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. It is a common perception that bigger, stronger, faster organisms have a distinct advantage for long-term survival when competing with other organisms in a given community. http://phys.org/news227806773.html Biology Mon, 20 Jun 2011 16:40:05 EST news227806773 An experiment conducted at the EPFL Environmental Biotechnology Laboratory has demonstrated the role played by micro-organisms in the degradation – without oxygen – of a very common pollutant: vinyl chloride. http://phys.org/news225714337.html Space & Earth Fri, 27 May 2011 11:26:04 EST news225714337 Scientists have discovered that marine diatoms, tiny phytoplankton abundant in the sea, have an animal-like urea cycle, and that this cycle enables the diatoms to efficiently use carbon and nitrogen from their environment. http://phys.org/news224337072.html Biology Wed, 11 May 2011 13:00:53 EST news224337072 Researchers at the University of Exeter have uncovered a 'missing link' in the fungal tree of life after analysing samples taken from the university's pond. http://phys.org/news224337342.html Biology Wed, 11 May 2011 13:00:22 EST news224337342 (PhysOrg.com) -- Organisms are genetically programmed to cheat the system and have to be policed to stop them putting their needs ahead of society and thus threatening its survival, say scientists. http://phys.org/news167661482.html Biology Fri, 24 Jul 2009 13:38:35 EST news167661482 The ice is melting, the sea level is rising and species are conquering new habitats. The warming of the world climate has many consequences. In the current issue of the renowned journal 'Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences' researchers from the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences (IFM-GEOMAR) and the HYAX Lake Ecosystem Laboratory in Aix-en-Provence (Germany) report that climate change influences the size of aquatic organisms. http://phys.org/news167550944.html Biology Thu, 23 Jul 2009 07:10:01 EST news167550944 (PhysOrg.com) -- Synchronicity in nature is seen in beating hearts, the flashing of fireflies' lights, the ebb and flow of infectious disease—and the simultaneous rise and fall of populations across vast reaches of space. While scientists have identified some factors that account for this melodic phenomenon, they have yet to sort out the relative contribution each plays in this finely tuned orchestra. http://phys.org/news167488020.html Biology Wed, 22 Jul 2009 13:27:54 EST news167488020 When cells experiencing DNA damage fail to repair themselves, they send a signal to their neighbors letting them know they're in trouble. The discovery, which shows that a process dubbed the DDR (DNA Damage Response) also controls communication from cell to cell, has implications for both cancer and aging. The findings appear in the July 13 online edition of the Nature Cell Biology. http://phys.org/news166710999.html Biology Mon, 13 Jul 2009 13:42:11 EST news166710999 Scientists have shown that E. coli - one of the best known and extensively studied organisms in the world - remains an enigma that may hold the key to human diseases, such as cancer. http://phys.org/news166704056.html Biology Mon, 13 Jul 2009 12:30:05 EST news166704056 The Amazon River originated as a transcontinental river around 11 million years ago and took its present shape approximately 2.4 million years ago. These are the most significant results of a study on two boreholes drilled in proximity of the mouth of the Amazon River by Petrobras, the national oil company of Brazil. http://phys.org/news166209055.html Space & Earth Tue, 07 Jul 2009 18:30:01 EST news166209055 What's so great about sex? From an evolutionary perspective, the answer is not as obvious as one might think. An article published in the July issue of the American Naturalist suggests that sex may have evolved in part as a defense against parasites. http://phys.org/news166118400.html Biology Mon, 06 Jul 2009 17:00:32 EST news166118400 A new study at the University of Leicester aims to investigate the DNA of sleep. http://phys.org/news165055510.html Medicine & Health Wed, 24 Jun 2009 09:45:39 EST news165055510 Most of our cells possess an internal clock, a group of genes displaying a cyclic expression pattern that reaches a peak once a day. A large number of circadian genes are expressed by organs such as the liver, whose activity needs to be precisely regulated over the course of the day. http://phys.org/news163009136.html Medicine & Health Sun, 31 May 2009 17:19:21 EST news163009136 Proteins are the executive agents that carry out all processes in a cell. Their activity is controlled and modified with the help of small chemical tags that can be dynamically added to and removed from the protein. 25 years after its first discovery, researchers at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg have now gained insight into the role of one of these tags, a small sugar residue, that is found on many different proteins across species. In the current online issue of Science they report that the addition of this sugar tag to proteins in the nucleus of a cell is vital for normal development in fruit flies. http://phys.org/news162814249.html Biology Fri, 29 May 2009 11:11:29 EST news162814249 The answer to the looming fuel crisis in the 21st century may be found by thinking small, microscopic in fact. Microscopic organisms from bacteria and cyanobacteria, to fungi and microalgae, are biological factories that are proving to be efficient sources of inexpensive, environmentally friendly biofuels that can serve as alternatives to oil, according to research presented at the 109th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology. http://phys.org/news161860707.html Biology Mon, 18 May 2009 10:19:12 EST news161860707 Scientists at The University of Manchester have developed an experiment that sheds new and fascinating light on how life on Earth might have begun. http://phys.org/news161456485.html Chemistry Wed, 13 May 2009 18:02:05 EST news161456485 When it comes to immunity, men may not have been dealt an equal hand. The latest study by Dr. Maya Saleh, of the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre and McGill University, shows that women have a more powerful immune system than men. In fact, the production of estrogen by females could have a beneficial effect on the innate inflammatory response against bacterial pathogens. These surprising results were published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. http://phys.org/news161315351.html Medicine & Health Tue, 12 May 2009 02:49:48 EST news161315351 An article by Dr. Xavier Trepat, senior researcher of the Cellular and respiratory biomechanics group at the University of Barcelona, Spain, contributes for the first time an experimental answer to the question of how cells move during biological processes as diverse as the development, metastasis, or regeneration of tissues. http://phys.org/news160834200.html Physics Wed, 06 May 2009 13:10:38 EST news160834200 When cells decide to make proteins, key building blocks of all organisms, they need to know where to start reading the instructions for assembling them. http://phys.org/news160417149.html Chemistry Fri, 01 May 2009 17:19:28 EST news160417149 (PhysOrg.com) -- The Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) drillship JOIDES Resolution is returning to port in Honolulu this week after a two-month voyage to chart detailed climate history in the equatorial Pacific Ocean. The expedition was the first of two back-to-back voyages of a scientific project called Pacific Equatorial Age Transect (PEAT). It was the first international scientific drilling expedition after the JOIDES Resolution underwent a multi-year transformation into a 21st-century floating science laboratory. http://phys.org/news160410462.html Space & Earth Fri, 01 May 2009 15:28:15 EST news160410462 (PhysOrg.com) -- Making its home near extreme temperatures of thermal vents on the ocean floor, the organism Methanopyrus kandleri harbors a molecular secret that intrigues evolutionary biologists and even HIV researchers. http://phys.org/news160326843.html Chemistry Thu, 30 Apr 2009 16:14:41 EST news160326843 During a seminar at another institution several years ago, University of Chicago paleontologist David Jablonski fielded a hostile question: Why bother classifying organisms according to their physical appearance, let alone analyze their evolutionary dynamics, when molecular techniques had already invalidated that approach? http://phys.org/news160157479.html Other Sciences Tue, 28 Apr 2009 17:11:43 EST news160157479 Within 10 years, we'll find life outside Earth -- that's the prediction of Peter Smith, the University of Arizona professor who led NASA's Phoenix Mars Mission. http://phys.org/news159548452.html Space & Earth Tue, 21 Apr 2009 16:01:26 EST news159548452 Researchers may have found a way to combine imaging with chemotherapy in a single agent for the treatment of prostate cancer, according to data presented at the American Association for Cancer Research 100th Annual Meeting 2009. http://phys.org/news159546244.html Medicine & Health Tue, 21 Apr 2009 15:24:27 EST news159546244 Kapakahines, marine-derived natural products isolated from a South Pacific sponge in trace quantities, have shown anti-leukemia potential, but studies have been all but stalled by kapakahines' lack of availability. http://phys.org/news159206712.html Chemistry Fri, 17 Apr 2009 17:05:37 EST news159206712 The club moss Lycopodium serratum is a creeping, flowerless plant used in homeopathic medicine to treat a wide variety of ailments. It contains a potent brew of alkaloids that have attracted considerable scientific and medical interest. However, the plant makes many of these compounds in extremely low amounts, hindering efforts to test their therapeutic value. http://phys.org/news159037185.html Chemistry Wed, 15 Apr 2009 18:01:03 EST news159037185 A researcher at UC Riverside has discovered a new species of lichen - a plant-like growth that looks like moss or a dry leaf - and named it after President Barack Obama. http://phys.org/news159021619.html Biology Wed, 15 Apr 2009 13:42:37 EST news159021619 Byproducts from the electronics, fuel, chemical and defense industries can be far from benign. Toxic heavy metals like cadmium and lead can seep into our food chain and cause cancer. And if found in the soil, these dangerous materials can render parks off-limits and real estate worthless. http://phys.org/news158851087.html Chemistry Mon, 13 Apr 2009 14:19:35 EST news158851087 Surgeons in Boston have performed the second-ever partial face transplant in the United States, replacing some 80 percent of a disfigured man's face. http://phys.org/news158586870.html Medicine & Health Fri, 10 Apr 2009 12:55:07 EST news158586870 (PhysOrg.com) -- Mass extinctions occur repeatedly, though irregularly, throughout Earth’s history, and occasionally these extinctions have been devastating to life on our planet - or have they? Extinction events have sometimes accelerated the evolution of life on earth by eliminating old dominating species and making room for new ones. A new study takes this idea a step further, showing that life may have never achieved the complexity necessary for the development of advanced multi-cellular organisms without recurring extinction events. http://phys.org/news157973463.html Biology Fri, 03 Apr 2009 10:31:31 EST news157973463