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. Scratching below the surface of a troublesome sensation that's equal parts tingle-tickle-prickle, sensory scientists from Johns Hopkins have discovered in mice a molecular basis for nonallergic itch. http://www.physorg.com/news180706322.html Medicine & Health Tue, 22 Dec 2009 12:12:39 EST news180706322 (PhysOrg.com) -- Physicists theorize that quantum phenomena could provide a major boost to batteries, with the potential to increase energy density up to 10 times that of lithium ion batteries. According to a new proposal, billions of nanoscale capacitors could take advantage of quantum effects to overcome electric arcing, an electrical breakdown phenomenon which limits the amount of charge that conventional capacitors can store. http://www.physorg.com/news180704455.html Physics Tue, 22 Dec 2009 11:42:13 EST news180704455 (PhysOrg.com) -- With a new immersive multiplayer game system, researchers are further blurring the line between gaming and the real world. Using a mouse and keyboard sounds kind of quaint compared to the system developed and tested by Jefry Tedjokusumo, Steven ZhiYing Zhou, and Stefan Winkler of the National University of Singapore (Winkler is currently with Symmetricom in San Jose, California). http://www.physorg.com/news180695187.html Technology Tue, 22 Dec 2009 10:00:01 EST news180695187 (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. http://www.physorg.com/news180681294.html Technology Tue, 22 Dec 2009 09:20:01 EST news180681294 (PhysOrg.com) -- Refineries could trim millions of dollars in energy costs annually by using a new method developed at Purdue University to rearrange the distillation sequence needed to separate crude petroleum into products. http://www.physorg.com/news180694802.html Chemistry Tue, 22 Dec 2009 09:02:30 EST news180694802 (PhysOrg.com) -- Prostheses for paralysed patients, communication with patients who have lost all capacity for normal communication - the hopes for modern brain research are high. However, such brain-machine interfaces (cyborgs) require a complete dictionary, with the help of which the activities of the brain can be translated successfully into desires, ideas and movement plans. http://www.physorg.com/news180694657.html Medicine & Health Tue, 22 Dec 2009 08:58:31 EST news180694657 (PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers from Children's Hospital Boston and Brigham and Women's Hospital have identified an important genetic cause of a devastating kidney disease that is the second leading cause of kidney failure in children, according to The NephCure Foundation. http://www.physorg.com/news180693918.html Medicine & Health Tue, 22 Dec 2009 08:45:52 EST news180693918 (PhysOrg.com) -- If a suggestion to be made to NASA comes to fruition, vast lakes thought to be filled with liquid hydrocarbons near the north pole of Saturn's moon Titan, may one day be explored by boat. http://www.physorg.com/news180680793.html Space & Earth Tue, 22 Dec 2009 07:10:01 EST news180680793 (PhysOrg.com) -- Stopping male mosquitoes from sealing their sperm inside females with a 'mating plug' could prevent mosquitoes from reproducing, and offer a potential new way to combat malaria, say scientists publishing new results in PLoS Biology on 22 December. http://www.physorg.com/news180684435.html Biology Tue, 22 Dec 2009 06:08:08 EST news180684435 Mold and mildew may be doomed. Researchers are closer to understanding how these and other fungi grow. "Fungi have a big impact on our dinner plate," said Dr. Brian Shaw, Texas AgriLife Research plant pathologist. "We tend to think that getting food on the table is easy. But fungi are major disease-causing organisms for both plants and animals. With more research, we can find new ways to compete with them." Commonly known fungi are molds, mildews, mushrooms and yeast. http://www.physorg.com/news180681595.html Biology Tue, 22 Dec 2009 05:22:35 EST news180681595 (PhysOrg.com) -- Water contaminated with mercury is very dangerous for both people and the environment, as mercury is one of the most toxic heavy metals. Though laboratory analyses do deliver precise quantitative measurements, they require expensive equipment, take a long time, and cannot be carried out on-location. http://www.physorg.com/news180680600.html Chemistry Tue, 22 Dec 2009 05:03:58 EST news180680600 (PhysOrg.com) -- Cornell researchers are devising methods to detect the magnetic fields of individual electrons and atomic nuclei, which they hope to use to make a nanoscale version of magnetic resonance imaging. http://www.physorg.com/news180680263.html Physics Tue, 22 Dec 2009 04:58:18 EST news180680263 (PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists at Arizona State University have developed an elegant method for significantly improving the memory capacity of electronic chips. http://www.physorg.com/news180643634.html Technology Mon, 21 Dec 2009 19:20:02 EST news180643634 At Berkeley Lab's National Center for Electron Microscopy it was revealed that single-stranded DNA can disperse bundles of single-walled carbon nanotubes into individual tubes and serve as guideposts for synthesizing platinum nanoparticles onto these tubes. http://www.physorg.com/news180644226.html Nanotechnology Mon, 21 Dec 2009 19:10:01 EST news180644226 (PhysOrg.com) -- In a result that may have implications for financial regulation, researchers from computer science and economics have revealed potentially impenetrable problems with the pricing of financial derivatives. They show that sellers of these investments could purposefully include pieces of bad risk that no buyer could detect even with the most powerful computers. http://www.physorg.com/news180640677.html Other Sciences Mon, 21 Dec 2009 18:50:05 EST news180640677 (PhysOrg.com) -- It's commonly known that plants interact with each other on an everyday basis: they shade each other out or take up nutrients from the soil before neighboring plants can get them. Now, researchers at the University of Michigan have learned that plants also respond to the past. http://www.physorg.com/news180640961.html Biology Mon, 21 Dec 2009 18:50:01 EST news180640961 (PhysOrg.com) -- Much like a tightly wound drum, red blood cells are in perpetual vibration. Those vibrations help the cells maintain their characteristic flattened oval or disc shape, which is critical to their ability to deform as they traverse blood vessels in the body to deliver oxygen to tissues. http://www.physorg.com/news180640421.html Chemistry Mon, 21 Dec 2009 18:30:01 EST news180640421 Identical twins look the same and are nearly genetically identical, but environmental factors and the resulting cellular changes could cause disease in one sibling and not the other. In a study published online in Genome Research, scientists have studied twins discordant for the autoimmune disease lupus, mapping DNA modifications across the genome and shedding light on epigenetic changes that may play a role in the disease. http://www.physorg.com/news180638306.html Medicine & Health Mon, 21 Dec 2009 18:10:04 EST news180638306 (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 in Nazareth, then a hamlet of around 50 impoverished Jewish families where Jesus spent his boyhood. http://www.physorg.com/news180637757.html Other Sciences Mon, 21 Dec 2009 18:00:08 EST news180637757 (PhysOrg.com) -- Exaptation is a familiar concept to evolutionary biologists. It's the basic idea explaining that a trait can evolve because it starts serving a different function. Think of birds: at first, the most important role of their feathers was to regulate body temperature. But over time, feathers became an increasingly important showpiece to help attract mates. Same feather, different function. http://www.physorg.com/news180640030.html Other Sciences Mon, 21 Dec 2009 17:47:57 EST news180640030 Regenerative medicine therapies often require the growth of functional, stable blood vessels at the site of an injury. Using synthetic polymers called hydrogels, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have been able to induce significant vasculature growth in areas of damaged tissue. http://www.physorg.com/news180635484.html Medicine & Health Mon, 21 Dec 2009 17:40:04 EST news180635484 (PhysOrg.com) -- UConn researchers say Spiroplasma's propulsion style is optimal for converting energy into motion. http://www.physorg.com/news180635780.html Physics Mon, 21 Dec 2009 17:30:01 EST news180635780 A new study at the University of Wisconsin-Madison suggests that depressed patients are unable to sustain activity in brain areas related to positive emotion. http://www.physorg.com/news180635210.html Medicine & Health Mon, 21 Dec 2009 17:00:02 EST news180635210 The specter of a drug-resistant form of the deadly H5N1 avian influenza is a nightmare to keep public health officials awake at night. http://www.physorg.com/news180634278.html Medicine & Health Mon, 21 Dec 2009 16:50:05 EST news180634278 The tuberculosis bacterium is an insidious germ that can lie dormant for many years, then suddenly emerge and cause potentially fatal disease. http://www.physorg.com/news180634666.html Medicine & Health Mon, 21 Dec 2009 16:50:02 EST news180634666 Researchers at National Jewish Health have discovered that a naturally occurring lipid in the lung can prevent RSV infection and inhibit spread of the virus after an infection is established. RSV is the major cause of hospitalization for children in the first two years of life, and is increasingly recognized as a dangerous pathogen in adults with chronic lung diseases, the elderly, and immunocompromised individuals. Currently, there is no effective vaccine for the virus. http://www.physorg.com/news180633898.html Medicine & Health Mon, 21 Dec 2009 16:40:01 EST news180633898 (PhysOrg.com) -- A group of University of Kansas researchers working with Chinese colleagues have discovered a venomous, birdlike raptor that thrived some 128 million years ago in China. This is the first report of venom in the lineage that leads to modern birds. http://www.physorg.com/news180635335.html Other Sciences Mon, 21 Dec 2009 16:29:36 EST news180635335 Intel Corporation announced new Intel Atom processors today that feature integrated graphics built directly into the CPU, enabling improved performance and smaller, more energy-efficient designs in a new generation of netbooks and Atom-based entry level desktop PCs. http://www.physorg.com/news180635143.html Electronics Mon, 21 Dec 2009 16:26:06 EST news180635143 Researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have proposed a new paradigm that should allow scientists to observe quantum behavior in small mechanical systems. http://www.physorg.com/news180632559.html Physics Mon, 21 Dec 2009 15:44:00 EST news180632559 People who identify as African-American may be as little as 1 percent West African or as much as 99 percent, just one finding of a large-scale, genome-wide study of African and African-American ancestry released today. http://www.physorg.com/news180632039.html Medicine & Health Mon, 21 Dec 2009 15:40:30 EST news180632039