Ayahuasca fixings found in 1,000-year-old bundle in the Andes

Today's hipster creatives and entrepreneurs are hardly the first generation to partake of ayahuasca, according to archaeologists who have discovered traces of the powerfully hallucinogenic potion in a 1,000-year-old leather bundle buried in a cave in the Bolivian Andes.

from All Top News -- ScienceDaily http://bit.ly/2YdACtk

New 3-foot-tall relative of Tyrannosaurus rex

'Suskityrannus gives us a glimpse into the evolution of tyrannosaurs just before they take over the planet,' said Sterling Nesbit.

from All Top News -- ScienceDaily http://bit.ly/2Lqggvd

Radical desalination approach may disrupt the water industry

Researchers report that they have developed a radically different desalination approach--''temperature swing solvent extraction (TSSE)''--for hypersaline brines. Their study demonstrates that TSSE can desalinate very high-salinity brines, up to seven times the concentration of seawater.

from All Top News -- ScienceDaily http://bit.ly/2GZACpI

Blue supergiant stars open doors to concert in space

Blue supergiants are rock-and-roll: they live fast and die young. This makes them rare and difficult to study. Before space telescopes were invented, few blue supergiants had been observed, so our knowledge of these stars was limited. Astronomers have now studied the sounds originating inside these stars and discovered that almost all blue supergiants shimmer in brightness because of waves on their surface.

from All Top News -- ScienceDaily http://bit.ly/2YdcF5f

Nature's dangerous decline 'unprecedented,' species extinction rates 'accelerating'

Nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history -- and the rate of species extinctions is accelerating, with grave impacts on people around the world now likely, warns a landmark new report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).

from All Top News -- ScienceDaily http://bit.ly/2VNAQJZ

Fracking: Earthquakes are triggered well beyond fluid injection zones

Using data from field experiments and computer modeling of ground faults, researchers have discovered that the practice of subsurface fluid injection used in 'fracking' and wastewater disposal for oil and gas exploration could cause significant, rapidly spreading earthquake activity beyond the fluid diffusion zone. The results account for the observation that the frequency of man-made earthquakes in some regions of the country surpass natural earthquake hotspots.

from All Top News -- ScienceDaily http://bit.ly/2DMiGya

Sculpting super-fast light pulses

Researchers have developed a novel and compact method of shaping ultrafast light pulses.

from All Top News -- ScienceDaily http://bit.ly/2H0S3r6

Researchers crack the peanut genome

Working to understand the genetics of peanut disease resistance and yield, researchers led by scientists at the University of Georgia have uncovered the peanut's unlikely and complicated evolution.

from All Top News -- ScienceDaily http://bit.ly/2VHDC3k

Arsenic-breathing life discovered in the tropical Pacific Ocean

In low-oxygen parts of the ocean, some microbes are surviving by getting energy from arsenic. This holdover from the ancient Earth was not known to still exist in the open ocean.

from All Top News -- ScienceDaily http://bit.ly/2VFB0CV

A genomic tour-de-force reveals the last 5,000 years of horse history

Each year on the first Saturday in May, Thoroughbred horses reach speeds of over 40 miles per hour as they compete to win the Kentucky Derby. But the domestic horse wasn't always bred for speed. In fact, an international team now has evidence to suggest that the modern horse is genetically quite different from the horses of even just a few hundred years ago.

from All Top News -- ScienceDaily http://bit.ly/2LkqMnQ

Giant panda's bamboo diet still looks surprisingly carnivorous

Giant pandas are unusual in being extremely specialized herbivores that feed almost exclusively on highly fibrous bamboo, despite belonging to a clade (Carnivora) of primarily flesh-eating carnivores. But a study suggests that the switch to a restricted vegetarian diet wasn't, in some respects, as big an evolutionary leap as it seems.

from All Top News -- ScienceDaily http://bit.ly/2VHDz7E

Knit 1, purl 2: Assembly instructions for a robot?

Researchers have used computationally controlled knitting machines to create plush toys and other knitted objects that are actuated by tendons. It's an approach they say might someday be used to cost-effectively make soft robots and wearable technologies.

from All Top News -- ScienceDaily http://bit.ly/2GYxZFK

Chewing versus sex in duck-billed dinosaurs

The duck-billed hadrosaurs walked the Earth over 90-million years ago and were one of the most successful groups of dinosaurs. But why were these 2-3 ton giants so successful? A new study shows that their special adaptations in teeth and jaws and in their head crests were crucial, and provides new insights into how these innovations evolved.

from All Top News -- ScienceDaily http://bit.ly/2JbTfJE