My picks from ScienceDaily

Simple Eyes Of Only Two Cells Guide Marine Zooplankton To The Light:

Researchers unravel how the very first eyes in evolution might have worked and how they guide the swimming of marine plankton towards light. Larvae of marine invertebrates - worms, sponges, jellyfish - have the simplest eyes that exist. They consist of no more than two cells: a photoreceptor cell and a pigment cell. These minimal eyes, called eyespots, resemble the 'proto-eyes' suggested by Charles Darwin as the first eyes to appear in animal evolution. They cannot form images but allow the animal to sense the direction of light. This ability is crucial for phototaxis - the swimming towards light exhibited by many zooplankton larvae. Myriads of planktonic animals travel guided by light every day. Their movements drive the biggest transport of biomass on earth.

Forgotten But Not Gone: How The Brain Re-learns:

Thanks to our ability to learn and to remember, we can perform tasks that other living things can not even dream of. However, we are only just beginning to get the gist of what really goes on in the brain when it learns or forgets something. What we do know is that changes in the contacts between nerve cells play an important role. But can these structural changes account for that well-known phenomenon that it is much easier to re-learn something that was forgotten than to learn something completely new?

'Powerhouses' From Living Cells -- Mitochondria -- Power New Explosives Detector:

Researchers in Missouri have borrowed the technology that living cells use to produce energy to develop a tiny, self-powered sensor for rapid detection of hidden explosives. The experimental sensor, about the size of a postage stamp, represents the first of its kind to be powered by mitochondria, the microscopic "powerhouses" that provide energy to living cells, the researchers say.

From Genes To Farmers' Fields: New 'Waterproof' Rice Developed:

"Waterproof" versions of popular varieties of rice, which can withstand 2 weeks of complete submergence, have passed tests in farmers' fields with flying colors. Several of these varieties are now close to official release by national and state seed certification agencies in Bangladesh and India, where farmers suffer major crop losses because of flooding of up to 4 million tons of rice per year. This is enough rice to feed 30 million people.

Complex Systems Science: How Do Math And Intuition Help Us Understand Whole Systems?:

Peter Dodds is lost. Well, not exactly. He knows he's going to meet me at 2:30 in the Davis Center. But just where? He doesn't remember. And yet, without hesitation, he walks into the atrium, past crowds of people, up the sweeping staircase and directly into Henderson's coffee shop.

There I sit, gulping a latte. How did he figure out where to go?

"t's an interesting kind of search problem," he says. "It just seemed like the right place to go. I figured you wouldn't be hanging out with the students, and that coffee might have something to do with this. I was right."

When Good Maples Go Red: Why Leaves Change Color In The Fall:

On a hushed autumn morning, when leaves have ripened to the fall, who hasn't stood under a flaming maple and wondered why it goes red?