http://www.physorg.com/science-news/ en-us PhysOrg.com provides the latest news on science, fossils, archaeology, chemistry, mathematics, biology and science technology. (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 (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) -- 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 A mathematical model has explained some of the remarkable features of mosquito hearing. In particular, the male can hear the faintest beats of the female's wings and yet is not deafened by loud noises. http://www.physorg.com/news177918117.html Other Sciences Fri, 20 Nov 2009 05:42:41 EST news177918117 Merely observing someone publicly blame an individual in an organization for a problem - even when the target is innocent - greatly increases the odds that the practice of blaming others will spread with the tenacity of the H1N1 flu, according to new research from the USC Marshall School of Business and Stanford University. http://www.physorg.com/news177874820.html Other Sciences Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:41:03 EST news177874820 William Shakespeare, who knew a thing or two about words, advised that "An honest tale speeds best, being plainly told." But the exact meaning of plain language isn't always easy to find. Even simple words like "most" and "least" can vary greatly in definition and interpretation, and are difficult to put into precise numbers. http://www.physorg.com/news177852815.html Other Sciences Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:00:02 EST news177852815 A suite of five ancient crocs, including one with teeth like boar tusks and another with a snout like a duck's bill, have been discovered in the Sahara by National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Paul Sereno. The five fossil crocs, three of them newly named species, are remains of a bizarre world of crocs that inhabited the southern land mass known as Gondwana some 100 million years ago. http://www.physorg.com/news177851529.html Other Sciences Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:17:59 EST news177851529 Researchers from Stony Brook University Medical Center in New York have confirmed that Homo floresiensis is a genuine ancient human species and not a descendant of healthy humans dwarfed by disease. Using statistical analysis on skeletal remains of a well-preserved female specimen, researchers determined the "hobbit" to be a distinct species and not a genetically flawed version of modern humans. Details of the study appear in the December issue of Significance, the magazine of the Royal Statistical Society. http://www.physorg.com/news177828426.html Other Sciences Thu, 19 Nov 2009 04:48:32 EST news177828426 You can make major discoveries by walking across a field and picking up every loose item you find. Dutch researcher Eva Kaptijn succeeded in discovering - based on 100,000 finds - that the Zerqa Valley in Jordan had been successively inhabited and irrigated for more than 13,000 years. But it was not just communities that built irrigation systems: the irrigation systems also built communities. http://www.physorg.com/news177784568.html Other Sciences Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:00:09 EST news177784568 (PhysOrg.com) -- The evolutionary history of New Zealand's many extinct flightless moa has been re-written in the first comprehensive study of more than 260 sub-fossil specimens to combine all known genetic, anatomical, geological and ecological information about the unique bird lineage. http://www.physorg.com/news177760311.html Other Sciences Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:00:02 EST news177760311 Consumers will work harder on a task if they're expecting to have to do something difficult at a later time, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research. http://www.physorg.com/news177703849.html Other Sciences Tue, 17 Nov 2009 23:10:01 EST news177703849 Hardening of the arteries has been detected in Egyptian mummies, some as old as 3,500 years, suggesting that the factors causing heart attack and stroke are not only modern ones; they afflicted ancient people, too. http://www.physorg.com/news177694227.html Other Sciences Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:40:03 EST news177694227 (PhysOrg.com) -- Ancient artifacts are almost always concerned with rich and powerful religious and political leaders, but new excavations of an ancient Maya site have unearthed a pyramid decorated with murals depicting the marketing and trading of goods by ordinary people around 1,350 years ago. http://www.physorg.com/news177582245.html Other Sciences Mon, 16 Nov 2009 10:30:01 EST news177582245 (PhysOrg.com) -- A new study pitting academic expertise against a computer in recreating a 425 million-year old jigsaw puzzle has discovered that there is no substitute for wisdom born out of experience. http://www.physorg.com/news177583145.html Other Sciences Mon, 16 Nov 2009 08:40:22 EST news177583145 Astronomer and long time science advocate Carl Sagan once said that he was "not very good at singing songs." But on Nov. 9 in Washington D.C., his voice could be heard singing about the wonders of universe -- 13 years after his death. http://www.physorg.com/news177269555.html Other Sciences Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:33:02 EST news177269555 There is a tendency to think that only men treat women in a sexist way, but a new study by a University of Miami researcher and his daughter shows that both men and women participate in maintaining a gender hierarchy in our society. The study, titled "Social Dominance and Sexual Self-Schema as Moderators of Sexist Reactions to Female Subtypes," was recently published by the journal of Sex Roles. http://www.physorg.com/news177260107.html Other Sciences Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:55:49 EST news177260107 (AP) -- Israel displayed for the first time Wednesday a collection of rare coins charred and burned from the Roman destruction of the Jewish Temple nearly 2,000 years ago. http://www.physorg.com/news177176994.html Other Sciences Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:52:37 EST news177176994 (AP) -- Scientists say they've discovered a new dinosaur species in South Africa that may help explain how the creatures evolved into the largest animals on land. http://www.physorg.com/news177154893.html Other Sciences Wed, 11 Nov 2009 09:41:56 EST news177154893 (PhysOrg.com) -- Although often seen as an inconsequential feature of digital technologies, one's self-representation, or avatar, in a virtual environment can affect the user's thoughts, according to research by a University of Texas at Austin communication professor. http://www.physorg.com/news177100524.html Other Sciences Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:36:03 EST news177100524 Fossil plants are windows to the past, providing us with clues as to what our planet looked like millions of years ago. Not only do fossils tell us which species were present before human-recorded history, but they can provide information about the climate and how and when lineages may have dispersed around the world. Identifying fossil plants can be tricky, however, when plant organs fail to be preserved or when only a few sparse parts can be found. http://www.physorg.com/news177096593.html Other Sciences Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:00:02 EST news177096593 Companies that commit fraud can find innovative ways to fudge the numbers, making it hard to tell something is wrong by just looking at their financial statements. But research from North Carolina State University unveils a new warning system that sees through accounting tricks by evaluating things that are easily verifiable, such as the number of employees or the square footage that a company owns. If a company says that its profits are up, but these nonfinancial measures (NFMs) are down, that's a sign something is probably wrong. http://www.physorg.com/news176975440.html Other Sciences Mon, 09 Nov 2009 07:56:28 EST news176975440 Scientists have discovered the first evidence that dinosaurs roamed the South Island of New Zealand with 70-million-year-old footprints found in six locations. http://www.physorg.com/news176809886.html Other Sciences Sat, 07 Nov 2009 10:40:05 EST news176809886 (PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists have extracted organically preserved muscle tissue from an 18 million years old salamander fossil. The discovery by researchers from University College Dublin, the UK and Spain, reported in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B shows that soft tissue can be preserved under a broader set of fossil conditions than previously known. http://www.physorg.com/news176660912.html Other Sciences Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:20:01 EST news176660912 (PhysOrg.com) -- Archaeologists excavating the former Radcliffe Infirmary site in Oxford have uncovered evidence of a prehistoric monumental landscape stretching across the gravel terrace between the Thames and Cherwell rivers. http://www.physorg.com/news176577298.html Other Sciences Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:15:33 EST news176577298 (PhysOrg.com) -- Remains of the oldest-known relative of T.rex have been identified, more than 100 years after being pulled out of a Gloucestershire reservoir, according to research published in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society today. http://www.physorg.com/news176568098.html Other Sciences Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:10:01 EST news176568098 A study by six researchers, including a University of Colorado at Boulder associate professor and his former doctoral student, shows that amputees who use running-specific prosthetic legs have no performance advantage over counterparts who use their biological legs. http://www.physorg.com/news176565385.html Other Sciences Wed, 04 Nov 2009 14:50:01 EST news176565385 (AP) -- A new study confirms what your 130 Facebook friends and scores of Twitter followers may have already told you: The Internet and mobile phones are not linked to social isolation. http://www.physorg.com/news176566373.html Other Sciences Wed, 04 Nov 2009 14:40:01 EST news176566373 (PhysOrg.com) -- Chief executives in 35 of the top Fortune 500 companies were overpaid by about 129 times their "ideal salaries" in 2008, according to a new type of theoretical analysis proposed by a Purdue University researcher to determine fair CEO compensation. http://www.physorg.com/news176481555.html Other Sciences Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:40:11 EST news176481555 The legendary "man-eating lions of Tsavo" that terrorized a railroad camp in Kenya more than a century ago likely consumed about 35 people--far fewer than popular estimates of 135 victims, according to a new analysis led by researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The study also yields surprises about the predatory behavior of lions. http://www.physorg.com/news176399116.html Other Sciences Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:00:01 EST news176399116 We all know adolescents get testy from time to time. Thank goodness we don't have young tyrannosaurs running around the neighborhood. http://www.physorg.com/news176386597.html Other Sciences Mon, 02 Nov 2009 12:17:02 EST news176386597