Science News for Writers

Diane Downs shot her 3 children (her 3 yr old and 7 yr old were killed and 8 yr old was paralyzed) on a rural road in Oregon in 1983. The story drew national attention and resulted in a book by Ann Rule and a made-for-TV movie, both called Small Sacrifices. Most if not all of us find the subject both horrifying yet fascinating.  Every year, minor children are killed by a parent.  What causes a parent or step-parent to do such a thing?  What problem does the parent think such an act will solve? This is one of the most daunting and troubling issues of the human mind imaginable. Current thinking on the function of the brain states that our conscious mind acts more as a traffic cop, and that behaviors and actions come from one of the many systems or modules in the brain.  While free will does make one responsible for one's actions, current research on the brain indicates that free will may not exist, opening up so many questions.  Here is the rep...

Credit: Image courtesy of Asier Marzo, Bruce Drinkwater and Sriram Subramanian copyright 2015 A team of researchers from the Universities of Bristol and Sussex in  collaboration with Ultrahaptics has built a novel sonic tractor beam that can lift and move objects using sound waves. You may not have considered using sound to create a tractor beam, but researchers did and have developed not one but three sonic technologies that hold and manipulate small objects. Amazing stuff, this, straight out of science fiction. Here's the report with a link to the longer article in the journal Nature Communications. *  *  *  *  *  Sonic tractor beam moves stuff with sound The concept of tractor beams that can grab and lift objects has been used by science-fiction writers, and programs like Star Trek, but has since come to fascinate scientists and engineers. Researchers have now built a working tractor beam that uses high-amplitude sound waves ...

Credit: CSIRO The new method can reveal fingerprints on metal, plastic and glass. By adding a drop of liquid containing crystals to surfaces,  investigators  using a UV light are able to see invisible finger- prints "glow" in about 30 seconds. Recent advances in identifying suspects is truly amazing.  There is, for example,  a new method for dating the age of a fingerprint allowing investigators to focus on current evidence rather than having to check out prints left prior to a crime.  There is  a new method of scanning fingerprints that shows not only the surface whorls and loops of a fingerprint, it shows underlying structures of the skin as well.  There is now  a method for taking fingerprints off ATM receipts and other paper documents.  And in some countries, babies are being fingerprinted at birth to build a database to be used to track medical care, but, has the potential to be used to identify people later in...

Credit: Diagram from PNAS; designed by Renate Helmiss This diagram shows an interlinked system of animals that carry nutrients from ocean depths to deep inland -- through their poop, urine, and, upon death, decomposing bodies. A new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports that -- in the past -- this chain of whales, seabirds, migratory fish and large land mammals transported far greater amounts of nutrients than they do today. Here, the red arrows show the estimated amounts of phosphorus and other nutrients that were moved or diffused historically -- and how much these flows have been reduced today. Grey animals represent extinct or reduced densities of animal populations. If the world's food chain collapses. . . if.  What would the effects be on your characters?   It is said that our civilized behavior only runs skin deep.  Given the choice between starvation and access to food and water, what would your cha...

Credit: Stony Brook University Dr. Choi and her colleagues in the College of Engineering and Applied  Sciences,  Vikas Ashok, a teaching assistant in the Department of Computer Science,  and Song Feng, a fifth year PhD student in the same department. Some elements of writing style differentiate successful fiction Imagine the challenge publishers face, pouring over thousands of manuscripts to determine if a book will be a hit. Stony Brook Department of Computer Science Assistant Professor Yejin Choi thinks she has a tool to bring some science to that art, and she is co-author of a paper, Success with Style: Using Writing Style to Predict the Success of Novels , which was unveiled at the conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP) 2013. "Predicting the success of literary works poses a massive dilemma for publishers and aspiring writers alike," Choi said. "We examined the quantitative connection between writing style ...

Popular crime shows may help reduce sexual assault 'Law & Order' viewers have healthier understanding of sexual consent A new study reveals viewers of "Law and Order" have a better grasp of sexual consent than viewers of other crime dramas such as "CSI" or "NCIS," suggesting that individuals who watch programs in which sexual predators are punished may avoid sexual predatory behavior in real life. "One of the marked differences between 'Law & Order' and other crime dramas is its focus on the criminals' trials," said lead researcher Stacey Hust. "Viewers of 'Law & Order' not only see the criminal act taking place, but they typically see the criminal punished for the crime. This judicial sentencing is rarely seen in other crime dramas." Worlds of Women #3 :  Confronting Rape and Sexual Assault by Mary E Odem Purchase new or used from The world's largest independent booksel...

Credit: Image courtesy of Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine  Research Northern gannet use old fishing nets  as nesting  material  in their nesting colony at the  North Sea  island of Helgoland. Speaking of ideas for writers:  Since the invention of Bakelite in New York in 1907 by Leo Baekeland, plastics have become ubiquitous - everywhere in everyday life.  Leading to six huge patches of discarded plastic debris floating across the world's oceans, something we have achieved in just over 100 years.   Plastics don't break down, rather large pieces of plastic deconstruct into smaller pieces of plastic, microscopic in size that are consumed by fish from sardines to whales, and by sea birds. This is not good.  These marine animals form the very basis of the food chain that we rely on for our daily bread.  The consumption of microscopic fragments of plastics by sea life that contain no food v...

Credit: Egidijus Auksorius Institut Langevin These images were acquired with the fingerprint sensor based on full field optical coherence tomography (FF-OCT). Internal fingerprint sensor peers inside fingertips for more surefire ID Quickly detecting 'internal fingerprints,' sweat pores could make fingerprint sensors more reliable and less likely to be tricked by fake fingerprints Most optical fingerprint sensors today produce images by reflecting light from areas where the skin does not come in contact with a glass plate, a technique that captures details from only the very top layer of skin. In contrast, a new device images the 'internal fingerprints,' which have the same pattern as external fingerprints, but are about half a millimeter below the skin's surface. In the 1971 film Diamonds are Forever, British secret agent James Bond uses fake fingerprints as part of a ploy to assume the identity of a diamond smuggler. At the time, sham pri...

The settings on Doc Brown's Time Machine at the start of Back to the Future, Part II. It's the day fans of the flick, Back to the Future, Part II have long awaited.  The question is, how close are we to the cool things depicted in the movie?  Do any exist in our 2015 reality, hopefully hoepfully unaffected by Marty's and Doc Brown's fiddling around with the space/time continuum back in 1955? Thankfully, as weird as some fashions seem today, the clothes in the movie haven't made the scene. . . yet. How about hoverboards and flying cars?  Well, sorta.  Not in production, but definitely in development. Credit: Image courtesy of Ithaca College Professor Matthew Sullivan levitates a DeLorean figurine using superconductors. According to Matthew C. Sullivan, associate professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Ithaca College and superconductor researcher, "We're probably closer to being able to create a transportation s...

Credit: © vencav / Fotolia    Stonehenge. Feasts and food choices:  Culinary habits of the Stonehenge builders news.nationalgeographic.com    Map showing the location of Durrington Walls and its position in relation to Stonehenge.  Archaeologists have revealed new insights into cuisine choices and eating habits at Durrington Walls -- a Late Neolithic monument and settlement site thought to be the residence for the builders of nearby Stonehenge during the 25th century BC. Together with researchers at the University of Sheffield, detailed analysis of pottery and animal bones has uncovered evidence of organised feasts featuring barbeque-style roasting, and an unexpected pattern in how foods were distributed and shared across the site. Chemically analyzing food residues remaining on several hundred fragments of pottery, the York team found differences in the way pots were used. Pots deposited in residential areas were found to be u...