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	<title>Junior Science Reporter &#187; Living things</title>
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	<description>Science news for children aged 7-11</description>
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		<title>Spinning spider silk</title>
		<link>http://www.juniorsciencereporter.org.uk/?p=420</link>
		<comments>http://www.juniorsciencereporter.org.uk/?p=420#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 12 Feb 2015 17:23:39 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joanna Carpenter]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Animals including humans]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Living things]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Properties and changes of materials]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[video]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[golden orb-weaver]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[kevlar]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[living]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[living things]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[materials]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[news]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[protein]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[silk]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[spider]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[spiders]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[spin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[steel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[thread]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[web]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.juniorsciencereporter.org.uk/?p=420</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Researchers at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada, are working out how to make artificial spider silk. Spiders build their webs out of lightweight, incredibly tough, slightly stretchy spider silk. It is stronger than steel and tougher than kevlar, which is used to make puncture-proof bicycle inner tubes. The building blocks of the silk are particular types of a substance called protein. (Different kinds of proteins are found in your hair and in foods such as meat and eggs). Jan Rainey and his coworkers have worked out exactly which proteins make up the spider silk and how they are joined to each other. The difficult part, though, is spinning the proteins into long strands. The researchers are still working on that. Spiders make up to seven different types of silk, with slightly different properties. For instance, the toughest sort is used to wrap up prey caught in the spider&#8217;s web. Normal silk comes from silk threads spun by silk worms when they are making a cocoon. Groups of silk worms are fairly easy to look after and their cocoons can be unwound into lengths of silk thread. However, spiders are more difficult to look after and in groups may begin [...]]]></description>
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		<title>Playing crocodiles</title>
		<link>http://www.juniorsciencereporter.org.uk/?p=416</link>
		<comments>http://www.juniorsciencereporter.org.uk/?p=416#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 12 Feb 2015 17:06:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joanna Carpenter]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Living things]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Living things and their habitats]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[crocodile]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[crocodiles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[news]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[play]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.juniorsciencereporter.org.uk/?p=416</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Next time you&#8217;re enjoying a splashabout in water, think of crocodiles. Not to keep safe &#8211; there&#8217;s little danger you&#8217;ll see any in the UK &#8211; but because it turns out that crocodiles like a good splashabout just as much as we do. We normally think of crocodiles as quite serious, but Vladimir Dinet, a research assistant professor in psychology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (USA), has spent ten years watching crocodiles. He has seen them playing about, with each other, with a river otter and people, and with wooden balls. Professor Dinet says that a man who rescued a crocodile that had been shot in the head became close friends with the animal and they played together happily every day until the crocodile died 20 years later. But, just in case you spot a crocodile in the water, don&#8217;t wait to find out if he wants to play. You don&#8217;t want to find out too late he&#8217;s hungry.]]></description>
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		<item>
		<title>Want to sell your poo?</title>
		<link>http://www.juniorsciencereporter.org.uk/?p=353</link>
		<comments>http://www.juniorsciencereporter.org.uk/?p=353#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 04 Feb 2015 21:09:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joanna Carpenter]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Animals including humans]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Living things]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[bacteria]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[C. difficile]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Clostridium difficile]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[donation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[faecal transplant]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[good bacteria]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[gut]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Massachusetts]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[news]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[pay]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[poo]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[USA]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.juniorsciencereporter.org.uk/?p=353</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[If you&#8217;re a bit short of pocket money, you can now sell your poo to doctors in Medford, Massachusetts, in the USA. The OpenBiome organisation is paying $40 for donations of poo, provided they are sure it has lots of &#8216;good&#8217; bacteria. You can even win a prize if you make the single largest donation each month! Unfortunately, you can only donate if you live or work near Medford. We often think of bacteria as germs that make us sick, but some are good for us. If we don&#8217;t have enough good bacteria in our guts, then bad ones that make us sick can take over. Our guts extract the goodness from our food and discard the rest as poo. One type of bad bacteria is called Clostridium difficile, known as C. difficile for short. It can cause diarrhoea, stomach pain and fever. Mostly, if bacteria are making you unwell, a doctor might give you antibiotics, which kill the bacteria and make you better.  But the trouble with C. difficile is that the antibiotics might kill the good bacteria in your gut, and you want them. Now researchers say that the best way to treat C. difficile infection is to get good bacteria from someone else [...]]]></description>
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		<title>Sea slug: plant or animal?</title>
		<link>http://www.juniorsciencereporter.org.uk/?p=350</link>
		<comments>http://www.juniorsciencereporter.org.uk/?p=350#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 04 Feb 2015 17:41:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joanna Carpenter]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Living things]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Living things and their habitats]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cells]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[chloroplasts]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[genes]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[green]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[light]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[news]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[photosynthesize]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sea slug]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[spectrum]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.juniorsciencereporter.org.uk/?p=350</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Researchers have discovered that the sea slug Elysia chlorotica uses genes from algae to gather energy from sunlight. Genes are instructions for how to build and maintain a body.  The sea slugs have &#8216;stolen&#8217; instructions for how to look after molecules called chloroplasts, which absorb energy from sunlight. The chloroplasts give the sea slugs additional energy to live and grow, so they have some energy even when they don&#8217;t eat. It also gives them a bright green colour.  (Sunlight is made up of all the colours of the rainbow; the chloroplasts look green because that&#8217;s the only colour they don&#8217;t absorb.) The researchers want to study the slugs some more to find out how the chloroplasts keep working for as long as up to nine months, which is longer than they work for in the algae.]]></description>
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		<title>Which is better for you &#8211; oranges or orange juice?</title>
		<link>http://www.juniorsciencereporter.org.uk/?p=322</link>
		<comments>http://www.juniorsciencereporter.org.uk/?p=322#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 28 Jan 2015 11:44:10 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joanna Carpenter]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Animals including humans]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Living things]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[carotenoids]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[flavenoids]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[healthy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[juice]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[news]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[orange]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[pasterization]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[pasteurize]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[vitamin C]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.juniorsciencereporter.org.uk/?p=322</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Oranges versus orange juice: Which one might be better for your health? Often the advice is given to eat an orange and drink water rather than drink oroange juice, which contains a relatively high amount of sugar. But it&#8217;snot quite so easy to say which option is more healthy, according to scientists. Although juice is indeed high in sugar, your body might find it easier to extract the goodness from juice than from the fruit itself. Oranges are packed with carotenoids and flavonoids that can make it less likely you&#8217;ll develop cancer, or problems with your heart and blood vessels. Ralf Schweiggert, Julian Aschoff and colleagues found that making pasteurized orange juice slightly lowered the levels of carotenoids and vitamin C. (Pasteurizing juice means heating it to kill germs). Sounds bad, right? But making the pasteurized improved the amount of carotenoid and vitamin C the body can absorb and use. And although juicing oranges reduced the levels of flavonoids, the ones left in the juice were much easier for the body to use than the ones in oranges.]]></description>
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		<title>Engravings rewrite human history</title>
		<link>http://www.juniorsciencereporter.org.uk/?p=230</link>
		<comments>http://www.juniorsciencereporter.org.uk/?p=230#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 16 Jan 2015 13:00:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joanna Carpenter]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Evolution and inheritance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Living things]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[evolution]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Homo erectus]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Neanderthals]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[news]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.juniorsciencereporter.org.uk/?p=230</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Scientists have found engravings on a 400,000 year-old fossilised shell from Java. It is the oldest known example of ancient humans deliberately creating pattern. Before these zigzag markings were found, the oldest known engravings were from 100,000 years ago. Those are thought to have been made by modern humans, or maybe Neanderthals.  (Neanderthals are an extinct close relatives of modern man. They died out about 40,000 years ago.) These newly found engravings are too old to have been made by modern humans or Neanderthals. That means they were made by an earlier human species, also extinct, known as Homo erectus. &#8220;[This] will change the way we think about this early human species,&#8221; Dr Stephen Munro of the Australian National University said. &#160; A reconstruction of a homo erectus man from the Sterkfontein Caves exhibition in South Africa. Credit: flowcomm on flickr.com. Used under CC BY 2.0 licence. A reconstruction of a Neanderthal man from the Neadnerthal Museum in Mettmann, Germany. Credit: Erich Ferdinand on flickr.com. Used under CC BY 2.0 licence.]]></description>
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		<title>A frog that gives birth</title>
		<link>http://www.juniorsciencereporter.org.uk/?p=217</link>
		<comments>http://www.juniorsciencereporter.org.uk/?p=217#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 08 Jan 2015 16:32:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joanna Carpenter]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Living things]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Living things and their habitats]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[frog]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[froglet]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[living]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[news]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[reproduction]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tadpole]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.juniorsciencereporter.org.uk/?p=217</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Most frogs lay eggs (frogspawn) in water that grow into tadpoles, froglets and then grown-up frogs. Now scientists have found a frog in the rainforests of Sulawesi Island, part of Indonesia, that gives birth to tadpoles! Two tadpoles, each about 10 millimeters long, shortly after birth. The newly described species Limnonectes larvaepartus is the only species of frog known to give birth to live tadpoles. Credit: Jim McGuire, UC Berkeley Jim McGuire, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley in the USA was in the rainforest and found a female frog giving birth to tadpoles. what he saw confirms what others had suspected but never seen happening. The frog, newly named Limnonectes larvaepartus (L. larvaepartus for short), was discovered a few decades ago by Indonesian researcher Djoko Iskandar, who works with Professor McGuire. Most male frogs fertilize eggs after the female lays them. About a dozen species have evolved ways to fertilize eggs inside the female&#8217;s body. Some of these deposit their fertilized eggs under rocks in streams but others give birth to froglets (miniature replicas of the adults). There are many other bizarre reproductive variations. Some frogs carry eggs in pouches on their back, brood tadpoles in their vocal [...]]]></description>
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		<item>
		<title>Ancient volcanoes linked to dinosaurs&#8217; extinction</title>
		<link>http://www.juniorsciencereporter.org.uk/?p=198</link>
		<comments>http://www.juniorsciencereporter.org.uk/?p=198#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 07 Jan 2015 11:20:11 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joanna Carpenter]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Animals including humans]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Living things]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dinosaur]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dinosaurs]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[extinction]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[lava]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[living]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[news]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[rocks]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[volcanoes]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.juniorsciencereporter.org.uk/?p=198</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[New research from Princeton University in the USA has shown that massive volcanic explosions 66 million years ago spewed enormous amounts of climate-altering gases into the atmosphere immediately before and during the extinction of the dinosaurs. A range of volcanoes in western India known as the Deccan Traps, which were once three times larger than France, began a phase of eruptions roughly 250,000 years before the extinction. For the next 750,000 years, the volcanoes unleashed more than 1.1 million cubic kilometers (264,000 cubic miles) of lava. The results suggest the Deccan Traps played a role in the dinosaurs&#8217; extinction, and challenge the idea that a meteorite impact in Mexico was the sole cause. The researchers used a precise rock-dating technique to work out when the main eruption started. &#160;]]></description>
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		<title>Supershiny eggs</title>
		<link>http://www.juniorsciencereporter.org.uk/?p=182</link>
		<comments>http://www.juniorsciencereporter.org.uk/?p=182#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 14 Dec 2014 11:33:22 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joanna Carpenter]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Animals including humans]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Living things]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[colour]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[eggs]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[iridescence]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nanostructures]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[news]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[shiny]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.juniorsciencereporter.org.uk/?p=182</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Relatives of ostriches and emus, Tinamou birds, lay supershiny eggs, but until now no-one knew how the eggs got so beautiful. Researchers at the University of Akron in the USA looked carefully at the eggs and found they were shiny thanks to a thin. smooth outer covering over the shell. “This smoothness causes light to be reflected in a specular manner, like off of a lake or mirror. The bumpiness of other eggs causes them reflect light diffusely, like a cloud,” Matthew Shawkey, associate professor of biology, explains. If the researchers can find out how the birds make the gloss, it might be possible to develop new coatings for ceramics and floors. The eggs are also iridescent, meaning the colour they appear depends on the angle you look at them from.  Other iridescent surfaces are butterfly wings or some seashells. The researchers removed the outer layer and found the egg surface beneath had teeny tiny structures that made the iridescence.]]></description>
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		<title>Electric eels hunt by remote control</title>
		<link>http://www.juniorsciencereporter.org.uk/?p=140</link>
		<comments>http://www.juniorsciencereporter.org.uk/?p=140#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 08 Dec 2014 10:24:55 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joanna Carpenter]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Living things and their habitats]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Electric eel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[electric shock]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[muscles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[news]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[prey]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.juniorsciencereporter.org.uk/?p=140</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Researchers have discovered that electric eels use electricity as a sort of remote control on the fishes&#8217; muscles. Kenneth Catania of Vanderbilt University in the USA watched some hungry eels and fish in fish tanks. When the eels saw the fish, they released pulses of electricity &#8211; up to 600 volts &#8211; and the fish froze in position, unable to escape. Professor Catania wondered how the eels `froze&#8217; the fish.  He discovered that the eel&#8217;s electric pulses send a `keep still&#8217; message to the fishes&#8217; nerves that control their muscles. They seem to copy the normal electrical pulses the fish nerves use to tell muscles what to do. The eels have two other types of pulses.  A separate zap makes nearby fish have twitchy muscles, which might help reveal hiding fish. The eels also use low-voltage pulses as a kind of sonar to sense what else might be around them in the water.]]></description>
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