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. (Phys.org) —Earthquakes that last minutes rather than seconds are a relatively recent discovery, according to an international team of seismologists. Researchers have been aware of these slow earthquakes, only for the past five to 10 years because of new tools and new observations, but these tools may explain the triggering of some normal earthquakes and could help in earthquake prediction. http://phys.org/news288268588.html Space & Earth Mon, 20 May 2013 11:36:57 EST news288268588 (Phys.org) —NASA's senior Mars rover, Opportunity, is driving to a new study area after a dramatic finish to 20 months on "Cape York" with examination of a rock intensely altered by water. http://phys.org/news288075812.html Space & Earth Sat, 18 May 2013 06:04:53 EST news288075812 In the race to protect society from infectious microbes, the bugs are outrunning us. The need for new therapeutic agents is acute, given the emergence of novel pathogens as well as old foes bearing heightened antibiotic resistance. http://phys.org/news288029054.html Chemistry Fri, 17 May 2013 17:04:38 EST news288029054 Working with the International Tennis Federation and colleagues at the University of Exeter, the team from the University of Sheffield's Faculty of Engineering developed a test machine which applies large forces to a surface to mimic the impact of elite tennis players on tennis courts. This impact can be up to four times the bodyweight of a player. http://phys.org/news283600629.html Technology Wed, 27 Mar 2013 10:57:47 EST news283600629 It was always believed that water is "squeezed" out of the clay structure under pressure but physicists at Umea University in Sweden together with German colleagues show that this appear to be not always true if excess of liquid water is available around. The new findings are published in Angewandte Chemie. http://phys.org/news283586581.html Chemistry Wed, 27 Mar 2013 07:03:09 EST news283586581 (Phys.org) —NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has seen evidence of water-bearing minerals in rocks near where it had already found clay minerals inside a drilled rock. http://phys.org/news282833364.html Space & Earth Mon, 18 Mar 2013 13:49:48 EST news282833364 (Phys.org) —An analysis of a rock sample collected by NASA's Curiosity rover shows ancient Mars could have supported living microbes. http://phys.org/news282315290.html Space & Earth Tue, 12 Mar 2013 13:54:56 EST news282315290 (Phys.org)—A NASA spacecraft is providing new evidence of a wet underground environment on Mars that adds to an increasingly complex picture of the Red Planet's early evolution. http://phys.org/news277915807.html Space & Earth Sun, 20 Jan 2013 14:50:20 EST news277915807 (Phys.org)—Given that over 20 trillion cubic meters of natural gas, a third of the United States' total reserves, are thought to be trapped in shale, and given the rush to exploit shale oil and gas resources by Australia, Canada, China, and other countries around the world—even oil-rich Saudi Arabia—it's a wonder that producers still rely on models of how fluids flow underground that were devised in the heyday of oil and gas development. http://phys.org/news276506339.html Physics Fri, 04 Jan 2013 07:30:03 EST news276506339 (Phys.org)—A new study co-authored by the Georgia Institute of Technology indicates that clay minerals, rocks that usually form when water is present for long periods of time, cover a larger portion of Mars than previously thought. In fact, Assistant Professor James Wray and the research team say clays were in some of the rocks studied by Opportunity when it landed at Eagle crater in 2004. The rover only detected acidic sulfates and has since driven about 22 miles to Endeavour Crater, an area of the planet Wray pinpointed for clays in 2009. http://phys.org/news275237581.html Space & Earth Thu, 20 Dec 2012 14:53:08 EST news275237581 If thirst is crucial to knowledge, then one crucial step in the evolution of air conditioning was born in the 1970s, when Ron Judkoff was a hot, thirsty Peace Corp volunteer in Kedougou, Senegal, one of the warmest places on Earth. http://phys.org/news275058786.html Technology Tue, 18 Dec 2012 13:13:18 EST news275058786 (Phys.org)—The latest work assignment for NASA's long-lived Mars rover Opportunity is a further examination of an area where the robot just completed a walkabout. http://phys.org/news273855870.html Space & Earth Tue, 04 Dec 2012 15:04:55 EST news273855870 There are easier places to make wine than the spectacular, desolate landscapes of southeast Turkey, but DNA analysis suggests it is here that Stone Age farmers first domesticated the wine grape. http://phys.org/news273213726.html Biology Tue, 27 Nov 2012 05:00:01 EST news273213726 Jewelry and female figurines from Belica, Serbia, to be exhibited for the first time at Tübingen University Museum. http://phys.org/news271442190.html Other Sciences Tue, 06 Nov 2012 16:37:54 EST news271442190 One of the most interesting discoveries made so far by the Opportunity rover on Mars has been the small round spherules or "blueberries" as they are commonly referred to, covering the ground at the rover's landing site. Typically only a few millimetres across, some lie loose on the soil while others are imbedded in rock outcrops. http://phys.org/news266831418.html Space & Earth Fri, 14 Sep 2012 09:10:01 EST news266831418 (Phys.org)—Ancient Mars, like Earth today, was a diverse planet shaped by many different geologic processes. So when scientists, using rovers or orbiting spacecraft, detect a particular mineral there, they must often consider several possible ways it could have been made. http://phys.org/news266655792.html Space & Earth Wed, 12 Sep 2012 08:03:19 EST news266655792 Instead of a warm, wet and possibly life-bearing planet as some scientists contend, early Mars may have been a hostile and volatile place with frequent volcanic outbursts, a study said Sunday. http://phys.org/news266420842.html Space & Earth Sun, 09 Sep 2012 14:47:28 EST news266420842 Meanwhile, back in Meridiani Planum … the Opportunity rover keeps on trucking, and has now exceeded over 35 kilometers (21.75 miles) of driving on its odometer! Quite an accomplishment for the Energizer Bunny of Mars rovers, now operating for 3,057 Martian sols. As the MER team says, "Not bad for a vehicle designed for only about 1 kilometer (.6 miles) of distance and 90 sols (days) of lifetime." http://phys.org/news265877386.html Space & Earth Mon, 03 Sep 2012 08:00:01 EST news265877386 The magic mineral and microbial processes that transform volcanic glass into clay have been identified, adding important knowledge to how clay is formed. http://phys.org/news260784188.html Chemistry Fri, 06 Jul 2012 09:20:02 EST news260784188 (Phys.org) -- In searching for better flame retardants for home furnishings—a large source of fuel in house fires—National Institute of Standards and Technology researchers defied the conventional wisdom and literally hit a wall, one made of clay. http://phys.org/news260093387.html Chemistry Thu, 28 Jun 2012 09:09:55 EST news260093387 Porous ceramic water filters are often coated with colloidal silver, which prevents the growth of microbes trapped in the micro- and nano-scale pores of the filter. Other metals such as copper and zinc have also been shown to exhibit anti-microbial activity. http://phys.org/news257099976.html Nanotechnology Thu, 24 May 2012 17:39:47 EST news257099976 (Phys.org) -- For the first time, scientists have direct evidence that high-pressure carbon dioxide or CO2 migrates into the clay montmorillonite causing it to expand, according to scientists at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Montmorillonite is found in the rocks used to cap carbon sequestration sites, and scientists previously thought that only water could make it expand.  Caprocks spend thousands of years halting the escape of injected CO2. To learn how these rocks respond to CO2, the researchers studied the material under realistic sequestration conditions. http://phys.org/news256548199.html Chemistry Fri, 18 May 2012 08:23:34 EST news256548199 (Phys.org) -- A new study by scientists from Denmark and Germany has found live bacteria trapped in red clay deposited on the ocean floor some 86 million years ago. The bacteria use miniscule amounts of oxygen and move only extremely slowly. http://phys.org/news256533790.html Biology Fri, 18 May 2012 05:10:01 EST news256533790 Gently cradling a 5,000-year-old cuneiform clay tablet from Ur (modern day Iraq), Andrew Nelson wishes he could peel back the layers to find out what makes up this first-generation iPad. And thanks to a new microCT scanner at Western’s Sustainable Archaeology Repository (SAR), the Anthropology professor has done just that. http://phys.org/news255947101.html Other Sciences Fri, 11 May 2012 09:25:10 EST news255947101 Once again, science and anthropology have teamed up to solve questions concerning the fascinating, brilliantly hued pigment known as Maya Blue. Impervious to the effects of chemical or physical weathering, the pigment was applied to pottery, sculpture, and murals in Mesoamerica largely during the Classic and Postclassic periods (AD 250-1520), playing a central role in ancient Maya religious practice. This unusual blue paint was used to coat the victims of human sacrifice and the altars on which they were dispatched. http://phys.org/news252586888.html Other Sciences Mon, 02 Apr 2012 12:01:48 EST news252586888 Mars was once a much wetter world than it is now, with hot springs, rivers, lakes and perhaps even oceans. Just how wet exactly, and for how long, is still a subject of considerable debate. One vital clue comes from clay mineral deposits and sediments left over after the water disappeared, but still visible now. They provide a valuable insight into what Mars used to be like, and why it is the cold, dry place we see today. http://phys.org/news251107008.html Space & Earth Fri, 16 Mar 2012 08:57:02 EST news251107008 Archaeological finds from cuneiform tablets and remnants of different vessels from over 4,000 years ago show that even around the dawn of civilisation, fermented cereal juice was highly enjoyed by Mesopotamia's inhabitants. However, besides the two basic ingredients, barley and emmer (a species of wheat) the brew produced in the clay jars of the Sumerians is shrouded in mystery. Despite an abundance of finds and scribal traditions which point to an early love of fermented cereal beverages, reconstructing ancient brewing methods is very difficult, according to the historian of science and cuneiform writing scholar Peter Damerow of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. A scholarly paper by Damerow, who passed away at the end of November 2011 in Berlin, carefully examines the beer brewing technologies of the Sumerians. However, the author also expresses great doubts as to whether the popular brew in ancient times was even beer. http://phys.org/news246027282.html Other Sciences Tue, 17 Jan 2012 12:55:01 EST news246027282 In the basement of Harvard’s Semitic Museum, Alex Douglas looked at the pieces of baked clay in front of him, teasing out how they fit together into a small tablet, thousands of years old and marked with ancient cuneiform writing. http://phys.org/news245061392.html Other Sciences Fri, 06 Jan 2012 08:50:01 EST news245061392 For millennia, writing has been the preferred way to convey information and knowledge from one generation to another. We first developed the ability to write on clay tablets with a point, and then settled on a reed pen, as preserved from 3000 BC in Egypt when it was used with papyrus. http://phys.org/news241096114.html Physics Mon, 21 Nov 2011 11:08:49 EST news241096114 (PhysOrg.com) -- A new NASA study suggests if life ever existed on Mars, the longest lasting habitats were most likely below the Red Planet's surface. http://phys.org/news239469254.html Space & Earth Wed, 02 Nov 2011 16:14:22 EST news239469254