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. Nearly 10 years after the discovery that birds make a hormone that suppresses reproduction, University of California, Berkeley, neuroscientists have established that humans make it too, opening the door to development of a new class of contraceptive and possible treatments for cancer or other diseases. http://www.physorg.com/news180716736.html Medicine & Health Tue, 22 Dec 2009 15:06:24 EST news180716736 Sandia National Laboratories scientists have developed tiny glitter-sized photovoltaic cells that could revolutionize the way solar energy is collected and used. http://www.physorg.com/news180713660.html Technology Tue, 22 Dec 2009 14:14:56 EST news180713660 More than a hundred years after its discovery, the limbs and vertebrae of a fossil have been pulled off the shelf at the American Museum of Natural History to revise the view of early carnivore lifestyles. Carnivores -currently a diverse group of mostly meat-eating mammals like bears, cats, raccoons, seals, and hyenas -had been considered arboreal in their early evolutionary history. But now that the skeleton of 'Miacis' uintensis has been unpacked from its matrix of sandstone, it is clear that some early carnivores were built to walk on the ground at least part of the time. The new research is published this month in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. http://www.physorg.com/news180713120.html Other Sciences Tue, 22 Dec 2009 14:06:15 EST news180713120 The often feared and sometimes deadly infections caused by MRSA - methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus - are now moving out of hospitals and emerging as an even more virulent strain in community settings and on athletic teams, and raising new concerns about antibiotic resistance. http://www.physorg.com/news180711591.html Medicine & Health Tue, 22 Dec 2009 13:41:08 EST news180711591 Mice without the deoxycytidine kinase (dCK) enzyme have defects in their adaptive immune system, producing very low levels of both T and B lymphocytes, the major players involved in immune response, according to a study by researchers with UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. http://www.physorg.com/news180708481.html Medicine & Health Tue, 22 Dec 2009 12:49:18 EST news180708481 Evidence of sophisticated, human behavior has been discovered by Hebrew University of Jerusalem researchers as early as 750,000 years ago - some half a million years earlier than has previously been estimated by archaeologists. http://www.physorg.com/news180707972.html Other Sciences Tue, 22 Dec 2009 12:40:38 EST news180707972 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 Research presented in a paper by Morgan McGuire, assistant professor of computer science at Williams College, and co-author Dr. David Luebke of NVIDIA, introduces a new algorithm to improve computer graphics for video games. http://www.physorg.com/news180705224.html Technology Tue, 22 Dec 2009 12:10:01 EST news180705224 (AP) -- Isahrai Azaria is heading to Austin, Texas, in February, and thanks to Facebook, she already has 40 acquaintances, an invitation to go water tubing, and a line on the best vegetarian lunch place in town. http://www.physorg.com/news180704896.html Technology Tue, 22 Dec 2009 12:00:01 EST news180704896 (AP) -- The FBI is investigating a hacker attack on Citigroup Inc. that led to the theft of tens of millions of dollars, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. http://www.physorg.com/news180704717.html Technology Tue, 22 Dec 2009 11:46:50 EST news180704717 (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