News tagged with current


Rhesus macaque

Rhesus macaque moms 'go gaga' for baby, too

Biology / Plants & Animals

created Oct 08, 2009 | popularity 5 / 5 (2) | comments 0

The intense exchanges that human mothers share with their newborn infants may have some pretty deep roots, suggests a study of rhesus macaques reported online on October 8th in Current Biology.


Physicists Measure Elusive 'Persistent Current' That Flows Forever

Physicists Measure Elusive 'Persistent Current' That Flows Forever

Physics / General Physics

created Oct 08, 2009 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (58) | comments 16

(PhysOrg.com) -- Physicists at Yale University have made the first definitive measurements of "persistent current," a small but perpetual electric current that flows naturally through tiny rings of metal wire ...


Silver Nanoparticles Give Polymer Solar Cells A Boost

Nanotechnology / Nanomaterials

created Oct 05, 2009 | popularity 4.3 / 5 (13) | comments 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- Small bits of metal may play a new role in solar power. Researchers at Ohio State University are experimenting with polymer semiconductors that absorb the sun’s energy and generate electricity. The goal: ...


High mortality rates may explain small body size

Biology / Evolution

created Oct 05, 2009 | popularity not rated yet | comments 0

A new study suggests that high mortality rates in small-bodied people, commonly known as pygmies, may be part of the reason for their small stature. The study, by Jay Stock and Andrea Migliano, both of the University of Cambridge, ...


Brain

Special brain wave boost slows motion

Medicine & Health / Neuroscience

created Oct 01, 2009 | popularity 4.2 / 5 (5) | comments 5

Researchers have found that they can make people move in slow motion by boosting one type of brain wave. The findings offer some of the first proof that brain waves can have a direct influence on behavior, ...


Storm killers: Earth Scan Lab tracks cold water upwellings in Gulf

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

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

Complex interactions between the ocean and overlying atmosphere cause hurricanes to form, and also have a tremendous amount of influence on the path, intensity and duration of a hurricane or tropical weather event. As researchers ...


Scandinavians are descended from Stone Age immigrants

Biology / Evolution

created Sep 24, 2009 | popularity 4.4 / 5 (10) | comments 4

(PhysOrg.com) -- Today's Scandinavians are not descended from the people who came to Scandinavia at the conclusion of the last ice age but, apparently, from a population that arrived later, concurrently with the introduction ...


Cracking the brain's numerical code

Medicine & Health / Neuroscience

created Sep 24, 2009 | popularity 3 / 5 (2) | comments 0

By carefully observing and analyzing the pattern of activity in the brain, researchers have found that they can tell what number a person has just seen. They can similarly tell how many dots a person has been presented with, ...


Introduced Japanese white-eyes pose major threat to Hawaii's native and endangered birds

Biology / Ecology

created Sep 17, 2009 | popularity 5 / 5 (1) | comments 0

In the late 1920s, people intentionally introduced birds known as Japanese white-eyes into Hawaiian agricultural lands and gardens for purposes of bug control. Now, that decision has come back to bite us. A recent increase ...


Carbon nanotubes could make efficient solar cells

Carbon nanotubes could make efficient solar cells

Nanotechnology / Nanomaterials

created Sep 10, 2009 | popularity 5 / 5 (21) | comments 13

(PhysOrg.com) -- Cornell researchers fabricated, tested and measured a simple solar cell called a photodiode, formed from an individual carbon nanotube.


Dividing cells 'feel' their way out of warp

Dividing cells 'feel' their way out of warp

Biology / Cell & Microbiology

created Sep 10, 2009 | popularity not rated yet | comments 0

Every moment, millions of a body's cells flawlessly divvy up their genes and pinch perfectly in half to form two identical progeny for the replenishment of tissues and organs -- even as they collide, get stuck, ...


Beans' defenses mean bacteria get evolutionary helping hand

Beans' defenses mean bacteria get evolutionary helping hand

Biology / Cell & Microbiology

created Sep 10, 2009 | popularity not rated yet | comments 0

Bean plants' natural defences against bacterial infections could be unwittingly driving the evolution of more highly pathogenic bacteria, according to new research published today in Current Biology.


A boy for every girl? Not even close

Biology / Plants & Animals

created Sep 10, 2009 | popularity 2.3 / 5 (3) | comments 0

In a perfect world, for every boy there would of course be a girl, but a new study shows that actual sex ratios can sometimes sway very far from that ideal. In fact, the male-to-female ratio of one tropical butterfly has ...


Monkey brains signal the desire to explore

Medicine & Health / Neuroscience

created Sep 04, 2009 | popularity 3 / 5 (2) | comments 7

Sticking with what you know often comes at the price of learning about more favorable alternatives.


Spare gene is fodder for fishes' evolution

Spare gene is fodder for fishes' evolution

Biology / Biotechnology

created Sep 03, 2009 | popularity not rated yet | comments 0

Scientists have suspected that spare parts in the genome—extra copies of functional genes that arise when genes or whole genomes get duplicated -- might sometimes provide the raw materials for the evolution ...