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Newborn babies have built-in body awareness ability

The ability to differentiate your own body from others is a fundamental skill, critical for humans' ability to interact with their environments and the people in them. Now, researchers reporting in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, on November 21 provide some of the first evidence that newborn babies enter the world with the essential mechanisms for this kind of body awareness already in place.

In addition to this insight into normal human development, the researchers stress the importance of the new findings for understanding atypical development, too.

Early-career investigator discovers current volcanic activity under West Antarctica

Scientists funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) have observed "swarms" of seismic activity--thousands of events in the same locations, sometimes dozens in a single day--between January 2010 and March 2011, indicating current volcanic activity under the massive West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS).

Infrared vision lets researchers see through -- and into -- multiple layers of graphene

BUFFALO, N.Y. — It's not X-ray vision, but you could call it infrared vision.

A University at Buffalo-led research team has developed a technique for "seeing through" a stack of graphene sheets to identify and describe the electronic properties of each individual sheet — even when the sheets are covering each other up.

The method involves shooting a beam of infrared light at the stack, and measuring how the light wave's direction of oscillation changes as it bounces off the layers within.

5 tips for a better Thanksgiving: A new video by the American Chemical Society

Whether you're brining your bird this Thanksgiving or experimenting with "wheat meat," the American Chemical Society's (ACS') latest Bytesize Science episode offers five tips on how to make this year's holiday even better through chemistry. The video is available now on http://www.BytesizeScience.com.

Additive may make wine fine for a longer time

An additive may help curb a chemical reaction that causes wine to look, smell and taste funky, according to food scientists.

The researchers added chelation compounds that bind with metals to inhibit oxidation, or oxygen's ability to react with some of the trace metals that are found in the wine, according to Gal Kreitman, a doctoral candidate in food science, Penn State.

New materials with potential biomedical applications

Bisphosphonates are a group of compounds that have become well-known and are extensively used as drugs for treating bone-related diseases, such as osteoporosis. New uses for bisphosphonates were discovered, as their ability to form physical gels in pure water was reported for the first time in a recent study performed in collaboration with the Universities of Jyväskylä and Eastern Finland.

Impacts of plant invasions become less robust over time

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — Among the most impressive ecological findings of the past 25 years is the ability of invasive plants to radically change ecosystem function. Yet few if any studies have examined whether ecosystem impacts of invasions persist over time, and what that means for plant communities and ecosystem restoration.

IUPUI study: Finding Occam's razor in an era of information overload

INDIANAPOLIS -- How can the actions and reactions of proteins so small or stars so distant they are invisible to the human eye be accurately predicted? How can blurry images be brought into focus and reconstructed?

Novel material stores unusually large amounts of hydrogen

This news release is available in German.

Financial decision makers need weather and climate information to manage risks

Maximizing returns on financial investments depends on accurately understanding and effectively accounting for weather and climate risks, according to a new study by the American Meteorological Society (AMS) Policy Program.

What water looks like to DNA

WASHINGTON D.C. Nov. 19, 2013 -- A team of biochemists and mathematicians have developed a sophisticated geometric model to predict how a biological molecule will interact with water molecules, computing the results up to 20 times faster than other existing approaches. This new approach may help researchers find new drugs to treat human diseases, said the team, who described their theoretical approach in the Journal of Chemical Physics, which is produced by AIP Publishing.

Phthalate exposure linked to preterm birth

ANN ARBOR—The odds of preterm birth for women exposed to a commonly used class of chemicals known as phthalates are increased significantly, according to a new study from the University of Michigan School of Public Health and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

Depending on the individual phthalate, women with the highest levels of exposure during pregnancy had two-to-five times the odds of preterm birth, compared to women with the lowest exposure.

'GUMBOS' promise new drugs and electronics: American Chemical Society Prized Science video

A group of nanoparticles called "GUMBOS" is as varied as their culinary namesake implies, with a wide range of potential applications from cancer therapy to sensors. GUMBOS are the focus of a new video from the American Chemical Society's (ACS) Prized Science series. The videos are available at http://www.acs.org/PrizedScience.

Researchers classify urban residential desert landscapes

LAS CRUCES, NM--A new study contains valuable information for homeowners and horticulturalists that live and work in desert regions. The study, the first of its type to classify desert plants into nine common types, includes recommendations for helping to plan and integrate lower water-use plants into urban landscapes. Interestingly, the researchers also determined that front- and backyard environments can differ significantly.

'Magic numbers' disappear and expand area of nuclear deformation

A team of researchers from the RIKEN Nishina Center for Accelerator-Based Science in Japan has demonstrated that the magic numbers 20 and 28 disappear from all neutron-rich magnesium isotopes, thereby establishing a new, larger area of nuclear deformation in the nuclear chart.

The Japanese study, published today in the prestigious journal Physical Review Letters, was made possible by the intense beam at the Radioactive Beam Factory (RIBF) at RIKEN, which produces the most intense radioactive isotope beams in the world.