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) -- NASA still isn't sure why two parachutes failed during a test flight of its prototype moon rocket just over a month ago. http://www.physorg.com/news179088399.html Space & Earth Thu, 03 Dec 2009 19:20:01 EST news179088399 (PhysOrg.com) -- The third in a series of papers in the journal Nature completes the case for a new method of predicting earthquakes. http://www.physorg.com/news179087953.html Space & Earth Thu, 03 Dec 2009 18:41:47 EST news179087953 (PhysOrg.com) -- A virus that in nature infects only rabbits could become a cancer-fighting tool for humans. Myxoma virus kills cancerous blood-precursor cells in human bone marrow while sparing normal blood stem cells, a multidisciplinary team at the University of Florida College of Medicine has found. The findings are now online and will appear in an upcoming issue of the journal Leukemia. http://www.physorg.com/news179085253.html Medicine & Health Thu, 03 Dec 2009 18:30:03 EST news179085253 (PhysOrg.com) -- Research conducted by University of Wyoming Professor Paul Johnson and others demonstrates that genetically modified tadpoles work well as sensitive monitors for rapidly detecting water pollution. http://www.physorg.com/news179084594.html Space & Earth Thu, 03 Dec 2009 18:30:02 EST news179084594 (PhysOrg.com) -- Two studies published this month in the Journal of Clinical Investigation provide a significant advance in understanding how some species of monkeys such as sooty mangabeys and African green monkeys avoid AIDS when infected with SIV, the simian equivalent of HIV. http://www.physorg.com/news179085831.html Medicine & Health Thu, 03 Dec 2009 18:05:48 EST news179085831 (PhysOrg.com) -- A new study provides crucial details that promise to help researchers better understand, and perhaps fine-tune with drugs, one of the most important signaling mechanisms in human cells, according to a study published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. http://www.physorg.com/news179084307.html Medicine & Health Thu, 03 Dec 2009 17:38:59 EST news179084307 (PhysOrg.com) -- Birds' alarm calls serve both to alert other birds to danger and to warn off predators. And some birds can pull a ventriloquist's trick, singing from the side of their mouths, according to a UC Davis study. http://www.physorg.com/news179082717.html Biology Thu, 03 Dec 2009 17:12:29 EST news179082717 (PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have discovered a new, more precise method for measuring how much - or how little - nanoscale interfaces love water. http://www.physorg.com/news179082513.html Nanotechnology Thu, 03 Dec 2009 17:10:03 EST news179082513 Homer's Iliad tells the story of Troy, a city besieged by the Greeks in the Trojan War. Today, a lone robot sits besieged in the sands of Troy while engineers and scientists plot its escape. http://www.physorg.com/news179081243.html Space & Earth Thu, 03 Dec 2009 16:48:31 EST news179081243 The prototype of Solar Impulse, a pioneering Swiss bid to fly around the world on solar power, briefly took off for the first time on Thursday but under battery power, the organisers said. http://www.physorg.com/news179075027.html Technology Thu, 03 Dec 2009 15:13:37 EST news179075027 An international team of scientists that includes an astronomer from Princeton University has made the first direct observation of a planet-like object orbiting a star similar to the sun. http://www.physorg.com/news179072298.html Space & Earth Thu, 03 Dec 2009 15:10:02 EST news179072298 (PhysOrg.com) -- Hawaii may be paradise for vacationers, but for geologists it has long been a puzzle. Plate tectonic theory readily explains the existence of volcanoes at boundaries where plates split apart or collide, but mid-plate volcanoes such as those that built the Hawaiian island chain have been harder to fit into the theory. A classic explanation, proposed nearly 40 years ago, has been that magma is supplied to the volcanoes from upwellings of hot rock, called mantle "plumes," that originate deep in the Earth's mantle. Evidence for these deep structures has been sketchy, however. http://www.physorg.com/news179074389.html Space & Earth Thu, 03 Dec 2009 14:53:40 EST news179074389 Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) researchers have identified a new factor that is necessary for the development of many forms of medulloblastoma, the most common type of malignant childhood brain cancer. http://www.physorg.com/news179072176.html Medicine & Health Thu, 03 Dec 2009 14:50:11 EST news179072176 A team of University of Minnesota researchers have discovered how PTTH, a hormone produced by the brain, controls the metamorphosis of juvenile insects into adults. http://www.physorg.com/news179072031.html Biology Thu, 03 Dec 2009 14:14:39 EST news179072031 (PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers from Intel Labs demonstrated an experimental, 48-core Intel processor, or "single-chip cloud computer," that rethinks many of the approaches used in today's designs for laptops, PCs and servers. http://www.physorg.com/news179071360.html Electronics Thu, 03 Dec 2009 14:03:07 EST news179071360 Most scientists believe that staph infections are caused by many bacterial cells that signal each other to emit toxins. The signaling process is called quorum sensing because many bacteria must be present to start the process. http://www.physorg.com/news179070935.html Chemistry Thu, 03 Dec 2009 13:56:14 EST news179070935 Noted for harbouring Eta Carinae -- one of the wildest and most massive stars in our galaxy -- the impressive Carina Nebula also houses a handful of massive clusters of young stars. The youngest of these stellar families is the Trumpler 14 star cluster, which is less than one million years old -- a blink of an eye in the Universe's history. This large open cluster is located some 8000 light-years away towards the constellation of Carina (the Keel). http://www.physorg.com/news179068963.html Space & Earth Thu, 03 Dec 2009 13:23:15 EST news179068963 (PhysOrg.com) -- An enzyme in our blood that enables our lungs to exhale carbon dioxide could be the key to isolating carbon dioxide emissions from coal plants in order to store them safely underground. A company called Carbozyme, based in New Jersey, is developing a synthetic version of the blood enzyme that could capture carbon dioxide using one-third less energy than other methods. http://www.physorg.com/news179068055.html Chemistry Thu, 03 Dec 2009 13:08:37 EST news179068055 Feeding birds in winter is a most innocent human activity, but it can nonetheless have profound effects on the evolutionary future of a species, and those changes can be seen in the very near term. That's the conclusion of a report published online on December 3rd in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, showing that what was once a single population of birds known as blackcaps has been split into two reproductively isolated groups in fewer than 30 generations, despite the fact that they continue to breed side by side in the very same forests. http://www.physorg.com/news179066690.html Biology Thu, 03 Dec 2009 12:45:18 EST news179066690 Our ability to learn new information and adapt to changes in our daily environment, as well as to retain lifelong memories, appears to lie in the minute junctions where nerve cells communicate, according to a new study by NYU Langone Medicine Center researchers. The study is published online this week in the journal Nature. http://www.physorg.com/news179065332.html Medicine & Health Thu, 03 Dec 2009 12:24:51 EST news179065332 A coating on windows or solar panels that repels grime and dirt? Expanded battery storage capacities for the next electric car? New Tel Aviv University research, just published in Nature Nanotechnology, details a breakthrough in assembling peptides at the nano-scale level that could make these futuristic visions come true in just a few years. http://www.physorg.com/news179065399.html Nanotechnology Thu, 03 Dec 2009 12:24:04 EST news179065399 Researchers at the UC San Diego School of Medicine have pinpointed a mechanism that may help explain how chromosomal translocations - the supposedly random shuffling of large chunks of DNA that frequently lead to cancer - aren't so random after all. They have developed a model of such chromosomal mix-ups in prostate cancer which indicates that the male sex hormone (androgen) receptor unexpectedly plays a key role in driving specific translocations in the development of cancer. http://www.physorg.com/news179065247.html Medicine & Health Thu, 03 Dec 2009 12:21:27 EST news179065247 (PhysOrg.com) -- By mimicking the way that a living body acquires immunity to disease through vaccination, researchers have designed an artificial immune system to solve optimization problems more effectively than before. The results show that the biologically motivated approach is better at exploring a greater amount of space and quickly locating the desired local and global optima than previous methods. http://www.physorg.com/news179060729.html Technology Thu, 03 Dec 2009 11:05:59 EST news179060729 Scientists at Boston Biomedical Research Institute (BBRI) and the University of Pennsylvania have found that combining two chemicals, one of which is the green tea component EGCG, can prevent and destroy a variety of protein structures known as amyloids. Amyloids are the primary culprits in fatal brain disorders such as Alzheimer's, Huntington's, and Parkinson's diseases. Their study, published in the current issue of Nature Chemical Biology (December 2009), may ultimately contribute to future therapies for these diseases. http://www.physorg.com/news179060136.html Chemistry Thu, 03 Dec 2009 10:57:46 EST news179060136 Coral reef fish can undergo a personality change in warmer water, according to an intriguing new study suggesting that climate change may make some species more aggressive. http://www.physorg.com/news179059979.html Biology Thu, 03 Dec 2009 10:54:15 EST news179059979 (PhysOrg.com) -- A new type of natural-gas electric power plant proposed by MIT researchers could provide electricity with zero carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere, at costs comparable to or less than conventional natural-gas plants, and even to coal-burning plants. But that can only come about if and when a price is set on the emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases - a step the U.S. Congress and other governments are considering as a way to halt climate change. http://www.physorg.com/news179058845.html Technology Thu, 03 Dec 2009 10:34:39 EST news179058845 In its first 18 years, the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International`s annual aerial-robotics competition posed four successive challenges, which robotics researchers had to meet using entirely autonomous aerial vehicles - no remote control allowed. The first challenge, which stood for three years, was to move a metal disc from one end of an arena to another. The fourth challenge was to travel three kilometers and find a way into a specific building: it stood for eight years. But this summer, for the first time in the competition's history, a challenge fell in its first year, to a team of students representing MIT's Robust Robotics Group. http://www.physorg.com/news179058502.html Technology Thu, 03 Dec 2009 10:31:55 EST news179058502 (PhysOrg.com) -- Heat transport in the earth's mantle and in the atmosphere is probably not as effective as previously thought. http://www.physorg.com/news179053848.html Physics Thu, 03 Dec 2009 09:40:01 EST news179053848 (PhysOrg.com) -- How can some sportsmen and women, in the heat of the moment, play on through pain that would floor anyone else? Bert Trautmann, the Manchester City goalkeeper, famously played on through to the end of the 1956 FA Cup final - holding on for a 3-1 win - despite suffering a broken neck from a collision in the second half. http://www.physorg.com/news179053650.html Medicine & Health Thu, 03 Dec 2009 09:08:11 EST news179053650 (PhysOrg.com) -- A team of scientists has made a major step in understanding how molecules locate the genetic information in DNA that is necessary to carry out important biological processes. http://www.physorg.com/news179053506.html Biology Thu, 03 Dec 2009 09:07:52 EST news179053506