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. After three all-day meetings and a blizzard of amendments and counter-amendments, the Texas Board of Education cast its final vote Friday on state science standards. The results weren't pretty. http://www.physorg.com/news157728177.html Other Sciences Tue, 31 Mar 2009 14:23:30 EST news157728177 Large size and a fast bite spelled doom for bony fishes during the last mass extinction 65 million years ago, according to a new study to be published March 31, 2009, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. http://www.physorg.com/news157294064.html Biology Thu, 26 Mar 2009 13:48:46 EST news157294064 Hurdia victoria was originally described in 1912 as a crustacean-like animal. Now, researchers from Uppsala University and colleagues reveal it to be just one part of a complex and remarkable new animal that has an important story to tell about the origin of the largest group of living animals, the arthropods. The findings are being published in this week's issue of Science. http://www.physorg.com/news156693285.html Other Sciences Thu, 19 Mar 2009 14:55:35 EST news156693285 Hippos spend lots of time in the water and now it turns out (or researchers argue), they are the closest living relative to whales. It also turns out, the two are swimming in a bit of controversy. http://www.physorg.com/news156605855.html Biology Wed, 18 Mar 2009 14:38:02 EST news156605855 New finds of 95 million year old fossils reveal much earlier origins of modern octopuses. These are among the rarest and unlikeliest of fossils. The chances of an octopus corpse surviving long enough to be fossilized are so small that prior to this discovery only a single fossil species was known, and from fewer specimens than octopuses have legs. http://www.physorg.com/news156513035.html Other Sciences Tue, 17 Mar 2009 12:51:25 EST news156513035 A new University of Florida study could help resolve a long-standing debate in shark paleontology: From which line of species did the modern great white shark evolve? http://www.physorg.com/news156097789.html Other Sciences Thu, 12 Mar 2009 17:33:24 EST news156097789 Sweden's government on Wednesday presented what it described as Europe's "most ambitious" strategy to improve energy efficiency and cut greenhouse gas emissions. http://www.physorg.com/news156002589.html Space & Earth Wed, 11 Mar 2009 15:04:01 EST news156002589 (PhysOrg.com) -- Is wood the new coal? Researchers at North Carolina State University think so, and they are part of a team working to turn woodchips into a substitute for coal by using a process called torrefaction that is greener, cleaner and more efficient than traditional coal burning. http://www.physorg.com/news156000919.html Technology Wed, 11 Mar 2009 14:35:56 EST news156000919 Colorful poison frogs in the Amazon owe their great diversity to ancestors that leapt into the region from the Andes Mountains several times during the last 10 million years, a new study from The University of Texas at Austin suggests. http://www.physorg.com/news155883644.html Biology Tue, 10 Mar 2009 06:01:26 EST news155883644 Though a fraction of Chicago's size, this industrial city in southeast Sweden has plenty of similarities with it, including a long, snowy winter and a football team the town's crazy about. http://www.physorg.com/news155751073.html Space & Earth Sun, 08 Mar 2009 17:11:56 EST news155751073 Paleontologists on Thursday unveiled the oldest fossil remains of a sea turtle that lived 72 million years ago in northern Mexico, the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) said. http://www.physorg.com/news155538211.html Other Sciences Fri, 06 Mar 2009 05:06:29 EST news155538211 The Pima Association of Governments has voted to back creation of a network of electric-vehicle charging stations all around Tucson. http://www.physorg.com/news155482454.html Technology Thu, 05 Mar 2009 13:34:46 EST news155482454 When Alan Pradel of the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris CAT scanned a 300-million-year-old fossilized iniopterygian from Kansas, he and his colleagues saw a symmetrical blob nestled within the braincase. This turned out to be the oldest brain found in fossil form, a wholly unexpected and rare discovery. http://www.physorg.com/news155236754.html Other Sciences Mon, 02 Mar 2009 17:20:04 EST news155236754 Mudslides that followed the 12 May 2008 Wenchuan, China earthquake, ranked by the US Geological Survey as the 11th deadliest earthquake ever recorded, may cause a carbon-dioxide release in upcoming decades equivalent to two percent of current annual global carbon emissions from fossil fuel combustion, a new study shows. http://www.physorg.com/news155232114.html Space & Earth Mon, 02 Mar 2009 16:02:38 EST news155232114 Ancient footprints found at Rutgers' Koobi Fora Field School show that some of the earliest humans walked like us and did so on anatomically modern feet 1.5 million years ago. http://www.physorg.com/news154880690.html Other Sciences Thu, 26 Feb 2009 14:25:25 EST news154880690 (PhysOrg.com) -- A 380-million-year-old fossil fish that shows an unborn embryo and umbilical cord has been discovered, scientists report in the journal Nature. http://www.physorg.com/news154796016.html Biology Wed, 25 Feb 2009 14:54:04 EST news154796016 (PhysOrg.com) -- A pregnant fossil fish at the Natural History Museum in London has shed light on the possible origin of sex, according to a study published in Nature today by an international team including Museum scientists. The fossil is an adult placoderm, an extinct group of armoured fish, and it contains a 5cm-long embryo. It is dated to the Upper Devonian period 350 million years ago and was found in the Gogo formation of western Australia. http://www.physorg.com/news154793593.html Biology Wed, 25 Feb 2009 14:14:12 EST news154793593 Ancient groundwater being tapped by Jordan, one of the 10 most water-deprived nations in the world, has been found to contain twenty times the radiation considered safe for drinking water in a new study by an international team of researchers. http://www.physorg.com/news154714642.html Space & Earth Tue, 24 Feb 2009 16:17:58 EST news154714642 (PhysOrg.com) -- The laser light glowed brilliant red, forming a moving line as it bounced information from the dodo`s bones back into the high-tech scanner sitting on a tripod on the Museum of Comparative Zoology`s (MCZ) fifth floor. http://www.physorg.com/news154359318.html Other Sciences Fri, 20 Feb 2009 13:36:39 EST news154359318 (PhysOrg.com) -- Interactive maps that detail carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion are now available on the popular Google Earth platform. The maps, funded by NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy through the joint North American Carbon Program, can display fossil fuel emissions by the hour, geographic region, and fuel type. http://www.physorg.com/news154287061.html Space & Earth Thu, 19 Feb 2009 17:31:26 EST news154287061 (PhysOrg.com) -- In the Mesozoic Era, 70 million years before birds first conquered the skies, pterosaurs dominated the air with sparrow- to Cessna-sized wingspans. Researchers suspected that these extinct reptiles sustained flight through flapping, based on fossil evidence from the wings, but had little understanding of how pterosaurs met the energetic demands of active flight. http://www.physorg.com/news154161897.html Other Sciences Wed, 18 Feb 2009 06:45:42 EST news154161897 The global travel logs of greenhouse gases are based on atmospheric sampling locations sprinkled over the Earth and short towers that measure the uptake or release of carbon from a small patch of forest. But those measurements don't agree with current computer models of how plants and soils behave. http://www.physorg.com/news153990808.html Space & Earth Mon, 16 Feb 2009 07:15:35 EST news153990808 (PhysOrg.com) -- About 150 million years ago, an evolutionarily hybrid creature, a dinosaur on its way to becoming a bird, died in what is now Germany, and become fossilized in limestone. http://www.physorg.com/news153919451.html Physics Sun, 15 Feb 2009 11:25:31 EST news153919451 By controlling emissions of fossil fuels we may be able to greatly delay the start of the next ice age, new research from the Niels Bohr Institute at University of Copenhagen concludes. The results have been published in the scientific magazine, Geophysical Research Letters. http://www.physorg.com/news153556935.html Space & Earth Wed, 11 Feb 2009 06:45:00 EST news153556935 Scientists have found proof in Bermuda that the planet's sea level was once more than 21 meters (70 feet) higher about 400,000 years ago than it is now. Their findings were published in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews Wednesday, Feb. 4. http://www.physorg.com/news153421329.html Space & Earth Mon, 09 Feb 2009 17:02:50 EST news153421329 In just four years a University of Portsmouth palaeontologist has discovered 48 new species from the age of the dinosaurs - while other scientists took 180 years to identify the same number. http://www.physorg.com/news153392286.html Other Sciences Mon, 09 Feb 2009 08:58:52 EST news153392286 (PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin, in collaboration with the Ethiopian government, have completed the first high-resolution CT scan of the world's most famous fossil, Lucy, an ancient human ancestor who lived 3.2 million years ago. http://www.physorg.com/news153146616.html Other Sciences Fri, 06 Feb 2009 12:44:04 EST news153146616 A missing link in the evolution of the front claw of living scorpions and horseshoe crabs was identified with the discovery of a 390 million-year-old fossil by researchers at Yale and the University of Bonn, Germany. http://www.physorg.com/news153065999.html Other Sciences Thu, 05 Feb 2009 14:20:32 EST news153065999 Scientists have recovered fossils of a 60-million-year-old South American snake whose length and weight might make today's anacondas and reticulated pythons seem a bit cuter and more cuddly. http://www.physorg.com/news152969011.html Other Sciences Wed, 04 Feb 2009 11:24:21 EST news152969011 (PhysOrg.com) -- Two newly described fossil whales---a pregnant female and a male of the same species--reveal how primitive whales gave birth and provide new insights into how whales made the transition from land to sea. http://www.physorg.com/news152952023.html Other Sciences Wed, 04 Feb 2009 06:42:16 EST news152952023