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) —Charities could benefit from an additional £40 million per year if a new intervention designed to automatically enroll donors to a scheme that increases their donations by three per cent a year is implemented. This is just one of the findings from a new report, published today by the Cabinet Office, which aimed to explore new and innovative ways of increasing charitable giving. http://phys.org/news289032670.html Other Sciences Wed, 29 May 2013 09:00:04 EST news289032670 Experts who go against the grain and pull off a big win are not the ones to follow – it was just a fluke after all. http://phys.org/news286016936.html Other Sciences Wed, 24 Apr 2013 10:09:02 EST news286016936 (Phys.org) —Professor Yaojun Li, of the Institute for Social Change, University of Manchester, analysed survey data on over 100,000 adults in England and Wales, over ten years to 2011. http://phys.org/news284197898.html Other Sciences Wed, 03 Apr 2013 08:51:44 EST news284197898 Hacker group Anonymous blocked the official website of Argentina's National Institute of Statistics and Census amid an international stand-off over claims the country has lied about its economy. http://phys.org/news277666441.html Technology Thu, 17 Jan 2013 17:34:08 EST news277666441 A new Rice University-led study finds that a deep connection about 50 miles underground can explain the enigmatic behavior of two of Earth's most notable volcanoes, Hawaii's Mauna Loa and Kilauea. The study, the first to model paired volcano interactions, explains how a link in Earth's upper mantle could account for Kilauea and Mauna Loa's competition for the same deep magma supply and their simultaneous "inflation," or bulging upward, during the past decade. http://phys.org/news270215516.html Space & Earth Tue, 23 Oct 2012 12:52:55 EST news270215516 (Phys.org)—A review of evidence into Quantitative Easing (QE) has shown that the Government's hope that it will pull the UK out of recession may be unfounded. http://phys.org/news269073967.html Other Sciences Wed, 10 Oct 2012 07:46:13 EST news269073967 NASA will launch an inflatable aeroshell/heat shield technology demonstrator on a Black Brant XI sounding rocket July 22 from the agency's launch range at the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. http://phys.org/news261936868.html Space & Earth Thu, 19 Jul 2012 17:14:37 EST news261936868 More than three out of 10 Indians are "suffering", an increase from 24 percent last year, a survey from global polling group Gallup showed Monday. http://phys.org/news254996776.html Other Sciences Mon, 30 Apr 2012 09:26:27 EST news254996776 (PhysOrg.com) -- Inflation, the brief period that occurred less than a second after the Big Bang, is nearly as difficult to fathom as the Big Bang itself. Physicists calculate that inflation lasted for just a tiny fraction of a second, yet during this time the Universe grew in size by a factor of 1078. Also during this time, a very important thing occurred: fluctuations in the quantum vacuum appeared, which later resulted in the temperature fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) that in turn produced large-scale structures such as galaxies. But in a new study, physicists now think that their understanding of the features of primordial quantum fluctuations – also called the inflationary power spectrum – may require a few small corrections due to currently unknown physics. These new corrections could allow scientists to search for experimental evidence to test a variety of quantum gravity theories, including string theory. http://phys.org/news251976548.html Physics Mon, 26 Mar 2012 11:20:02 EST news251976548 Tablet computers like Apple's iPad and Samsung's Galaxy Tab have been added into the basket of goods used to measure official British inflation, the Office for National Statistics said Tuesday. http://phys.org/news250868570.html Electronics Tue, 13 Mar 2012 14:43:15 EST news250868570 (PhysOrg.com) -- The widely-accepted theory of cosmic inflation states that our universe expanded rapidly in the moments after its birth, resulting in the immense expanse we see today. http://phys.org/news249555281.html Physics Mon, 27 Feb 2012 08:58:33 EST news249555281 Sometimes a scientist can only laugh in the face of a seemingly insurmountable challenge. http://phys.org/news248367083.html Physics Mon, 13 Feb 2012 14:51:48 EST news248367083 South Korea's largest mobile carrier SK Telecom said Thursday its fourth-quarter net profit fell 61 percent year-on-year due to higher spending on next-generation network technology and lower fees. http://phys.org/news247378991.html Technology Thu, 02 Feb 2012 04:40:03 EST news247378991 While the price of oil has risen in recent years, it has not affected the price of goods as much as in the past, according to research by two Kansas State University economists. http://phys.org/news241094873.html Other Sciences Mon, 21 Nov 2011 10:48:00 EST news241094873 World markets produced a roller-coaster ride for investors in August. MIT News recently spoke to international economics expert Roberto Rigobon to hear his views about the chaos investors have been facing. Rigobon is the Society of Sloan Fellows Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and a founder of MIT’s Billion Prices Project, an innovative real-time inflation tracker. http://phys.org/news234597674.html Other Sciences Wed, 07 Sep 2011 07:01:50 EST news234597674 (PhysOrg.com) -- Using a new coupled mass spectrometry technique that employs multiple collectors, researchers in France have shown that it was not an influx of silver from the America's that caused high inflation in Europe from the early 1500's to mid 1600, as some historians have long believed. Their results, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) show that the gradual replacement of coins made from Spanish silver to imported Mexican silver, did not occur until nearly fifty years later. http://phys.org/news225715623.html Chemistry Fri, 27 May 2011 12:20:01 EST news225715623 Despite being used for several decades, test-based incentives have not consistently generated positive effects on student achievement, says a new report from the National Research Council. The report examines evidence on incentive programs, which impose sanctions or offer rewards for students, teachers, or schools on the basis of students' test performance. Federal and state governments have increasingly relied on incentives in recent decades as a way to raise accountability in public education and in the hope of driving improvements in achievement. http://phys.org/news225636180.html Other Sciences Thu, 26 May 2011 13:43:17 EST news225636180 The value of silver soared to an all-time high last Thursday, and plunged dramatically yesterday, illustrating the constant volatility of the precious-metals market, which includes lustrous commodities like gold, silver and platinum. http://phys.org/news223891038.html Other Sciences Fri, 06 May 2011 08:58:00 EST news223891038 Economists from the Bank of Spain's Research Department have published a study on the direct, indirect and 'second time around' effects of oil prices on the economies of Spain and those of the European Monetary Union (EMU). The results show that Spanish inflation reflects oil prices than more directly inflation in the euro area overall. http://phys.org/news220873518.html Other Sciences Fri, 01 Apr 2011 10:45:35 EST news220873518 (PhysOrg.com) -- Although U.S. personal income per capita has risen 5.7 percent since 2000, an increase in tax-exempt benefits provided by the government and employers accounted for all of the income growth in the past decade, says a University of Michigan economist. http://phys.org/news220773958.html Other Sciences Thu, 31 Mar 2011 07:20:17 EST news220773958 Chief financial officers in the U.S. have a more optimistic outlook about the economy, with robust growth expected in earnings and capital spending. Overall employment is expected to grow slowly, though some job categories are in strong demand. However, an uptick in inflation would pose notable risks for many firms. http://phys.org/news218971831.html Other Sciences Thu, 10 Mar 2011 09:30:54 EST news218971831 Inflation is a crucial economic indicator, since rising prices can hurt consumers and trigger political discontent. It is also hard to measure. In the United States, Bureau of Labor Statistics employees track over 20,000 prices in person or via phone, which are then aggregated into the Consumer Price Index, a monthly gauge of price levels. But what if the Internet could help measure inflation, and in real time? That is the aim of an ambitious new enterprise, the Billion Prices Project, launched by Roberto Rigobon and Alberto Cavallo, two professors at the MIT Sloan School of Management. http://phys.org/news214225655.html Other Sciences Fri, 14 Jan 2011 11:08:31 EST news214225655 (PhysOrg.com) -- By looking far out into space and observing what’s going on there, scientists have been led to theorize that it all started with a Big Bang, immediately followed by a brief period of super-accelerated expansion called inflation. Perhaps this was the beginning of everything, but lately a few scientists have been wondering if something could have come before that, setting up the initial conditions for the birth of our universe. http://phys.org/news211808127.html Physics Fri, 17 Dec 2010 11:40:01 EST news211808127 US Internet titan Google is readying its own "Google Price Index" based on a vast database of online purchases, providing a daily measure of inflation, said a top company official quoted Tuesday in the Financial Times. http://phys.org/news206096574.html Technology Tue, 12 Oct 2010 10:20:02 EST news206096574 (PhysOrg.com) -- As far as astrophysicists can tell, the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate, and will likely continue to do so indefinitely. But now some physicists are saying that this theory, called eternal inflation, and its implication that time is endless pose a problem for scientists calculating the probability of any event occurring. In a recent paper, they calculate that time is likely to end within the next 5 billion years due to some type of catastrophe that no one alive at the time will witness. http://phys.org/news205133042.html Physics Fri, 01 Oct 2010 06:24:21 EST news205133042 (PhysOrg.com) -- Is stamp collecting only of interest to passionate hobbyists? Far from it. Stamps can be a valuable addition to an investment portfolio, generating average long-term yields of up to 7 percent per year. http://phys.org/news198350345.html Other Sciences Wed, 14 Jul 2010 19:00:01 EST news198350345 (PhysOrg.com) -- Sophisticated new technologies created by NASA and university scientists are enabling them to build an instrument designed to probe the first moments of the universe's existence. http://phys.org/news191777544.html Space & Earth Thu, 29 Apr 2010 16:33:21 EST news191777544 (PhysOrg.com) -- Is there anybody out there? In Alejandro Jenkins' case, the question refers not to whether life exists elsewhere in the universe, but whether it exists in other universes outside of our own. http://phys.org/news182537257.html Physics Tue, 12 Jan 2010 16:48:12 EST news182537257 (PhysOrg.com) -- Over the past few decades, the idea that our universe could be one of many alternate universes within a giant multiverse has grown from a sci-fi fantasy into a legitimate theoretical possibility. Several theories of physics and astronomy have hypothesized the existence of a multiverse made of many parallel universes. One obvious question that arises, then, is exactly how many of these parallel universes might there be. http://phys.org/news174921612.html Physics Fri, 16 Oct 2009 14:20:53 EST news174921612 (PhysOrg.com) -- Transaction prices of commercial property sold by major institutional investors fell by 18 percent in the second quarter of 2009, according to an index developed and published by the MIT Center for Real Estate (MIT/CRE). http://phys.org/news168528849.html Other Sciences Mon, 03 Aug 2009 14:35:04 EST news168528849