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. Bioluminescence may play a key role in successful foraging for southern elephant seals, a deep-sea predator, according to research published Aug. 29 in the open access journal PLOS ONE. http://phys.org/news265478193.html Biology Wed, 29 Aug 2012 17:00:04 EST news265478193 Sexual selection in the Forked Fungus Beetle favors larger body and horn size, and a new study investigates the relationship between these traits and the beetles' grip strength, which is crucial for the male to hold on to the female and shield her from other males in an elaborate courtship ritual. The full results are reported on Aug. 15 in the open access journal PLoS ONE. http://phys.org/news264263749.html Biology Wed, 15 Aug 2012 17:00:01 EST news264263749 Green lacewings are delicate green insects with large, lace-like wings that live in a wide variety of habitats, especially tropical forests. Adults mostly feed on flowers, but the larvae are ferocious predators of other insects, frequently carrying the dead carcasses of their prey on their backs after killing them using their enormous, sucking tube-like jaws. http://phys.org/news263644987.html Biology Wed, 08 Aug 2012 11:43:16 EST news263644987 The Chief Executive of the Royal Society of Chemistry has welcomed the government's Open Access proposals announced yesterday, but said the estimated £50 million annual transition costs would mean a bumpy ride ahead for UK researchers and institutions.  http://phys.org/news261807534.html Other Sciences Wed, 18 Jul 2012 05:19:10 EST news261807534 Advocates of “open access” publishing in academia say a UK report that proposes spending £60 million a year to make all publicly-funded research free to access will protect the profits of publishers at the expense of scholarship. http://phys.org/news259403311.html Other Sciences Wed, 20 Jun 2012 09:28:46 EST news259403311 (Phys.org) -- The computer and subsequent Internet age have brought all manner of change to modern society, one of which is easy access to published scientific research papers; where before it would typically take months for a paper to be published, now it can be done almost instantly and accessed just as quickly. But with such change comes resistance as established entities seek to hold on to their position, even as others push for change. Today, most serious research papers are published by just a handful of journals, who then charge a fee for people to access them. One problem with this system is that it leads some to ask why the public should have to pay to access research papers that came about as the result of public funding. To address this issue in Britain, the government there has asked a working group of individuals to look into the problem and then to make some recommendations. Their report, headed by Dame Janet Finch, has been published online and is available without cost to anyone who wishes to read it. http://phys.org/news259313882.html Other Sciences Tue, 19 Jun 2012 08:38:27 EST news259313882 Voters prefer older-looking presidents in times of war, according to research published May 23 in the open access journal PLoS ONE. http://phys.org/news257010607.html Other Sciences Wed, 23 May 2012 17:00:24 EST news257010607 The movement patterns of critically endangered leatherback turtles vary greatly depending on whether the animals live in the North Atlantic or the Eastern Pacific, with implications for feeding behavior and population recovery, according to research published May 16 in the open access journal PLoS ONE. http://phys.org/news256405915.html Biology Wed, 16 May 2012 17:00:16 EST news256405915 Harvard Library says it can no longer afford the vast cost of academic journal subscriptions, and has advised staff at the university to support open access publishing instead. http://phys.org/news254567130.html Other Sciences Wed, 25 Apr 2012 10:05:42 EST news254567130 There is an increasing need for stronger accountability of government and thus greater demands on transparency of the diplomatic and national security apparatus. However, despite the advent of WikiLeaks, which purports to expose cover-ups, exploitation and corruption by making the evidence publicly available, there are still many political and bureaucratic obstacles to overcome on the road to more open government. http://phys.org/news251462410.html Technology Tue, 20 Mar 2012 11:40:16 EST news251462410 Music is a very strong emotional communicator, and different cultures have different emotional associations for different musical "modes". Now, a new cross-cultural study shows that tonal trends used to express feelings in music are consistent in different cultures and are similar to those used in speech. The full report is published March 14, in the open access journal PLoS ONE. http://phys.org/news250955902.html Other Sciences Wed, 14 Mar 2012 17:00:08 EST news250955902 For many years, the traditional method to access researchers’ scholarly works, particularly in the sciences and social sciences, has been through paid subscriptions to journals. But in recent years, a movement toward “open access” has grown, providing free access to such material online. The issue has also drawn national attention this year, with thousands of researchers supporting a boycott of a leading scientific journal publisher, while competing bills before Congress tackle the issue of requiring open access to publicly funded research. Northeastern University news office asked Will Wakeling, dean of University Libraries at Northeastern, to discuss what open access is all about and what this trend means for the research community. http://phys.org/news250416778.html Other Sciences Thu, 08 Mar 2012 09:00:04 EST news250416778 Spider flies are a rarely collected group of insects. Adults are considered important pollinators of flowers, while larvae live as internal parasitoids of juvenile spiders. Eight genera are recorded in Australasia, including four genera in the subfamily Panopinae, a group of large, hairy, often metallic coloured adults whose larvae specialize as parasitizing mygalomorph spiders such as tarantulas, trap door and funnel web spiders. http://phys.org/news249906790.html Biology Fri, 02 Mar 2012 10:33:21 EST news249906790 Blue whale vocal behavior is affected by man-made noise, even when that noise does not overlap the frequencies the whales use for communication, according to new research published Feb. 29 in the open access journal PLoS ONE. The whales were less likely to emit calls when mid-frequency sonar was present, but were more likely to do so when ship sounds were nearby, the researchers report. http://phys.org/news249762422.html Biology Wed, 29 Feb 2012 18:27:16 EST news249762422 Knowledge about animal diet can inform conservation strategy, but this information can be difficult to gather. A new DNA-based method, which analyzes genetic material from feces, could be a useful tool, and researchers have shown its utility to characterize the diet of snow leopards in Mongolia. http://phys.org/news249762348.html Biology Wed, 29 Feb 2012 18:26:00 EST news249762348 (PhysOrg.com) -- The discovery of a new species of ichthyosaurs considerably changes our understanding of the evolution and the extinction of these dinosaur age sea reptiles, according to a study published this week in PLoS ONE by an international team of Belgian, British and German scientists. http://phys.org/news244979933.html Other Sciences Thu, 05 Jan 2012 09:59:07 EST news244979933 Open access to information about biodiversity is of crucial importance to society, directly affecting areas such as conservation and climate change research and education. "Non-Commercial" restrictions on the reuse of this information are a major barrier to addressing these problems, says a review paper published in the open access journal ZooKeys. http://phys.org/news241959439.html Biology Thu, 01 Dec 2011 11:22:14 EST news241959439 Prestigious US academic institution Princeton University has banned researchers from giving the copyright of scholarly articles to journal publishers, except in certain cases where a waiver may be granted. http://phys.org/news236426015.html Other Sciences Wed, 28 Sep 2011 10:54:03 EST news236426015 Do animals that have evolved for millions of years underground, completely isolated from the day-night cycle, still "know" what time it is? Does a normal circadian clock persist during evolution under constant darkness? A new study directly tackles these fundamental questions by investigating a species of cavefish, Phreatichthys andruzzii, which has lived isolated for 2 million years beneath the Somalian desert. Many fish species have evolved in the absence of sunlight in cave systems around the world, sharing a common set of striking adaptations including eye loss. The new study, published September 6 in the online, open access journal PLoS Biology, reports that this cavefish has an unusual circadian clock; it ticks with an extremely long period (up to 47 hours), and is completely blind. http://phys.org/news234551221.html Biology Tue, 06 Sep 2011 18:07:26 EST news234551221 Facebook and artists like Rembrandt have much in common, says the author of "Friending the Virgin: some thoughts on the pre-history of Facebook" in the open access journal SAGE Open. http://phys.org/news231772930.html Technology Fri, 05 Aug 2011 14:22:36 EST news231772930 Molecular data have shown that three Australian Cucurbitaceae species initially collected in 1856 but never accepted as separate species are distinct from each other and that one of them is the closest relative of the honeymelon, Cucumis melo. The names for these species are sorted out in a study published in the open access journal PhytoKeys. http://phys.org/news230994429.html Biology Wed, 27 Jul 2011 14:07:34 EST news230994429 Golf's storied history in the US has long been criticized for its lack of diversity, but the PGA has taken steps to improve minority participation and exposure to the game. Minority participation has increased with the popularity and success of Tiger Woods, and continues today with targeted efforts, say the authors of "Increasing Minority Golf Participation Through PGA Education Initiatives" in the open access journal SAGE Open. http://phys.org/news230547449.html Other Sciences Fri, 22 Jul 2011 09:58:02 EST news230547449 In the century and a half since Charles Darwin's publication of The Origin of Species, evolutionary theory has become the bedrock of modern biology, yet its application to the understanding of the human mind remains controversial. For the past 30 years, evolutionary interpretation of human cognition has been dominated by the field of evolutionary psychology. One view of this field is that human minds are composed of a list of dedicated programmes, each fashioned by natural selection to solve specific problems faced by our Stone Age ancestors, with all humans possessing the same universal architecture irrespective of geography or upbringing. However, this characterization of the human mind has been subject to criticism, in particular that some interpretations were so speculative they amounted to 'evolutionary stories'. http://phys.org/news230315972.html Biology Tue, 19 Jul 2011 17:39:52 EST news230315972 Synthetic collagen has a wide range of applications in reconstructive and cosmetic surgery and in the food industry. For proper function in animals a certain number of prolines within the protein need to be hydroxylated. BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Biotechnology reports that for the first time the α1 chain of type 1 collagen has been produced in maize with similar levels of proline hydroxylation to human collagen. http://phys.org/news228108129.html Biology Fri, 24 Jun 2011 04:22:29 EST news228108129 Since the World Wide Web emerged in the mid 1990s scientists have dreamed of having the whole body of scientific peer reviewed literature freely available on the web, openly available without any hindrance. In the "Open Access" scenario each published article is just one mouse-click away from any reader worldwide, a model which is in sharp contrast to the established subscription system (whereby access is only provided to those people who are able to pay for an annual subscription), 'Open Access' removes any barriers to what many believe should be publicly available material and in addition, provides for full use and re-use of the published output (hence facilitating developments such as data mining of knowledge discovery). http://phys.org/news227199305.html Other Sciences Mon, 13 Jun 2011 17:00:01 EST news227199305 They say the best things in life are free, but when it comes to online scientific publishing, a new research report in The FASEB Journal suggests otherwise. In the report, Philip M. Davis from Cornell University shows that free access to scientific journal articles leads to increases in downloads, but not to increases in citations (their use), a key factor used in scientific publishing to assess a research article's relative importance and value. This study should help scientists make informed decisions about where they publish their work and assist governments, granting institutions and universities with evaluating whether or not their open access policies are leading to greater dissemination of useful scientific knowledge. http://phys.org/news220721740.html Other Sciences Wed, 30 Mar 2011 16:36:18 EST news220721740 Long before the Italians rediscovered original Greek sources during the Renaissance, Arab scholars recognized the importance of ancient science and philosophy and began translating precious writings into Arabic. Now, Classics Professor Mark Schiefsky wants to transform those ancient Greek texts and their Arabic translations into an open-access digital corpus that could provide important insight into the development of science in the classical world. http://phys.org/news220710844.html Other Sciences Wed, 30 Mar 2011 13:34:22 EST news220710844 APS announces Physical Review X (PRX), an online, open access, primary research journal for authors in all fields of physics. http://phys.org/news214658854.html Physics Wed, 19 Jan 2011 12:20:05 EST news214658854 New findings settle one of the arguments about Open Access (OA) research publications: Are they more likely to be cited because they were made OA, or were they made OA because they were more likely to be cited? http://phys.org/news206643258.html Other Sciences Mon, 18 Oct 2010 17:54:28 EST news206643258 (PhysOrg.com) -- European researchers are creating new technology that could, ultimately, make accessible the sum of humankind's knowledge. Hundreds of organisations and millions of documents are already linked to this "United Nations of knowledge". http://phys.org/news173103456.html Technology Fri, 25 Sep 2009 13:19:36 EST news173103456