Scientists map speed of climate change

Space & Earth / Environment

Dec 23, 2009 | 2.8 / 5 (27) | 23

New study finds that the average ecosystem will need to shift about a quarter mile per year to keep pace with global climate change.

Scientists discover how the brain encodes memories at a cellular level

Medicine & Health / Research

Dec 23, 2009 | 4.8 / 5 (31) | 16

Scientists at UC Santa Barbara have made a major discovery in how the brain encodes memories. The finding, published in the December 24 issue of the journal Neuron, could eventually lead to the development ...

Why newborn babies can't walk

Medicine & Health / Neuroscience

Dec 18, 2009 | 4.2 / 5 (13) | 16

(PhysOrg.com) -- The first steps of an infant is a real milestone in the development of all mammals including humans, but little is known about why some animals can walk soon after birth, while others need ...

Panasonic plans home-use storage cell

Technology / Energy

Dec 23, 2009 | 4.1 / 5 (20) | 9

Panasonic Corp., which recently made a successful takeover bid for Sanyo Electric Co., plans to market a lithium-ion storage cell for home use around fiscal 2011.

Court bans sale of Word; Microsoft promises fix

Technology / Software

Dec 22, 2009 | 4.3 / 5 (12) | 8

(AP) -- A federal appeals court ordered Microsoft Corp. to stop selling its Word program in January and pay a Canadian software company $290 million for violating a patent, upholding the judgment of a lower ...

LG Display claims world's thinnest TV panel

Electronics / Hardware

Dec 21, 2009 | 4.2 / 5 (11) | 8

South Korea's LG Display said Monday it has developed the world's thinnest LCD television panel, measuring 2.6 millimetres (0.1 inches).

Glacier melt adds ancient edibles to marine buffet

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

Dec 23, 2009 | 4 / 5 (11) | 7

Glaciers along the Gulf of Alaska are enriching stream and near shore marine ecosystems from a surprising source - ancient carbon contained in glacial runoff, researchers from four universities and the U.S. ...

Tiny nano-electromagnets turn a cloak of invisibility into a possibility

Physics / General Physics

Dec 22, 2009 | 4.6 / 5 (14) | 7

A team of researchers at the FOM institute AMOLF (The Netherlands) has succeeded for the first time in powering an energy transfer between nano-electromagnets with the magnetic field of light.

Researcher explains mystery of golden ratio

Other Sciences / Mathematics

Dec 21, 2009 | 2.6 / 5 (21) | 7

The Egyptians supposedly used it to guide the construction the Pyramids. The architecture of ancient Athens is thought to have been based on it. Fictional Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon tried to unravel ...

Physicists detect two candidate dark matter interactions, but say the data are not conclusive

Physics / General Physics

Dec 18, 2009 | 4.1 / 5 (16) | 6

(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists have spent decades searching for the elusive material known as dark matter, which is believed to make up 25 percent of the universe. On Thursday, Dec. 17, a team of physicists including ...

More precise measurements of the W boson

Physics / General Physics

Dec 21, 2009 | 3.8 / 5 (17) | 5

(PhysOrg.com) -- "The W boson is one of the very few major building blocks of matter," Dmitri Denisov tells PhysOrg.com. "It is a member of a family of particles that is the most fundamental in nature. The W boson is res ...

Tracing the traces: Nanogram concentrations of a toxic compound detected in chlorinated tap water

Chemistry / Analytical Chemistry

Dec 23, 2009 | 5 / 5 (4) | 6

(PhysOrg.com) -- Drinking water can transmit a number of diseases, including typhoid, dysentery, cholera, and diarrhea, which can then spread explosively throughout an entire service area. To avoid this problem, drinking ...

Motorized knee can make you run faster

Technology / Engineering

Dec 22, 2009 | 4.3 / 5 (11) | 5

(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists at the Tsukuba University in Japan have come up with a motorized knee you can attach to your leg to make you run faster and use less muscle power.

War-torn 'nursery' hopes to send monkeys to Mars

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

Dec 20, 2009 | 2.4 / 5 (7) | 5

The monkeys at this run-down research centre which was once the pride of Soviet science have seen it all -- a brutal civil war, freezing winters and starvation.

Potatoes, algae replace oil in US company's plastics

Chemistry / Materials Science

Dec 21, 2009 | 3.9 / 5 (17) | 5

Frederic Scheer is biding his time, convinced that by 2013 the price of oil will be so high that his bio-plastics, made from vegetables and plants, will be highly marketable.

First Jesus-era house discovered in Nazareth

Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils

Dec 21, 2009 | 2.7 / 5 (6) | 5

(AP) -- Just in time for Christmas, archaeologists on Monday unveiled what may have been the home of one of Jesus' childhood neighbors. The humble dwelling is the first dating to the era of Jesus to be discovered ...