http://www.physorg.com/ en-us Physorg.com internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. (AP) -- A spacewalking astronaut put aside the impending birth of his daughter and blazed through his first-ever venture outside the International Space Station on Saturday. http://www.physorg.com/news178009250.html Space & Earth Sat, 21 Nov 2009 17:33:55 EST news178009250 (AP) -- Computer hackers have broken into a server at a well-respected climate change research center in Britain and posted hundreds of private e-mails and documents online - stoking debate over whether some scientists have overstated the case for man-made climate change. http://www.physorg.com/news178046136.html Technology Sat, 21 Nov 2009 17:16:08 EST news178046136 (AP) -- Scientists are preparing the world's largest atom smasher to explore the depths of matter after successfully restarting the $10 billion machine following more than a year of repairs. http://www.physorg.com/news178024871.html Physics Sat, 21 Nov 2009 11:21:52 EST news178024871 (AP) -- Two fingers and a tooth removed from Galileo Galilei's corpse in a Florentine basilica in the 18th century and given up for lost have been found again and will soon be put on display, an Italian museum director said Friday. http://www.physorg.com/news178009204.html Other Sciences Sat, 21 Nov 2009 07:00:32 EST news178009204 (PhysOrg.com) -- Food production of modern human societies is mostly based on large-scale monoculture crops, but it now appears that advanced insect societies have the same practice. Our societies took just ten thousand years of (mainly cultural) evolution to adopt this habit and we are far from convinced that it is sustainable. http://www.physorg.com/news177954268.html Biology Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:20:01 EST news177954268 (AP) -- A lawsuit in Wisconsin is bringing a fresh challenge to the practice of paying for keywords on Google and other search engines to boost one company's link over a rival's. http://www.physorg.com/news177954916.html Technology Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:56:11 EST news177954916 (AP) -- A Vatican researcher has rekindled the age-old debate over the Shroud of Turin, saying that faint writing on the linen proves it was the burial cloth of Jesus. Experts say the historian may be reading too much into the markings, and they stand by carbon-dating that points to the shroud being a medieval forgery. http://www.physorg.com/news177954765.html Other Sciences Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:53:35 EST news177954765 (PhysOrg.com) -- The atomic-level action of a remarkable class of ring-shaped protein motors has been uncovered by researchers with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory using a state-of-the-art protein crystallography beamline at the Advanced Light Source (ALS). These protein motors play pivotal roles in gene expression and replication, and are vital to the survival of all biological cells, as well as infectious agents, such as the human papillomavirus, which has been linked to cervical cancer. http://www.physorg.com/news177954624.html Biology Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:51:16 EST news177954624 (PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers from the NSLS and Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) have demonstrated a technique that could be used to significantly improve the quantity and quality of light produced from a free-electron laser (FEL) - a source that provides pulses of light that can be 1,000 times shorter than those at conventional storage ring light sources. http://www.physorg.com/news177952043.html Physics Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:24:58 EST news177952043 The world's biggest atom-smasher, shut down after its inauguration in September 2008 amid technical faults, restarted on Friday, a spokesman for the European Organisation for Nuclear Research said. http://www.physorg.com/news177951527.html Physics Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:00:46 EST news177951527 Children who suffer physical or emotional abuse may be faced with accelerated cellular aging as adults, according to new research from Butler Hospital and Brown University. http://www.physorg.com/news177951030.html Medicine & Health Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:51:27 EST news177951030 (PhysOrg.com) -- A multi-trillion-watt laser at the University of Rochester has simulated a stellar jet -- an outpouring of matter from a fledgling star -- with unprecedented realism. http://www.physorg.com/news177949235.html Physics Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:27:46 EST news177949235 On the beach at Monster, bulldozers painstakingly turn sand dredged from the bottom of the North Sea bed into dunes in an ambitious effort to safeguard the Netherlands from flooding. http://www.physorg.com/news177946209.html Space & Earth Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:10:02 EST news177946209 Deep under the sea, there's a battle of life and death going on, with no holds barred. Sponges and other marine animals which cannot move around might seem to be defenceless against predators. Yet nothing is further from the truth. These animals produce biologically active chemical substances which provide them with an effective defence against their enemies. http://www.physorg.com/news177947175.html Biology Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:10:02 EST news177947175 (PhysOrg.com) -- Not just birds, but also a few species of bats face a long journey every year. Researchers at Princeton University in the U.S. and at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Radolfzell, Germany studied the migratory behaviour of the largest extant family of bats, the so-called "Vespertilionidae" with the help of mathematical models. They discovered that the migration over short as well as long distances of various kinds of bats evolved independently within the family. http://www.physorg.com/news177948336.html Biology Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:06:17 EST news177948336 A US judge set February 18 for a hearing on the revised legal settlement between Google and US authors and publishers that would allow the Internet giant to scan and sell millions of books online. http://www.physorg.com/news177945750.html Technology Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:50:01 EST news177945750 The World Health Organisation said Friday that a mutation had been found in samples of the swine flu virus taken following the first two deaths from the pandemic in Norway. http://www.physorg.com/news177945959.html Medicine & Health Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:26:27 EST news177945959 Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center and VCU Institute of Molecular Medicine researchers have identified a gene that may play a pivotal role in two processes that are essential for tumor development, growth and progression to metastasis. Scientists hope the finding could lead to an effective therapy to target and inhibit the expression of this gene resulting in inhibition of cancer growth. http://www.physorg.com/news177945339.html Medicine & Health Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:16:30 EST news177945339 A key question in the origin of biological molecules like RNA and DNA is how they first came together billions of years ago from simple precursors. Now, in a study appearing in this week's Journal of Biological Chemistry, researchers in Italy have reconstructed one of the earliest evolutionary steps yet: generating long chains of RNA from individual subunits using nothing but warm water. http://www.physorg.com/news177945116.html Chemistry Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:12:36 EST news177945116 (PhysOrg.com) -- Not too long ago, it seemed that ethanol production was the wave of the future. The use of trash, wood chips or different types of plants -- usually grass or corn -- to make ethanol was considered a way to help reduce reliance on foreign oil. However, investor interest in the process cooled, especially since it turned out that some materials were not terribly efficient when it came to producing ethanol. However, wood chips are once again being considered in the quest to create an industry based around cellulosic ethanol. http://www.physorg.com/news177942392.html Chemistry Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:27:35 EST news177942392 (PhysOrg.com) -- On the surface, English, Japanese, and Kinande, a member of the Bantu family of languages spoken in the Democratic Republic of Congo, have little in common. It is not just that the vocabularies of these three languages are vastly different; many of their rules of grammar diverge too. http://www.physorg.com/news177940651.html Other Sciences Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:58:56 EST news177940651 Physicists at UC Santa Barbara have made an important advance in electrically controlling quantum states of electrons, a step that could help in the development of quantum computing. The work is published online today on the Science Express Web site. http://www.physorg.com/news177938057.html Physics Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:18:55 EST news177938057 (PhysOrg.com) -- "Carbon nanotubes are exciting for fundamental physics, and for potential technological applications," Nadya Mason tells PhysOrg.com. "However, we are generally limited in the way that we can study them. Many of these limitations have to do with controlling tunneling, or the way electrons move on and off the nanotube." In order to overcome this limitation, Mason, a scientist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, participated in an experiment using a superconducting tunnel probe in a carbon nanotube to observe spectroscopic features. http://www.physorg.com/news177934374.html Nanotechnology Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:13:55 EST news177934374 (PhysOrg.com) -- A team of researchers has implemented support for 'trusted computing' in a commercially available version of the open source operating system Linux, breaking new ground in the global drive toward more secure computing environments. http://www.physorg.com/news177931452.html Technology Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:40:02 EST news177931452 (PhysOrg.com) -- When foreign invaders trip the immune system`s alarm, antibodies need to be specially sculpted to attack them head on. New research now shows that gene segments called enhancers control the reshuffling of antibody genes that makes such a precise and coordinated attack possible. http://www.physorg.com/news177931573.html Medicine & Health Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:38:53 EST news177931573 (PhysOrg.com) -- Glaxo-SmithKline has joined forces with Nabi Pharmaceuticals to produce a vaccine to help smokers give up their addiction permanently. http://www.physorg.com/news177922617.html Medicine & Health Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:30:02 EST news177922617 (PhysOrg.com) -- When NASA's Cassini spacecraft began orbiting Saturn five years ago, a dozen highly-tuned science instruments set to work surveying, sniffing, analyzing and scrutinizing the Saturnian system. http://www.physorg.com/news177927581.html Space & Earth Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:20:02 EST news177927581 (PhysOrg.com) -- Research by the University of Warwick and the University of Manchester finds that psychological therapy could be 32 times more cost effective at making you happy than simply obtaining more money. The research has obvious implications for large compensation awards in law courts but also has wider implications for general public health. http://www.physorg.com/news177927882.html Medicine & Health Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:26:06 EST news177927882 (PhysOrg.com) -- Will advances in neuroscience make the justice system more accurate and unbiased? Or could brain-based testing wrongly condemn some and trample the civil liberties of others? The new field of neurolaw is cross-examining for answers. http://www.physorg.com/news177927125.html Medicine & Health Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:13:16 EST news177927125 (PhysOrg.com) -- One of the great promises of nanotechnologies lies in its ability to create drug-containing nanoparticles decorated with targeting molecules that recognize and bind to cancer cells, providing drug delivery only at the site of the targeted cells. Such site-specific drug delivery would not only boost the cancer-killing activity of a drug payload but also reduce potential side effects by greatly restricting or even eliminating the amount of drug reaching healthy tissue. http://www.physorg.com/news177922936.html Nanotechnology Fri, 20 Nov 2009 07:40:05 EST news177922936