Science Daily Picks

Found : Apple Gene for Red
CSIRO scientist have found the gene that controls the color of apples. The red color of apple skin is result of anthocyanins (responsible for blue or red color in plants). It was known that color of apples is affected by light (less light results in poor color), so the scientist looked for genes that were activated by light and compared these to genes in a green apple and bingo!


Learning During Sleep?
Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg have taken a step towards understanding communication between memory areas. Their study shows a link between sleep and memory consolidation (transfer of memory from hippocampus to the cerebral cortex).

Cities Change The Songs Of Birds Leiden University researchers studied the songs of the great tit (Parus major), a successful urban dweller in the center of ten major European cities and compared the songs to that of the bird living in nearby forest sites. The results show that songs that are important for mate selection or territory defense are shorter, sung faster and at a higher pitch by the urban bird. The findings published on Dec.5 in Current Biology show divergence within a species because of the environment and could very well lead to speciation.

NASA Telescope Sees Black Hole Munch On A Star.
NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer has caught a black hole eating a star, from the initial capture to the last bites.

Water Still Flows In Brief Spurts On Mars, NASA Images Suggest
NASA photographs have revealed bright new deposits seen in two gullies on Mars that suggest water carried sediment through them sometime during the past seven years.
So let the hunt for the ETs begin :)