ScienceDaily: Strange Science News

Liquid water is an important prerequisite for life to develop on a planet. As researchers report in a new study, liquid water could also exist for billions of years on planets that are very different from Earth. This calls our currently Earth-centred idea of potentially habitable planets into question.

Researchers have found that people may have a tendency to form friendships with individuals who have a similar body odor. The researchers were even able to predict the quality of social interactions between complete strangers by first 'smelling' them with a device known as an electronic nose, or eNose. These findings suggest that the sense of smell may play a larger role in human social interactions than previously thought.

Researchers have unlocked an evolutionary mystery of a deadly pathogen responsible for fueling the superbug crisis: it can reproduce by having sex. And while such fraternizing is infrequent, scientists report it could be producing more drug-resistant and more virulent strains of Candida auris, capable of spreading faster.

Using light-capturing proteins in living microbes, scientists helped reconstruct what life was like for some of Earth's earliest organisms. These efforts could help us one day recognize signs of life on other planets.

Researchers studied the effect of the 'attitudes' of a semi-autonomous telepresence robot on its human operator. They found that when a person controlled only a part of the body of a semi-autonomous robot, its expressed opinions affected him or her. This work may help assist in the development of new semi-autonomous robots to perform labor more efficiently.

Researchers have developed a virtual robotic limb system which can be operated by users' feet in a virtual environment as extra, or supernumerary, limbs. After training, users reported feeling like the virtual robotic arms had become part of their own body. This study focused on the perceptual changes of the participants, understanding of which can contribute to designing real physical robotic supernumerary limb systems that people can use naturally and freely just like our own bodies.

A formidable space tourism industry may have a greater climate effect than the aviation industry and undo repair to the protective ozone layer if left unregulated, according to a new study.

An innovative scientific instrument, the Compact Color Biofinder may change the game in the search for signs of extraterrestrial life.

A research group has explored the potential production of micro-scale organic electronics for use in bioelectronics via multiphoton 3-D printers.

The neural and cognitive complexity of the octopus could originate from a molecular analogy with the human brain, according to a new study. The research shows that the same 'jumping genes' are active both in the human brain and in the brain of two species, Octopus vulgaris, the common octopus, and Octopus bimaculoides, the Californian octopus.

Specifications from an asteroid that made headline news in 2019 because it appeared to come out of nowhere and was traveling fast has just been published.