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. Adding iron to the world's oceans to capture carbon and fight global warming could do more harm than good, as the mineral appears to boost the growth of a plankton that produces a deadly neurotoxin, a study published Monday shows. http://www.physorg.com/news187896509.html Space & Earth Mon, 15 Mar 2010 19:00:08 EST news187896509 An international team led by Yale University has, for the first time, measured the mass of a type of supernova thought to belong to a unique subclass and confirmed that it surpasses what was believed to be an upper mass limit. Their findings, which appear online and will be published in an upcoming issue of the Astrophysical Journal, could affect the way cosmologists measure the expansion of the universe. http://www.physorg.com/news187896206.html Space & Earth Mon, 15 Mar 2010 18:23:43 EST news187896206 Nature abounds with examples of evolutionary arms races. Certain marine snails, for example, evolved thick shells and spines to avoid be eaten, but crabs and fish foiled the snails by developing shell-crushing claws and jaws. http://www.physorg.com/news187895617.html Biology Mon, 15 Mar 2010 18:13:47 EST news187895617 In an unprecedented broadcasting move, the 2010 Masters will be produced and broadcast live in 3-D, Augusta National Golf Club chairman Billy Payne announced on Monday. http://www.physorg.com/news187895356.html Technology Mon, 15 Mar 2010 18:09:42 EST news187895356 The muscle-building abilities of hormones known as insulin-like growth factors (IGFs) are legendary. Just do an online search and you'll find not only scientific papers discussing the effects of IGFs on the cells that give rise to muscle tissue, but also scores of ads touting the purported benefits of IGF supplements for bodybuilding. http://www.physorg.com/news187895015.html Medicine & Health Mon, 15 Mar 2010 18:04:48 EST news187895015 The film "Avatar" isn't the only 3-D blockbuster making a splash this winter. A team of Houston scientists this week unveiled a new technique for growing 3-D cell cultures, a technological leap from the flat petri dish that could save millions of dollars in drug-testing costs. The research is reported in Nature Nanotechnology. http://www.physorg.com/news187892515.html Nanotechnology Mon, 15 Mar 2010 17:22:23 EST news187892515 For the average college basketball fan looking for an edge in a March Madness office pool, a University of Illinois expert in statistics and data analysis has some advice on how to pick winners: After the Sweet Sixteen round of play, ignore a team's seeding, which is a statistically insignificant predictor of a team's chances of winning. http://www.physorg.com/news187892436.html Other Sciences Mon, 15 Mar 2010 17:20:56 EST news187892436 When we notice somebody pointing at something, we automatically look in the direction of the gesture. In humans, the ability to understand this type of gesturing (known as declarative communication) may seem to be an automatic response, but it is actually a sign of sophisticated communication behavior. Numerous studies have tried to determine if great apes (for example, chimpanzees and bonobos) are able to understand declarative communication, but results have been mixed. http://www.physorg.com/news187891895.html Biology Mon, 15 Mar 2010 17:12:06 EST news187891895 In a paradigm changing discovery, Plasmodium vivax (P. vivax) malaria has been identified in a population historically thought to be resistant to the disease, those who do not express the Duffy blood group protein on their red blood cells, according to researchers from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, Pasteur Institute, and the Madagascar Ministry of Health. In a study of more than 600 individuals from eight communities covering the main malaria transmission areas of Madagascar, the researchers found that 10 percent of people experiencing clinical malaria were Duffy-negative and infected with P. vivax. These findings were published in an upcoming issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. http://www.physorg.com/news187891421.html Medicine & Health Mon, 15 Mar 2010 17:04:19 EST news187891421 Forensic scientists may soon have a valuable new item in their toolkits -- a way to identify individuals using unique, telltale types of hand bacteria left behind on objects like keyboards and computer mice, says a new University of Colorado at Boulder study. http://www.physorg.com/news187879653.html Biology Mon, 15 Mar 2010 15:00:22 EST news187879653 A quest that began over a decade ago with a chance observation has reached a milestone: the identification of a gene that may regulate regeneration in mammals. The absence of this single gene, called p21, confers a healing potential in mice long thought to have been lost through evolution and reserved for creatures like flatworms, sponges, and some species of salamander. In a report published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from The Wistar Institute demonstrate that mice that lack the p21 gene gain the ability to regenerate lost or damaged tissue. http://www.physorg.com/news187879295.html Medicine & Health Mon, 15 Mar 2010 15:00:21 EST news187879295 A family history of Alzheimer's is one of the biggest risk factors for developing the memory-robbing disease, which affects more than 5 million Americans and is the most common form of senile dementia. Now an international collaboration led by NYU Langone Medical Center researchers has found the likely basis for this heightened familial risk -especially from the maternal side. http://www.physorg.com/news187878937.html Medicine & Health Mon, 15 Mar 2010 15:00:20 EST news187878937 The more difficult the decision we face, the more likely we are not to act, according to new research by UCL scientists that examines the neural pathways involved in 'status quo bias' in the human brain. http://www.physorg.com/news187878622.html Medicine & Health Mon, 15 Mar 2010 15:00:18 EST news187878622 Researchers have discovered that infants respond to the rhythm and tempo of music and find it more engaging than speech. http://www.physorg.com/news187878764.html Medicine & Health Mon, 15 Mar 2010 15:00:16 EST news187878764 To understand the role of inflammation in cardiovascular and other diseases, it is essential to identify and characterize genes that induce an inflammatory response in the body -- and the genes that regulate them. http://www.physorg.com/news187879515.html Medicine & Health Mon, 15 Mar 2010 15:00:13 EST news187879515 Flowering plants may be considerably older than previously thought, says a new analysis of the plant family tree. http://www.physorg.com/news187879025.html Biology Mon, 15 Mar 2010 15:00:10 EST news187879025 Like a magician who says, "Pick a card, any card," Stanford University computer scientist Debashis Sahoo, PhD, seemed to be offering some kind of trick when he asked researchers at the Stanford Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine to pick any two genes already known to be involved in stem cell development. Finding such genes can take years and hundreds of thousands of dollars, but Sahoo was promising the skeptical stem cell scientists that, in a fraction of a second and for practically zero cost, he could find new genes involved in the same developmental pathway as the two genes provided. http://www.physorg.com/news187879201.html Medicine & Health Mon, 15 Mar 2010 15:00:05 EST news187879201 A new combination drug treatment for parasitic intestinal roundworms shows promise in a test on a common laboratory species. http://www.physorg.com/news187878679.html Medicine & Health Mon, 15 Mar 2010 15:00:01 EST news187878679 One piece of the American effort to find a way to make solar energy cheap enough that everyone will want it is unfolding in a modest redbrick building in this Midwestern city once known as one of the nation's top makers of glass. http://www.physorg.com/news187880516.html Technology Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:30:02 EST news187880516 A team of researchers from Carnegie Museum of Natural History has described a new genus and species of carnivorous amphibian from western Pennsylvania. The fossil skull, found in 2004 near Pittsburgh International Airport, was recovered from rocks deposited approximately 300 million years ago during the Late Pennsylvanian Period. Named Fedexia striegeli, it is one of only a very few relatively large amphibian fossils to display evidence of a predominantly terrestrial (land-based) life history so early in geologic time. http://www.physorg.com/news187878492.html Other Sciences Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:00:08 EST news187878492 (PhysOrg.com) -- Astronomers will peer deep into the universe in five directions to document the early history of star formation and galaxy evolution in an ambitious new project requiring an unprecedented amount of time on the Hubble Space Telescope. http://www.physorg.com/news187880057.html Space & Earth Mon, 15 Mar 2010 13:54:40 EST news187880057 Be true to yourself, and better romantic relationships will follow, research suggests. http://www.physorg.com/news187877019.html Medicine & Health Mon, 15 Mar 2010 13:40:04 EST news187877019 (PhysOrg.com) -- A new replica of an early modern human brain has provided further evidence for the theory that the human brain has been shrinking. The skull belonged to an elderly Cro Magnon man, whose skeleton is called Cro Magnon 1. The entire skeleton was discovered in 1868 in the Cro Magnon cave in Dordogne, France, and has since become one of the most famous Upper Palaeolithic skeletons. Using new technology, researchers have produced a replica of the 28,000-year-old brain and found that it is about 15-20% larger than our brains. http://www.physorg.com/news187877156.html Biology Mon, 15 Mar 2010 13:06:34 EST news187877156 Images from the recent flyby of Phobos, on 7 March 2010, are released today. The images show Mars' rocky moon in exquisite detail, with a resolution of just 4.4 metres per pixel. They show the proposed landing sites for the forthcoming Phobos-Grunt mission. http://www.physorg.com/news187875480.html Space & Earth Mon, 15 Mar 2010 12:38:27 EST news187875480 In a breakthrough that may help fill a critical need in stem cell research and patient care, researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine have demonstrated that skin cells found in human amniotic fluid can be efficiently "reprogrammed" to pluripotency, where they have characteristics similar to human embryonic stem cells that can develop into almost any type of cell in the human body. The study is online now and will appear in print in the next issue of the journal Cellular Reprogramming, to be published next month. http://www.physorg.com/news187875000.html Biology Mon, 15 Mar 2010 12:30:47 EST news187875000 Desktop experiments could point the way to dark matter discovery, complementing grand astronomical searches and deep underground observations. According to recent theoretical results, small blocks of matter on a tabletop could reveal elusive properties of the as-yet-unidentified dark matter particles that make up a quarter of the universe, potentially making future large-scale searches easier. This finding was announced today by theorists from the Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Science (SIMES), a joint institute of the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University, at the American Physical Society meeting in Portland, Oregon. http://www.physorg.com/news187874895.html Physics Mon, 15 Mar 2010 12:28:42 EST news187874895 Given a choice between spending a token to get their absolute favorite food or spending it to have a choice from a buffet of options, capuchin monkeys will opt for variety. http://www.physorg.com/news187874814.html Biology Mon, 15 Mar 2010 12:27:21 EST news187874814 Australian and US scientists have discovered how changes in winds blowing on the Southern Ocean drive variations in the depth of the surface layer of sea water responsible for regulating exchanges of heat and carbon dioxide between the ocean and the atmosphere. http://www.physorg.com/news187874248.html Space & Earth Mon, 15 Mar 2010 12:17:47 EST news187874248 (AP) -- More corners of the country would have high-speed Internet access and existing connections would become much faster under a sweeping proposal to overhaul U.S. broadband policy that is being unveiled Tuesday. http://www.physorg.com/news187873103.html Technology Mon, 15 Mar 2010 12:10:01 EST news187873103 Today's youth are generally not the self-centered, antisocial slackers that previous research has made them out to be, according to a provocative new study co-authored by a Michigan State University psychologist. http://www.physorg.com/news187873244.html Medicine & Health Mon, 15 Mar 2010 12:01:59 EST news187873244