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Science Tidbits Friday

By possum

Come gather around one and all for another day of new and exciting, tantalizing news in the realm of science.  New discoveries.  New takes on old knowledge.  The base of information and knowledge grows at a rate much too fast to keep up with all that is available.  

Over the fold are some selections from a few of my favorite science news sites around the world.  Tidbits include big bird droppings, ancient chemical warfare, supersolids, and caffeine consumption and hallucination.  Follow over the fold and down the yellow brick road for one more session of science education and entertainment.
From the department of scientists do the strangest things comes a feces story.  Thousands of years ago very large birds roamed parts of our globe.  In New Zealand the Moa left behind large mounds of droppings (reaching nearly half a foot in length sometimes) in caves and other habitats.  The Moa

were a large flightless bird of a genus specific to New Zealand, although a distant cousin to the Ostrich and the Emu. Some Moa grew to turkey size while other species were up to four metres high.

Researchers picking through the feces found DNA from 10 different species.

The researchers suggest all moa were probably eating a variety of plants, dominated by herbs and sub-shrubs (shrubs less than about 3 feet, or 1 meter, tall).

Archeologists have found evidence of chemical warfare used in Roman times.

...about twenty Roman soldiers, found in a siege-mine at the city of Dura-Europos, Syria, met their deaths not as a result of sword or spear, but through asphyxiation.

Bitumen and sulfur crystals were set afire producing choking gases.  The gas was pumped by bellows into the tunnel resulting in death within minutes for the Roman soldiers.

From a range outside my ability to grasp in some measures comes news of supersolids which act as both a solid and a frictionless liquid at the same time.

Able to exist only at low temperatures, a supersolid behaves very differently from objects in the everyday world.

I'd say!!!  Research into ultracold atomic physics is producing materials that act in ways that are not normal in our warmer world.

Coffee drinkers look out.

'High caffeine users' - those who consumed more than the equivalent of seven cups of instant coffee a day - were three times more likely to have heard a person's voice when there was no one there compared with 'low caffeine users' who consumed less than the equivalent of one cup of instant coffee a day.

 And all this time I thought that was old age.  LOL.

For more science news see these and other websites:

General Science Collectors:
Eureka Science News
New Scientist
LiveScience

Blogs:
ScienceBlogs
Tetrapod Zoologyvertebrate paleontology
Laelapsmore vertebrate paleontology
Cantauri Dreamsspace exploration
Deep Sea Newsmarine biology

Techie and Science News:
Wired News
Techonology Review

NASA beauty picture of the day.  For more see the NASA website.  These pictures are evidence of your tax dollars hard at work.

Evil Eye Nebula, NASA, Public Domain

Peace.

Full post as published by Never In Our Names on January 16, 2009 (boomark / email).