http://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. When a solar flare filled with charged particles erupts from the sun, its magnetic fields sometime break a widely accepted rule of physics. The flux-freezing theorem dictates that the magnetic lines of force should flow away in lock-step with the particles, whole and unbroken. Instead, the lines sometimes break apart and quickly reconnect in a way that has mystified astrophysicists. http://phys.org/news288457198.html Space & Earth Wed, 22 May 2013 16:00:09 EST news288457198 (Phys.org) —The idea of living with 3-D printed food is neither unthinkable nor new; designers and futurists have been looking to 3-D printing as food's next frontier. In 2012, there was news that the Thiel Foundation made a $350,000 donation to Modern Meadow. Co-founded by Gabor and Andras Forgacs, two tech-entrepreneurs, the company focus was on commercialized bioprinting and they were exploring bioprinted meat —applying the basic idea of layering cells using print technology. Now, NASA similarly made a next-frontier move in bestowing a $125,000 grant on Systems & Materials Research Corporation (SMRC) in Austin, Texas. The company has been given the nod from NASA to create a prototype of a food synthesizer. The prototype will follow the company's-proof of concept a chocolate printer, applying a layer of chocolate on to a cracker. The company will move on up to a more nutritional solution. The grant from NASA is for a system that can print food for astronauts on space missions. http://phys.org/news288456209.html Technology Wed, 22 May 2013 16:00:07 EST news288456209 Solar Impulse, the first aircraft that can fly day and night fueled entirely by energy from the sun, embarked Wednesday on the second leg of its historic journey across the American continent. http://phys.org/news288456389.html Technology Wed, 22 May 2013 15:46:35 EST news288456389 Malaria-carrying mosquitos appear to be manipulated by the parasites they carry, but this manipulation may simply be part of the mosquitos' immune response, according to Penn State entomologists. http://phys.org/news288455449.html Biology Wed, 22 May 2013 15:31:31 EST news288455449 (Phys.org) —Researchers have created a new type of transparent electrode that might find uses in solar cells, flexible displays for computers and consumer electronics and future "optoelectronic" circuits for sensors and information processing. http://phys.org/news288455347.html Nanotechnology Wed, 22 May 2013 15:29:14 EST news288455347 Neanderthals may have started weaning their young from seven months of age and transferred them to solid food by just over a year, a fossil tooth study said Wednesday. http://phys.org/news288449623.html Other Sciences Wed, 22 May 2013 13:53:51 EST news288449623 Dinosaurs are often thought of as large, fierce animals, but new research highlights a previously overlooked diversity of small dinosaurs. In the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, a team of paleontologists from the University of Toronto, Royal Ontario Museum, Cleveland Museum of Natural History and University of Calgary have described a new dinosaur, the smallest plant-eating dinosaur species known from Canada. Albertadromeus syntarsus was identified from a partial hind leg, and other skeletal elements, that indicate it was a speedy runner. Approximately 1.6 m (5 ft) long, it weighed about 16 kg (30 lbs), comparable to a large turkey. http://phys.org/news288448515.html Other Sciences Wed, 22 May 2013 13:35:34 EST news288448515 Exactly 50 years after the US-American meteorologist Edward Lorenz discovered chaos (remember the "butterfly effect"?) the topic is still as fascinating as ever. A new visualization technique developed at the University of Vienna helps to make chaos visible to the naked eye. The method, which is being published in Royal Society journal Interface, allows for the intuitive interpretation of chaotic or nearly chaotic phenomena, and thus makes the fascinating world of chaos theory more accessible to the scientific community. http://phys.org/news288448410.html Physics Wed, 22 May 2013 13:33:50 EST news288448410 Facebook on Wednesday became a full member of the Global Network Initiative, a non-governmental organization promoting Internet freedom and privacy rights. http://phys.org/news288447541.html Technology Wed, 22 May 2013 13:19:06 EST news288447541 While humans have harnessed the power of yeast to ferment bread and beer, the function of yeast or other types of fungi that live in and on the human body is not well understood. In the first study of human fungal skin diversity, National Institutes of Health researchers sequenced the DNA of fungi at skin sites of healthy adults to define the normal populations across the skin and to provide a framework for investigating fungal skin conditions. http://phys.org/news288446836.html Biology Wed, 22 May 2013 13:08:23 EST news288446836 Two hungry young galaxies that collided 11 billion years ago are rapidly forming a massive galaxy about 10 times the size of the Milky Way, according to UC Irvine-led research published Wednesday in the journal Nature. http://phys.org/news288436178.html Space & Earth Wed, 22 May 2013 13:00:15 EST news288436178 Harvard physicists have developed a novel technique that can detect molecular variants in chemical mixtures – greatly simplifying a process that is one of the most important, though time-consuming, processes in analytical chemistry. http://phys.org/news288445694.html Chemistry Wed, 22 May 2013 13:00:14 EST news288445694 Researchers at the Universities of Leeds and Chicago have uncovered an important mechanism behind the generation of astrophysical magnetic fields such as that of the Sun. http://phys.org/news288435797.html Space & Earth Wed, 22 May 2013 13:00:05 EST news288435797 In the tropics at heights more than 10 miles above the surface, the prevailing winds alternate between strong easterlies and strong westerlies roughly every other year. This slow heartbeat in the tropical upper atmosphere, referred to as the quasibiennial oscillation (QBO), impacts the winds and chemical composition of the global atmosphere and even the climate at Earth's surface. http://phys.org/news288445803.html Space & Earth Wed, 22 May 2013 13:00:04 EST news288445803 Swedish scientists have mapped the gene sequence of Norway spruce (the Christmas tree) – a species with huge economic and ecological importance - and that is the largest genome to have ever been mapped. The genome is complex and seven times larger than that of humans. The results have been published in the journal Nature. http://phys.org/news288445984.html Biology Wed, 22 May 2013 13:00:01 EST news288445984 A tiny Australian songbird may hold the answer to discovering the biological source of stuttering, which affects 3 million Americans and is notoriously difficult to treat. http://phys.org/news288442474.html Biology Wed, 22 May 2013 11:54:48 EST news288442474 (Phys.org) —Researchers at North Carolina State University have developed a new technique for creating high-quality semiconductor thin films at the atomic scale – meaning the films are only one atom thick. The technique can be used to create these thin films on a large scale, sufficient to coat wafers that are two inches wide, or larger. http://phys.org/news288442234.html Nanotechnology Wed, 22 May 2013 11:50:44 EST news288442234 (Phys.org) —In order to study many complex phenomena, physicists seek to isolate them in potential wells or boxes with easily described forms and boundary conditions. These features in turn dictate various behaviors of the system under study like, for example, equilibrium states or resonances. In recent times it has emerged that constraining particles on extremely small scales can result in interesting new behaviors. Artificial atom systems, like quantum dots, can be fine-tuned in this way to specific color or conductivity according to their dimension. In some cases, even the phase of a material can be manipulated. A group of researchers has recently demonstrated the ability to precisely control the phase structure of superfluid helium-3 by manipulating the geometry of the container that holds it, and applying an appropriate magnetic field. Their new paper, recently published in Science, describes how they used an ultra-sensitive SQUID detector to readout the NMR spectra that reveals the phase information. http://phys.org/news288436371.html Physics Wed, 22 May 2013 10:13:38 EST news288436371 Two new minute spider species have been discovered from the Sichuan and Chongqing, China. The tiny new spiders are both less than 2 mm in length, with Trogloneta yuensis being as little as 1.01 mm and Mysmena wawuensis measured to be the even tinier 0.75 mm, which classes it among the smallest spiders known. The two species described in the open access journal Zookeys both have a bizarre body shape with disproportionately big spherical posterior body. http://phys.org/news288434823.html Biology Wed, 22 May 2013 09:49:11 EST news288434823 (Phys.org) —A diverse team of international researchers has found that women with stronger immune systems don't necessarily have prettier faces than women whose immune system is not so strong. In their paper published in the journal Biology Letters, the team describes how they used photographs of women that had been vaccinated against hepatitis B to compare facial beauty. http://phys.org/news288433813.html Biology Wed, 22 May 2013 09:40:02 EST news288433813 EU leaders, desperate to give growth a boost, target energy policy Wednesday amid concerns a US-led revolution in shale oil and gas development will reshape the global economy and leave Europe far behind. http://phys.org/news288433630.html Technology Wed, 22 May 2013 09:40:01 EST news288433630 Even though astronauts receive some general medical training in preparation for a stay aboard the ISS, most of them still aren't medical professionals by any means—and with the inherent difficulties of microgravity and the relatively noisy environment inside the Station, even a simple diagnostic task like listening to a heartbeat can be a challenge. http://phys.org/news288431416.html Space & Earth Wed, 22 May 2013 09:30:01 EST news288431416 (Phys.org) —Workaholics tend to live in extremes, with great job satisfaction and creativity on the one hand and high levels of frustration and exhaustion on the other hand. Now, a new Florida State University study offers managers practical ways to help these employees stay healthy and effective on the job. http://phys.org/news288430387.html Other Sciences Wed, 22 May 2013 09:30:01 EST news288430387 Farmers have resumed planting rice for market only 15 kilometres (nine miles) from Japan's crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station, a local official said Wednesday. http://phys.org/news288433580.html Space & Earth Wed, 22 May 2013 09:26:25 EST news288433580 If you're a small charity looking for some corporate largesse, pegging your ask to a big morale-boosting event planned for your community may help seal the deal, suggests a new study on corporate giving. http://phys.org/news288433511.html Other Sciences Wed, 22 May 2013 09:25:17 EST news288433511 Research at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Advanced Light Source promises four-bit magnetic cells instead of the two-bit magnetic domains of standard magnetic memories. Magnetic vortices are whirlpools of magnetic field, in which electron spins point either clockwise or counterclockwise. In the crowded center of the whirlpool the spins point either down or up. These four orientations could represent separate bits of information in a new kind of memory, if controlled independently and simultaneously. http://phys.org/news288433476.html Nanotechnology Wed, 22 May 2013 09:24:44 EST news288433476 Early screening for prostate cancer could become as easy for men as personal pregnancy testing is for women, thanks to UC Irvine research published today in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. http://phys.org/news288433289.html Chemistry Wed, 22 May 2013 09:21:37 EST news288433289 Re-routing anti-cancer drugs to the "power plants" that make energy to keep cells alive is a promising but long-neglected approach to preventing emergence of the drug-resistant forms of cancer—source of a serious medical problem, scientists are reporting. That's the conclusion of a new study published in the journal ACS Chemical Biology. http://phys.org/news288431184.html Chemistry Wed, 22 May 2013 09:20:01 EST news288431184 Swedish researchers are leading the development of the world's first comprehensive model of the human voice, which could contribute to better voice care, voice prosthetics, talking robots and teaching opportunities. http://phys.org/news288433039.html Technology Wed, 22 May 2013 09:17:38 EST news288433039 A new slow-motion method of controlling the synthesis of polymers, which takes inspiration from both trees and Celtic Knots, opens up new possibilities in areas including medical devices, drug delivery, elastics and adhesives. http://phys.org/news288433007.html Chemistry Wed, 22 May 2013 09:16:56 EST news288433007