science news 15.5.2019

Today's selection of science news. Links are normally to press releases on EurekAlert (at the bottom end I may also add a couple of newspaper stories). I include quotes from the summary (using quotation marks) in cases where the title alone doesn't reveal what the story is about. My own thoughts appear without quotation marks, if I have any.



astrobiology

Small, hardy planets most likely to survive death of their stars

How the Sun pumps out water from Mars into space


evolution

First birds: Archaeopteryx gets company

Dolphin ancestor's hearing was more like hoofed mammals than today's sea creatures

How the snail's shell got its coil
"Researchers from the Tokyo University of Science, Japan, have used CRISPR gene editing technology to make snails with shells that coil the 'wrong' way, providing insights into the fundamental basis of left-right asymmetry in animals."


ecology
Escaped pet parrots are now naturalized in 23 US states, study finds
"Research data on bird sightings finds that 56 different parrot species have been spotted in 43 states, and 25 of those species are now breeding in the wild in 23 different states."

Parents unknown
"Animals in hard-to-reach places, especially strange, 'unattractive,' animals, may completely escape our attention. We don't know what their role is in the environment. In fact, we don't even know they exist. New research may double the number of species of a little-known marine creature, based on DNA studies of its larvae."


Phoronid larva collected in Bocas del Toro province, Panama (Caribbean Sea, Atlantic Ocean).
Credit: Michael Boyle


light and life

Dead zones in circadian clocks
"Circadian clocks of organisms respond to light signals during night but do not respond in daytime. The time window where circadian clocks are insensitive to light signals is referred to as the 'dead zone'. Researchers from Kanazawa University have proposed a mechanism for the daytime dead zone. They report that saturation of a single biochemical reaction in the gene regulatory network that controls circadian oscillations can create a daytime dead zone in different species."


quantum computation

Accelerating quantum technologies with materials processing at the atomic scale
"An emerging suite of information technologies based on fundamental quantum physics has been given a boost by researchers at the University of Oxford, who have invented a method to engineer single atomic defects in diamond using laser processing."


humans

How much language are unborn children exposed to in the womb?

Coffee addicts really do wake up and smell the coffee

How Nigerian music can help you choose a ripe watermelon
"The quickest way to decide if a watermelon is ripe or not is by tapping on it. And if you're having trouble detecting the subtleties of the sound, listen to some Nigerian traditional music to get your ears attuned. Nigerian researcher Stephen Onwubiko has found a link between the sounds of drumming in traditional Nigerian music and the sound of fingers drumming on watermelons in the markets."