Veering towards reality

How birds fly in a V formation --

http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/01/15/birds-that-fly-in-a-v-formation-use-an-amazing-trick/

Notice the big questions are unanswered, like how the birds manage to stay in tune.

Atomic level details still a mystery

This is a description of an article, behind a pay wall at a magazine named: Nature Structural & Molecular BiologyA molecular motor finds its track pp920 - 921
Jared C Cochran and F Jon Kull
doi:10.1038/nsmb.2644
The detailed mechanism by which the molecular motors kinesin and
myosin travel along their respective protein tracks as they generate
force during motile processes is still poorly understood. In a recent
breakthrough, a crystal structure of kinesin in complex with tubulin
illuminates the atomic-level details of a motor-track interaction,
answering many questions yet leaving a number of mysteries unresolved.
http://links.ealert.nature.com/ctt?kn=37&ms=NDIyMzkwMDkS1&r=MTc2OTgwNzA4NAS2&b=2&j=MTk3NDk3ODEwS0&mt=1&rt=0

Rip and click

Science finds:

- If you can remember it, you can remember it wrong 

Some things don't change, right?

Nice write up about neurogenesis -- new brain cells--  and new research. The author poses the question of what use are these new neuron cells in the brain. One answer does not occur to her, and won't to scientists, either. The world is changing, and man's brain needs to change also, to increase his intellectual functions, perceptions, and adaptations. The brain is changing. Makes scientists shiver to consider that. The idea that 2+2 might equal one thing today, and a different thing tomorrow, would seem to pull the rug out from under any intellectual discourse. So whisper when you discuss this. Or not.

Study on electricity needs to be replicated

An exciting study at Tufts University finding that there is a unique electric sign to cells that are likely to change in a manner that is not considered healthy for a person..

"Galaxies have a voracious appetite for fuel "

From the mymymy department, we have

The headline

Notre Dame astronomers find massive supply of gas around modern galaxies

The text begins

Galaxies have a voracious appetite for fuel -- in this case, fresh gas -- but astronomers have had difficulty finding the pristine gas that should be falling onto galaxies. 

Dark Matter Mysteries Deepen

Wired has a nice article on recent research reporting surprising observations that may relate to dark matter. A brief excerpt:
..
. dark matter is thought to barely interact with itself. The dark matter should just coast through itself and move at the same speed as the hardly interacting galaxies. Instead, it looks [with the recent observations] like the dark matter is crashing into something — perhaps itself – and slowing down faster than the galaxies are. But this would require the dark matter to be able to interact with itself in a completely new an unexpected way, a “dark force” that affects only dark matter. This would be a new fundamental force of the universe, in addition to the four known forces: gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak forces.
...[If this new property is correctly supposed] in particular it would help solve the core/cusp problem, an outstanding mystery seen in dwarf galaxies and star clusters. If dark matter only feels the force of gravity, it should tend to clump in the center of these objects. But astronomers over and over observe the opposite: The dark matter in dwarf galaxies and star clusters is evenly distributed. If dark matter can interact through some sort of dark force, it can bump into itself and puff out, like a hot gas.