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. The universe abounds with dark matter. Nobody knows what it consists of. University of Oslo physicists have now launched a very hard mathematical explanation that could solve the mystery once and for all. http://phys.org/news278144331.html Physics Wed, 23 Jan 2013 06:19:17 EST news278144331 (Phys.org)—An international team of astronomers, led by academics from the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan), has found the largest known structure in the universe. The large quasar group (LQG) is so large that it would take a vehicle travelling at the speed of light some 4 billion years to cross it. The team publish their results in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. http://phys.org/news277112505.html Space & Earth Fri, 11 Jan 2013 07:41:54 EST news277112505 Recently I posted an image of two of Saturn's shepherd moons, Pandora and Prometheus, captured by Cassini in a face-off across the spindly F ring. Now here's a much wider-angle view of the gas giant's rings, seen by Cassini two days later on December 20, and the same two moons can still be seen staring each other down… two tiny points of light visible across the wavering line of the F ring at lower center. http://phys.org/news275558044.html Space & Earth Mon, 24 Dec 2012 08:40:04 EST news275558044 (Phys.org)—An astronomer from the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) is leading a global study to help find holes in dust clouds. http://phys.org/news275136489.html Space & Earth Wed, 19 Dec 2012 10:48:17 EST news275136489 Claims that forest leaves rich in nitrogen may aid in reflecting infrared radiation—helping cool the atmosphere—have been challenged by new research that shows that the structure of tree canopies is a more important factor in infrared reflection. http://phys.org/news273754795.html Space & Earth Mon, 03 Dec 2012 15:00:28 EST news273754795 (Phys.org)—French researchers Sébastien Charnoz and Aurélien Crida have proposed in a paper published in the journal Science that moons that orbit some of the planets in our solar system came about due to accretion from material in rings that used to surround the planets, rather than as entities that took shape while their host planets were forming. http://phys.org/news273491487.html Space & Earth Fri, 30 Nov 2012 10:20:01 EST news273491487 (Phys.org)—An efficient, high-volume technique for testing potential drug treatments for Alzheimer's disease uncovered an organic compound that restored motor function and longevity to fruit flies with the disease, according to new research that could help put the search for an effective Alzheimer's drug on a faster track. http://phys.org/news272215783.html Chemistry Thu, 15 Nov 2012 15:50:02 EST news272215783 Examining battery materials on the nano-scale reveals how nickel forms a physical barrier that appears to impede the shuttling of lithium ions in the battery's electrode, reducing how fast the materials charge and discharge, according to research led by DOE's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Nickel is an essential component of cathode compounds for lithium-ion batteries.  Published in Nano Letters, the research also suggests a way to improve the materials. http://phys.org/news271411140.html Nanotechnology Tue, 06 Nov 2012 09:30:01 EST news271411140 (Phys.org)—Researchers from North Carolina State University have created flower-like structures out of germanium sulfide (GeS) – a semiconductor material – that have extremely thin petals with an enormous surface area. The GeS flower holds promise for next-generation energy storage devices and solar cells. http://phys.org/news269177058.html Nanotechnology Thu, 11 Oct 2012 12:24:31 EST news269177058 One can often begin to understand a protein's function by identifying its accomplices in the cell. Accordingly, scientists have developed diverse biochemical assays that essentially allow them to go 'fishing' for interaction data—using a purified protein of interest as 'bait' to pluck its binding partners from out of a cellular extract. http://phys.org/news269074678.html Biology Wed, 10 Oct 2012 07:58:11 EST news269074678 Most proteins have a single 'correct' way to fold; typically, improperly folded proteins are promptly eliminated by cells. However, certain misfolded proteins have a tendency to aggregate in dense fibrous clumps known as amyloid plaques. In humans, this accumulation is often a pathological feature, as observed in Alzheimer's or Huntington's disease. http://phys.org/news268646492.html Biology Fri, 05 Oct 2012 09:01:38 EST news268646492 (Phys.org)—For more than 50 years, language scientists have assumed that sentence structure is fundamentally hierarchical, made up of small parts in turn made of smaller parts, like Russian nesting dolls. http://phys.org/news267437281.html Other Sciences Fri, 21 Sep 2012 09:08:08 EST news267437281 (Phys.org)—Clumpy particles in Saturn's B-ring provide stark contrast to the delicately ordered ringlets seen in the rest of this view presented by the Cassini spacecraft. http://phys.org/news266569149.html Space & Earth Tue, 11 Sep 2012 08:20:02 EST news266569149 (Phys.org)—The space between stars is not empty—it contains copious amounts of gas and dust. Astronomers estimate that about 5-10% of the total mass of our Milky Way galaxy is contained in the interstellar gas and dust, and about 1% is in the form of tiny dust grains made predominantly of silicates, rather like fine sand. Some grains are also composed of carbon and other elements. http://phys.org/news265358501.html Space & Earth Tue, 28 Aug 2012 08:00:01 EST news265358501 (Phys.org) -- At the core of most galaxies including our own Milky Way is a massive black hole. Material falling into the environment of the black hole heats up, and can radiate dramatically, sometimes also powering the ejection of bipolar jets of rapidly moving charged particles. These so-called active galactic nuclei (AGN) are observed to have roughly two types of characteristics: bright, rapidly moving hot gas with dust emission features, or dust absorption with modest (or no) fast gas. http://phys.org/news263792137.html Space & Earth Fri, 10 Aug 2012 04:36:02 EST news263792137 (Phys.org) -- Two of our Milky Way's neighbor galaxies may have had a close encounter billions of years ago, recent studies with the National Science Foundation's Green Bank Telescope (GBT) indicate. The new observations confirm a disputed 2004 discovery of hydrogen gas streaming between the giant Andromeda Galaxy, also known as M31, and the Triangulum Galaxy, or M33. http://phys.org/news258651405.html Space & Earth Mon, 11 Jun 2012 18:00:03 EST news258651405 (Phys.org) -- Astronomers used to think that star formation simply involved the gradual coalescence of material under the influence of gravity. No longer. Making a new star is a complex process, among other things assembling a circumstellar disk (possibly preplanetary in nature) and at the same time ejecting material as bipolar jets perpendicular to those disks. These outflows help the young star balance its growth as new material accretes, but at the same time they disrupt the environment. Although jets from young stars have been known for over twenty years, their influences on the environment have remained uncertain, in part because the dusty natal clouds in which stars form obscure optical light. http://phys.org/news257412917.html Space & Earth Mon, 28 May 2012 09:10:02 EST news257412917 The microscopic organisms on which almost all life in the oceans depends could be even more vulnerable to increasingly acidic waters than scientists realised, according to a new study. http://phys.org/news256288276.html Space & Earth Tue, 15 May 2012 08:11:24 EST news256288276 (Phys.org) -- A carbon nanotube sponge that can soak up oil in water with unparalleled efficiency has been developed with help from computational simulations performed at the Department of Energy's (DOE's) Oak Ridge National Laboratory. http://phys.org/news255880735.html Nanotechnology Thu, 10 May 2012 15:00:09 EST news255880735 NPL and University of Leicester scientists have explored a new way of ordering proteins for materials engineering at the nanoscale, using natural biological phenomena as a guide. http://phys.org/news255158595.html Biology Wed, 02 May 2012 06:23:31 EST news255158595 With its large clumps of cascading white tendrils, the Hericium erinaceus looks less like a mushroom and more like a lion's mane (its nickname). http://phys.org/news253338738.html Biology Wed, 11 Apr 2012 05:30:03 EST news253338738 Proteins are the molecular building blocks and machinery of cells and involved in practically all biological processes. To fulfil their tasks, they need to be folded into a complicated three-dimensional structure. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry (MPIB) in Martinsried near Munich, Germany, have now analysed one of the key players of this folding process: the molecular chaperone DnaK. "The understanding of these mechanisms is of great interest in the light of the many diseases in which folding goes awry, such as Alzheimer's or Parkinson's," says Ulrich Hartl, MPIB director. The work of the researchers has now been published in Cell Reports. http://phys.org/news250435563.html Biology Thu, 08 Mar 2012 13:29:09 EST news250435563 On Midway atoll in the North Pacific, dozens of young albatross lie dead on the sand, their stomachs filled with cigarette lighters, toy soldiers and other small plastic objects their parents have mistaken for food. http://phys.org/news247378776.html Space & Earth Thu, 02 Feb 2012 04:30:02 EST news247378776 Scientists from the University of Bristol have developed a soap, composed of iron rich salts dissolved in water, that responds to a magnetic field when placed in solution. The soap's magnetic properties were proved with neutrons at the Institut Laue-Langevin to result from tiny iron-rich clumps that sit within the watery solution. The generation of this property in a fully functional soap could calm concerns over the use of soaps in oil-spill clean ups and revolutionise industrial cleaning products. http://phys.org/news246555354.html Chemistry Mon, 23 Jan 2012 17:00:05 EST news246555354 (PhysOrg.com) -- Stars form as gravity coalesces the gas and dust in interstellar clouds until the material produces clumps dense enough to become stars. But precisely how this happens, and whether or not the processes are the same for all stars, remains very uncertain. Astronomers have been studying very young clumps, called "pre-stellar cores" located deep within stellar wombs, in an attempt to sort out these details. But precisely because the cores have no stars in them yet, or at best only very young stars, they are faint and difficult to observe. http://phys.org/news246526377.html Space & Earth Mon, 23 Jan 2012 07:33:07 EST news246526377 (PhysOrg.com) -- Black holes are irresistible sinks for matter and energy. They are so dense that not even light can escape from their gravitational clutches. Massive black holes (equal to millions or even billions of solar masses) develop during collisions between galaxies. More ordinary, stellar-mass-sized black holes form as remnants of the explosive deaths of stars, and are thought to contain not more than about twenty solar masses of material. http://phys.org/news245923158.html Space & Earth Mon, 16 Jan 2012 07:59:29 EST news245923158 (PhysOrg.com) -- Astronomers using the partially completed ALMA observatory have found compelling evidence for how star-forming galaxies evolve into 'red and dead' elliptical galaxies, catching a large group of galaxies right in the middle of this change. http://phys.org/news245503971.html Space & Earth Wed, 11 Jan 2012 11:34:07 EST news245503971 The accumulation of damaged protein is a hallmark of aging that not even the humble baker's yeast can escape. Yet, aged yeast cells spawn off youthful daughter cells without any of the telltale protein clumps. Now, researchers at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research may have found an explanation for the observed asymmetrical distribution of damaged proteins between mothers and their youthful daughters. http://phys.org/news241273735.html Biology Wed, 23 Nov 2011 12:29:12 EST news241273735 Nanoparticles such as carbon nanotubes (CNT), which are found in an ever-increasing number of products, are ending up more and more frequently in our surroundings. If and how they affect aquatic ecosystems are questions which are still unanswered. An Empa study shows that while CNTs do not have toxic effects on green algae they do inhibit its growth by depriving the plant of light and space. http://phys.org/news239616292.html Nanotechnology Fri, 04 Nov 2011 09:40:03 EST news239616292 Imagine having skin so supple you could stretch it out to more than twice its normal length in any direction - repeatedly - yet it would always snap back completely wrinkle-free when you let go of it. You would certainly never need Botox. http://phys.org/news238668325.html Nanotechnology Mon, 24 Oct 2011 09:45:37 EST news238668325