Science

A billon-frames-per-second film has captured the vibrations of gold nanocrystals in stunning detail for the first time. Source: University College London - Discipline: Physics

The 17 groups will each receive up to 11 years of support

People eating at fast food restaurants largely underestimate the calorie content of meals, especially large ones, according to a paper published today on bmj.com. Source: BMJ-British Medical Journal - Discipline: Health

An extraordinarily deep earthquake shook Russia’s Far East this morning. The magnitude-8.3 quake took place nearly 610 kilometres below Earth’s surface, according to preliminary estimates from the US Geological Survey. Normally rocks at this depth are too hot to rupture quickly in a quake; instead, they deform slowly, like hot wax flowing rather than cold wax shattering. But beneath the Sea of Okhotsk, north of Japan and west of Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula, the sea floor — a slab of old Pacific crust — is diving beneath Eurasia. The crust is descending fast enough — about 8 centimetres per year — to remain cool enough to rupture even at great depths. The diving plate is thus seismically active down to 650 kilometres or greater. The epicenter of today’s quake was about 400 kilometres northwest of the city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. Deep quakes cause less damage than shallow ones, and early news reports suggest there were little to no injuries or damage, although the shaking was felt as far away as Moscow. (Pictured, at right, is the seismic signal as recorded in Ruedersdorf, Germany.) A tsunami warning was issued and lifted soon thereafter. A series of smaller quakes, up to about magnitude 6.0, had shaken just south and east of Petropavlosk-Kamchatsky over the past several days. But they were far shallower. Figuring out how the shallow earthquake swarm and the large deep quake are related — if they are — is likely to be a topic of intense study. The Okhotsk quake rivals and perhaps surpasses the magnitude-8.2 quake that hit northern Bolivia on June 9, 1994. That one occurred 631 kilometres deep, reshaping geologists’ ideas about how earthquakes could occur so far down. Images: USGS; GFZ

An extremely precise measurement of the distance to a star system has finally allowed astronomers to solve a decade-old puzzle, confirming understanding of the way exotic objects like black holes interact with nearby stars. Source: International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research - Discipline: Astronomy

Most modern human mothers wean their babies much earlier than our closest primate relatives. But what about our extinct relatives, the Neanderthals? A team of U.S. and Australian researchers reports that they can now use fossil teeth to calculate when a Neanderthal baby was weaned. The new technique is based in part on knowledge gained from studies of teeth from human infants and from monkeys.

Radiation from all galaxies that ever existed suffuses the universe with a diffuse extragalactic background light (EBL). Measuring the EBL is as fundamental to cosmology as measuring heat from the Big Bang (cosmic microwave background) at radio wavelengths. Researchers describe the best measurement yet of the evolution of the EBL over the past 5 billion years, based on observations from radio waves to gamma rays from NASA spacecraft and ground-based telescopes.

A new report indicates that more than one in five parents of teens aged 12 to 17 (22.3 percent) think what they say has little influence on whether or not their child uses illicit substances, tobacco, or alcohol. This report by the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) also shows one in ten parents said they did not talk to their teens about the dangers of using tobacco, alcohol, or other drugs -- even though 67.6 percent of these parents who had not spoken to their children thought they would influence whether their child uses drugs if they spoke to them.

Two mutations central to the development of infantile myofibromatosis (IM) -- a disorder characterized by multiple tumors involving the skin, bone, and soft tissue—may provide new therapeutic targets, according to researchers.

Harvard University engineers design beautiful roses, violets and tulips that are smaller than width of a human hair.