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) -- Apple Inc. is suing cell phone maker Nokia Corp. for patent infringement, a countermove to Nokia's earlier suit against technologies used in Apple's iPhone. http://www.physorg.com/news179756128.html Technology Fri, 11 Dec 2009 12:18:41 EST news179756128 University of Iowa researchers have found the existence of a new, rare inherited retinal disease. Now the search is on to find the genetic cause, which investigators hope will increase understanding of more common retinal diseases. http://www.physorg.com/news179752590.html Medicine & Health Fri, 11 Dec 2009 11:18:19 EST news179752590 A new study may explain why the England soccer team keeps losing in penalty shootouts - and could help the team address the problem in time for the World Cup 2010. Research by the University of Exeter shows for the first time the effect of anxiety on a footballer's eye movements while taking a penalty. http://www.physorg.com/news179749980.html Medicine & Health Fri, 11 Dec 2009 10:34:43 EST news179749980 Using atoms at temperatures colder than deep space, Rice University physicists have delivered overwhelming proof for a once-scoffed-at theory that's become a hotbed for research some 40 years after it first appeared. In a paper available online in Science Express, Rice's team offers experimental evidence for a universal quantum mechanism that allows trios of particles to appear and reappear at higher energy levels in an infinite progression. The triplets, often called trimers, form in special cases where pairs cannot. http://www.physorg.com/news179749630.html Physics Fri, 11 Dec 2009 10:27:59 EST news179749630 (PhysOrg.com) -- A new study of thousands of species of plants and animals suggests new species may arise from rare events instead of through an accumulation of small changes made in response to changes in the environment. http://www.physorg.com/news179737267.html Biology Fri, 11 Dec 2009 09:40:02 EST news179737267 Fed up with foreign companies patenting traditional medicine from India, the country's top scientific body is compiling a giant database of everything from yoga positions to medicinal fruit juice. http://www.physorg.com/news179740391.html Technology Fri, 11 Dec 2009 08:30:01 EST news179740391 VISTA is the latest telescope to be added to ESO's Paranal Observatory in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. It is housed on the peak adjacent to the one hosting the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT) and shares the same exceptional observing conditions. VISTA's main mirror is 4.1 metres across and is the most highly curved mirror of this size and quality ever made -- its deviations from a perfect surface are less than a few thousandths of the thickness of a human hair -- and its construction and polishing presented formidable challenges. http://www.physorg.com/news179739402.html Space & Earth Fri, 11 Dec 2009 08:10:02 EST news179739402 Boston College researchers have observed the "hot electron" effect in a solar cell for the first time and successfully harvested the elusive charges using ultra-thin solar cells, opening a potential avenue to improved solar power efficiency, the authors report in the current online edition of Applied Physics Letters. http://www.physorg.com/news179739056.html Physics Fri, 11 Dec 2009 07:31:22 EST news179739056 Five-year-olds can reason about the world from multiple perspectives simultaneously, according to a new theory by researchers in Japan and Australia. Using an established branch of mathematics called Category Theory, the researchers explain why specific reasoning skills develop in children at certain ages, particularly at age five. The new theory, published December 11 in the open-access journal PLoS Computational Biology, shows that these reasoning skills have similar profiles of development because they involve related sorts of processes. http://www.physorg.com/news179737665.html Biology Fri, 11 Dec 2009 07:10:28 EST news179737665 Chemotherapy generally improves survival in postmenopausal breast cancer patients, according to a landmark study led by Dr. Kathy Albain of Loyola University Health System. http://www.physorg.com/news179737360.html Medicine & Health Fri, 11 Dec 2009 07:04:22 EST news179737360 (PhysOrg.com) -- The Glasgow Science Centre in Scotland is exhibiting a computer that makes up jokes using its database of simple language rules and a large vocabulary. http://www.physorg.com/news179736700.html Technology Fri, 11 Dec 2009 06:52:14 EST news179736700 (AP) -- On a mountaintop clearing in the Sierra Nevada stands a tall metal platform holding a crude furnace and a box of silver iodide solution that some scientists believe could help offer relief from searing droughts. http://www.physorg.com/news179691518.html Space & Earth Thu, 10 Dec 2009 18:19:33 EST news179691518 The slogan is "one laptop per child." But it will be a long time before that is true everywhere in the world. Meanwhile, a new device aims to make a situation that is common in poor areas - one computer shared among many children - work better in school settings. http://www.physorg.com/news179690698.html Electronics Thu, 10 Dec 2009 18:05:32 EST news179690698 (PhysOrg.com) -- Results of diagnostic tests on Spirit's right-rear wheel on Sol 2109 (Dec. 8, 2009) continue to indicate a troubled wheel, which may leave the rover with only four operable wheels. http://www.physorg.com/news179689932.html Space & Earth Thu, 10 Dec 2009 17:52:47 EST news179689932 Thursday's Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing featured testimony from experts about the power industry's need to develop systems capable of storing large amounts of electricity if the nation's power grid intends to utilize the expected increase of energy produced by renewable resources. http://www.physorg.com/news179688592.html Technology Thu, 10 Dec 2009 17:30:20 EST news179688592 (PhysOrg.com) -- Name all the venomous animals you can think of and you probably come up with snakes, spiders, bees, wasps and perhaps poisonous frogs. But catfish? http://www.physorg.com/news179688441.html Biology Thu, 10 Dec 2009 17:27:50 EST news179688441 Shrink a human being down to the size of an insect, and you would no longer be able to sip lemonade from a straw. The forces that hold liquid together would simply be too great to overcome at that tiny scale. http://www.physorg.com/news179688348.html Biology Thu, 10 Dec 2009 17:26:33 EST news179688348 (PhysOrg.com) -- A team of Stanford researchers has developed a new generation of retinal implants that aims to provide higher resolution and make artificial vision more natural. http://www.physorg.com/news179686378.html Medicine & Health Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:54:18 EST news179686378 (PhysOrg.com) -- The genetically modified cyanobacterium consumes carbon dioxide and produces the liquid fuel isobutanol by using energy from sunlight. http://www.physorg.com/news179683624.html Biology Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:07:55 EST news179683624 (PhysOrg.com) -- A team of Princeton University scientists has produced a systematic listing of the ways a particular cancerous cell has "gone wrong," giving researchers a powerful tool that eventually could make possible new, more targeted therapies for patients. http://www.physorg.com/news179683447.html Medicine & Health Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:04:58 EST news179683447 Scientists have discovered a signaling pathway that tuberculosis bacteria use to coerce disease-fighting cells to switch allegiance and work on their behalf. Epithelial cells line the airways and other surfaces to protect and defend the body. Tuberculosis bacteria co-opt these epithelial cells into helping create tubercles: the small, rounded masses characteristic of TB. The tubercles enable the bacteria to expand their numbers and spread to other locations. http://www.physorg.com/news179677469.html Medicine & Health Thu, 10 Dec 2009 15:10:09 EST news179677469 (AP) -- Swine flu has sickened about 50 million Americans, and killed about 10,000, according to new estimates released by federal health officials on Thursday. http://www.physorg.com/news179679161.html Medicine & Health Thu, 10 Dec 2009 14:53:19 EST news179679161 (PhysOrg.com) -- University of Maryland researchers have developed and successfully tested new computer software and computational techniques to analyze patterns of improvised explosive device (IED) attacks in Iraq, Afghanistan or other locations and predict the locations of weapons caches that are used by insurgents to support those attacks. http://www.physorg.com/news179677568.html Technology Thu, 10 Dec 2009 14:51:36 EST news179677568 It's no secret that the emissions leaving a car tailpipe or factory smokestack affect climate and air quality. Even trees release chemicals that influence the atmosphere. But until now, scientists have struggled to know where these organic molecules go and what happens to them once they leave their source, leading to models for predicting climate and air quality that are incomplete or less than accurate. http://www.physorg.com/news179677214.html Space & Earth Thu, 10 Dec 2009 14:50:04 EST news179677214 Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found that a molecule produced naturally by muscles in response to nerve damage can reduce symptoms and prolong life in a mouse model of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). http://www.physorg.com/news179676993.html Medicine & Health Thu, 10 Dec 2009 14:19:34 EST news179676993 Extensive analyses and modeling of Cassini imaging and heat-mapping data have confirmed and extended previous ideas that migrating ice, triggered by infalling reddish dust that darkens and warms the surface, may explain the mysterious two-toned "yin-yang" appearance of Saturn's moon Iapetus. The results, published online Dec. 10 in a pair of papers in the journal Science, provide what may be the most plausible explanation to date for the moon's bizarre appearance, which has puzzled astronomers for more than 300 years. http://www.physorg.com/news179677088.html Space & Earth Thu, 10 Dec 2009 14:18:55 EST news179677088 (PhysOrg.com) -- The gases which formed the Earth's atmosphere - and probably its oceans - did not come from inside the Earth but from outer space, according to a study by University of Manchester and University of Houston scientists. http://www.physorg.com/news179676765.html Space & Earth Thu, 10 Dec 2009 14:13:36 EST news179676765 Observers were able to accurately judge some aspects of a stranger's personality from looking at photographs, according to a study in the current issue of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (PSBP), the official monthly journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. Self-esteem, ratings of extraversion and religiosity were correctly judged from physical appearance. http://www.physorg.com/news179674450.html Medicine & Health Thu, 10 Dec 2009 14:10:01 EST news179674450 When given the chance to consume alcohol at will, fruit flies behave in ways that look an awful lot like human alcoholism. That's according to a study published online on December 10th in Current Biology that is one of the first to consider alcohol self-administration in the insects. http://www.physorg.com/news179674844.html Biology Thu, 10 Dec 2009 13:50:02 EST news179674844 For an ovary to remain an ovary, the female organ has to continuously suppress its inner capacity to become male. That's the conclusion of a study in the December 11th issue of the journal Cell revealing that the ovaries of mice can be reprogrammed into testes (minus the sperm) by silencing a single gene. http://www.physorg.com/news179673591.html Biology Thu, 10 Dec 2009 13:20:55 EST news179673591