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Researchers Find Innate Correlations Among Different Power Law Phenomena

Researchers Find Innate Correlations Among Different Power Law Phenomena

Physics / General Physics

created Nov 17, 2009 | popularity 4.2 / 5 (21) | comments 18 feature

(PhysOrg.com) -- Studying the patterns that emerge in natural and social phenomena is a popular area of research, although usually individual phenomena are studied separately from each other. In a recent study, ...


How Did Evolution Begin?

How Did Evolution Begin?

Chemistry / Biochemistry

created Sep 28, 2009 | popularity 4.3 / 5 (28) | comments 17 feature

(PhysOrg.com) -- Life's ability to replicate itself is essential for evolution, yet even the simplest kind of replication requires a relatively complex system. So what kind of non-replicating system might ...


Bacteria offer insights into human decision making

Bacteria offer insights into human decision making

Physics / General Physics

created Dec 08, 2009 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (20) | comments 1

(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists studying how bacteria under stress collectively weigh and initiate different survival strategies say they have gained new insights into how humans make strategic decisions that ...


Compressing photonic signals for greater bandwidth

Compressing photonic signals for greater bandwidth

Physics / Optics & Photonics

created Nov 03, 2009 | popularity 4.3 / 5 (7) | comments 3

Cornell researchers have developed an ingenious method to time-compress optical signals. The process could enable optical communication systems to carry many more bits per second or could also be used to generate ...


Scientists bend nanowires into 2-D and 3-D structures

Scientists bend nanowires into 2-D and 3-D structures

Nanotechnology / Nanophysics

created Oct 21, 2009 | popularity 4.3 / 5 (7) | comments 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- Taking nanomaterials to a new level of structural complexity, scientists have determined how to introduce kinks into arrow-straight nanowires, transforming them into zigzagging two- and three-dimensional ...


International scientists set boundaries for survival

International scientists set boundaries for survival

Space & Earth / Environment

created Sep 23, 2009 | popularity 3.7 / 5 (28) | comments 16

Human activities have already pushed the Earth system beyond three of the planet's biophysical thresholds, with consequences that are detrimental or even catastrophic for large parts of the world; six others ...


New book suggests Earth perhaps not such a benevolent mother after all

New book suggests Earth perhaps not such a benevolent mother after all

Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils

created May 20, 2009 | popularity 4.1 / 5 (21) | comments 15

(PhysOrg.com) -- In the past 50 years it has become commonplace to think of Earth as a nurturing place, straining mightily to maintain equilibrium so that life might continue and flourish.


Maybe robots dream of electric sheep, but can they do science?

Being Isaac Newton: Computer derives natural laws from raw data

Technology / Computer Sciences

created Apr 02, 2009 | popularity 4.4 / 5 (20) | comments 8

If Isaac Newton had access to a supercomputer, he'd have had it watch apples fall - and let it figure out the physical matters. But the computer would have needed to run an algorithm, just developed by Cornell ...


Plugging in Molecular Wires

Chemistry /

created Feb 11, 2009 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (3) | comments 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- Plants, algae, and cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) are masters of everything to do with solar energy because they are able to almost completely transform captured sunlight into chemical energy. This is in ...


Researchers construct a device that mimics one of nature’s key transport machines

Researchers construct a device that mimics one of nature's key transport machines

Biology /

created Jan 06, 2009 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (7) | comments 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- To help protect its genes, a cell is highly selective about what it allows to move in and out of its nucleus. Yet that choosiness is regulated by just a thin barrier, perforated with tiny ...


Bourbon versus vodka: Bourbon hurts more the next day, performance is the same

Medicine & Health / Other

created Dec 18, 2009 | popularity 3.7 / 5 (3) | comments 0

Many alcoholic beverages contain byproducts of the materials used in the fermenting process. These byproducts are called "congeners," complex organic molecules with toxic effects including acetone, acetaldehyde, fusel oil, ...


Biologists reveal structure of cell nucleus 'gatekeeper'

Biologists reveal structure of cell nucleus 'gatekeeper'

Biology / Cell & Microbiology

created Oct 27, 2009 | popularity 4 / 5 (5) | comments 6

(PhysOrg.com) -- Biologists led by associate professor Thomas Schwartz (MIT) have worked out a rudimentary architectural plan for the nuclear pore complex (NPC), the gatekeeper of the cell's nucleus.


High-speed genetic analysis looks deep inside primate immune system

Medicine & Health / Research

created Oct 12, 2009 | popularity not rated yet | comments 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- Viruses such as HIV and influenza take safe harbor in cells, where they cannot be recognized directly by the immune system. The immune response relies on infected cells announcing the presence of the virus ...


'Promiscuous' protein interactions found in the nuclear pore complex

Biology / Cell & Microbiology

created Sep 29, 2009 | popularity 5 / 5 (1) | comments 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- The NPC is the only way in or out of a cell's nucleus. It plays a key role in cellular metabolism and signaling, and any malfunction in these pores can have lethal consequences. Now new research reveals further ...


Researchers unravel brain's wiring to understand memory

Medicine & Health / Neuroscience

created Sep 28, 2009 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (4) | comments 0

Using a powerful microscope, Karel Svoboda, a brain scientist at the Janelia Farm Research Campus in Ashburn, Va., peers through a plastic window in the top of a mouse's head to watch its brain's neurons sprout new connections ...