs of the year, that the team would have many breakthroughs to consider for the year of 2014. And though perhaps not necessarily the most technically successful mission this year, on account of the vast distances between Earth and itself as well as it bouncy landing, the team narrowed down the prospective list down to one to name the November 12, 2014 touchdown of the Philae Lander to be the most historic moment of the year.

Sugar May Be Worse for Blood Pressure Than Salt

Both sugar and salt have gotten bad publicity over the years as far as healthy diet is concerned. Sugary food consumption has been linked to diabetes and obesity, while excessive intake of salt and salty foods has been associated with cardiovascular illnesses, particularly high blood pressure. However, a recent study puts sugar in a worse light as it claims that sugar may increase blood pressure more than salt does.

Could Water Have Changed the Face of Mars, or Is the Habitability Question too Much to Bare?

While some parts of the nation are fighting Winter storms of snow and sleet, eyes this week are o water of the liquid variety. And more specifically, researchers and reporters are looking towards the molecule’s importance in developing life, as well as its origins story too. News this week of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Rosetta Mission, revealed a recently published study reporting that the sustenance of our Earth and of all life, water, may in fact have not originated on comets from the Kuiper Belt as once believed. And what’s more, now that researchers have debunked false origin stories of the miracle molecule, they’re now beginning to question whether water alone can make a planet habitable for life, or if there are other mitigating conditions as well.

While Some Researchers Find Brains Who can Navigate, Others Just Can’t Find Theirs

News early this morning broke courtesy of a study in the journal Nature, where researchers finally discovered how brains intrinsically can navigate the body, by using what they call a “3-D neural compass”. The study conducted at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel investigated the Egyptian fruit bat and revealed a toroidal shaped grouping of neural cells within the brain that helped the bats differentiate their orientation and the place in a 3-dimensional field.

How a Crop Found in Beer Helped Early Man Survive in Frigid Tibetan Plateau

In spite of the harsh climate, freezing many regions of Tibet’s upper plateaus in the mountains of Asia, researchers have uncovered a rich anthropological history of the past amidst frozen objects of the past. And what they reveal is that even in the far off past, the surmounting odds against survival in the region known as the “Roof of the World” created many interesting challenges for ancient man.

In Chimpanzee Sexual Selection, Nice Guys Finish Last

Behavioral studies of our close relatives the chimpanzee often reveal origins of what we believe to be distinctly “human” interactions. Grooming behavior, child rearing and even gang formation have all been identified in chimpanzee populations, but in a recent study conducted in Tanzania, researchers from Arizona State University say that they may have found the origins or far more disturbing behavior—bullying and male-on-female violence.

Could A Techni-Particle Save Us from the Universe’s Undoing?

In the preface to a new book entitled “Starmus”, published last month, Cambridge cosmologist Stephen Hawking said that if indeed the particle is the Higgs Boson, then CERN’s discovery could lead to the demise of the universe if its contents were to become unstable. But a new research analysis published this month in the journal Physical Review D, says that Hawking and the rest of the universe may need not fear, because the particle may in fact not be what it appears.

Just Because Bats Are Blind Doesn’t Mean They Can’t Compete

As species that primarily navigate with their ears and not their eyes, bats are fairly amazing creatures. Their abilities to track predators, prey and hear sounds far beyond what humans can hear, makes these echolocators quite impressive specimens. But new research reveals that their sonar signals may have an additional function as well -- to jam up competitors, and steal their prey.

Could Large Hadron Collider Discovery Be Something Else? Researchers Look to Techni-Higgs Particles

The Higgs Boson particle has been at the center of theoretical physics debates for quite some time now, and while the elusive particle is conjectured to be at the center of every atom, giving them their mass, researchers have been hard-pressed to prove its existence. Last year, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) revealed that an anomaly discovered in the Large Hadron Collider when atoms were compounded together may have in fact been the Higgs Boson, however, new research says that they may have been mistaken. And the particle CERN found may very well be something entirely different.

1Kite Study Reveals Origins of Insects and Perhaps Our Origins Too

While bacteria win the award for largest species abundance, and Archaea take the award for oldest organisms known to man, the most abundant animal on the face of the Earth is still the formidable and diverse phyla arthropoda—which include all species of insects. They come in an array of shapes and sizes, and compose nearly 80 percent of all animal species identified by man to date, and there are still undoubtedly thousands of species we’ve yet to find. But researchers believe that the diverse little creepy crawly bunch may hold more secrets than they let on, perhaps even secrets about our very own evolutionary origins.

Binary Stars Merge and Beat Supermassive Black Hole

Nearly every Sci-Fi film about deep space has warned about the perils of coming up against a black hole. And if there’s anything we’ve learned, or that astronomy has taught us, it’s that these supermassive vortex’s have quite a strong pull—something most planets and stars cannot bare to go through. But as it so happens, it turns out that cosmic coupling may be one solution for solar systems looking to avoid certain death.

Why Researchers Have to Go In Disguise—The Penguin in the Room

Looking for a way to observe king penguin colonies in the ice fields of Antarctica, researchers led by Yvon Le Maho from the University of Strasbourg, France developed a fluffy little rover shaped in the image of a penguin chick so that they could get an up-close view of the male penguins’ nesting behaviors.

Penguin-Friendly Rover Finds Its Place Amongst the Crowd

It’s a story, much like the ones you’ve heard before. An orphaned bird must stand alone within its flock, to find its own place amongst its peers. But this isn’t the story of an ugly little duckling that turns into a swan, or one of a tap-dancing emperor penguin with a knack for hip hop. This is a tale of a remote-operated rover that brought researchers into the fold of a penguin colony, for a view unlike anything we’ve seen before.

Vampire-Like Deer Reveals Itself in Time for Halloween

It’s a fanged creature unlike any other, and it clearly won’t need a costume this Halloween. The unusual herbivore, the Kashmir Musk Deer is a species that was once native to the northern ranges of Afghanistan. Though, in spite of the fact that the species has not been seen for more than 60 years, a team of researchers headed by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) recently revealed that more than a handful of the rare species have been identified in alpine meadows of northeast Afghanistan, just in time to come out for Halloween.

Crytptic New Species of Leopard Frog Found in New York City

For a field-based ecologist, the continental United States is pretty much a textbook of well-known organisms. The thrilling new species often making front-page news are more likely to found in the tropics or open-oceans, than in the plains of the Midwest or the large metropolis cities of the East and West coasts. With such well-defined niche habitats, the species in the United States aren’t too surprising to the experienced biologist, however, sometimes new life can be found where you’d least expect it. No, we’re not talking about the mutant turtles in the sewers of New York City, but it does appear the jam-packed hub may be home to another unique amphibian, colloquially known as the “Atlantic Coast Leopard Frog”.
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