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. Harvard scientists say they've solved a mystery that's nearly as old as science's understanding of the genetic code. http://phys.org/news277976749.html Biology Mon, 21 Jan 2013 08:30:02 EST news277976749 Chemists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have found an easier way to perform one of the most fundamental tasks in molecular biology. Their new method allows scientists to add a marker to certain cells, so that these cells may be easily located and/or selected out from a larger cell population. http://phys.org/news276878224.html Chemistry Tue, 08 Jan 2013 14:37:11 EST news276878224 (Phys.org)—Just as human tourists can be good for the economy, "insect tourists" can be good for a plant. When the hairs of a "sticky plant" trap small insects or "insect tourists," the plant can benefit in ways most people never think about, say researchers in the Department of Entomology, University of California, Davis. http://phys.org/news276855528.html Biology Tue, 08 Jan 2013 08:19:00 EST news276855528 The mysterious inner workings of Chang Shan—a Chinese herbal medicine used for thousands of years to treat fevers associated with malaria—have been uncovered thanks to a high-resolution structure solved at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI). http://phys.org/news275488362.html Chemistry Sun, 23 Dec 2012 13:00:48 EST news275488362 A tiny, translucent zebrafish that glows green when its liver makes glucose has helped an international team of researchers identify a compound that regulates whole-body metabolism and appears to protect obese mice from signs of metabolic disorders. http://phys.org/news273667440.html Chemistry Sun, 02 Dec 2012 13:00:14 EST news273667440 Researchers at the Tokyo Institute of Technology,  NASA's Johnson Space Center, Lunar Planetary Institute, and Carnegie Institute of Washington report on geochemical studies that help towards settling the controversy that surrounds the origin, abundance, and history of water on Mars. http://phys.org/news272538511.html Space & Earth Mon, 19 Nov 2012 09:08:45 EST news272538511 (Phys.org)—Although some scholars have suggested that the income gap between men and women is due to women's reluctance to negotiate salaries, a new study at the University of Chicago shows that given an invitation, women are just as willing as men to negotiate for more pay. http://phys.org/news272206632.html Other Sciences Thu, 15 Nov 2012 12:57:20 EST news272206632 Blending religion with familism—a strong commitment to lifelong marriage and childbearing—dampens secular civic participation, according to research by a Baylor University sociologist. http://phys.org/news272199393.html Other Sciences Thu, 15 Nov 2012 10:57:25 EST news272199393 (Phys.org)—The fossilized fangs of saber-toothed cats hold clues to how the extinct mammals shared space and food with other large predators 9 million years ago. http://phys.org/news271417703.html Biology Tue, 06 Nov 2012 19:00:05 EST news271417703 (Phys.org)—By force of habit we tend to assume computers are made of silicon, but there is actually no necessary connection between the machine and the material. All that an engineer needs to do to make a computer is to find a way to build logic gates—the elementary building blocks of digital computers—in whatever material is handy. http://phys.org/news269280067.html Biology Fri, 12 Oct 2012 17:02:23 EST news269280067 During the Great Recession, families of all economic classes have felt the pinch. They have lost incomes and assets, and some families are worse off than others. A new series of reports from researchers at the University of Kansas examines families' economic instability over a 25-year period leading up to the Great Recession, between 1984 and 2009. They ask what predicts families' probability of experiencing economic instability and whether this instability affects children's educational achievement. http://phys.org/news268049438.html Other Sciences Fri, 28 Sep 2012 11:20:01 EST news268049438 It started with an offhand remark, an unusual characterization for astronomers talking about stars: "They're going off like popcorn." http://phys.org/news266571181.html Space & Earth Tue, 11 Sep 2012 08:33:11 EST news266571181 (Phys.org)—Over the last decade, metabolomics has emerged as the newest of the "omic" sciences (following genomics and proteomics) to provide comprehensive biochemical information about cellular metabolism. This new field has revealed that many of the chemicals involved in or produced through metabolism are currently unknown, but may play vital and previously unappreciated roles in human health and disease. http://phys.org/news266514300.html Biology Mon, 10 Sep 2012 16:45:23 EST news266514300 Research on a unique vertebrate called the sea lamprey shows that more than a thousand genes are shed during its early development. These genes are paradoxically lost all throughout the developing embryo except in a specialized compartment called "primordial germ cells" or PGCs. The PGCs can be thought of as embryonic stem cells and are used, ultimately, for making the next generation of lampreys. Based on computational analysis, a significant number of genes that are lost in the embryo have signatures of "pluripotency," which suggests that they could also have undesirable effects if they were inadvertently turned on in the body. In effect, by undergoing programmed genome rearrangement and gene loss during embryogenesis, the sea lamprey "seals" the genes away in the small germline compartment so they cannot be misexpressed and thereby create untoward problems (such as development of cancer, for example). http://phys.org/news264766145.html Biology Tue, 21 Aug 2012 11:09:13 EST news264766145 As the world's accessible oil reserves dwindle, natural gas has become an increasing important energy source. The primary component of natural gas is methane, which has the advantage of releasing less carbon dioxide when it's burned than do many other hydrocarbon fuels. But because of the very stable structure of the methane molecule, it can be difficult to access the energy stored within. When unburned methane escapes into the atmosphere, it's a greenhouse gas 20 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. http://phys.org/news263735023.html Chemistry Thu, 09 Aug 2012 14:00:24 EST news263735023 (Phys.org) -- Last year, astronomers discovered a quiescent black hole in a distant galaxy that erupted after shredding and consuming a passing star. Now researchers have identified a distinctive X-ray signal observed in the days following the outburst that comes from matter on the verge of falling into the black hole. http://phys.org/news263142181.html Space & Earth Thu, 02 Aug 2012 16:05:22 EST news263142181 An Indiana University biologist has shown that natural variation in measures of the brain's ability to process steroid hormones predicts functional variation in aggressive behavior. http://phys.org/news258216177.html Biology Wed, 06 Jun 2012 15:43:10 EST news258216177 A new type of hybrid material developed at the University of California, Berkeley, could help oil and chemical companies save energy and money – and lower their environmental impacts – by eliminating an energy-intensive gas-separation process. http://phys.org/news252248254.html Chemistry Thu, 29 Mar 2012 14:00:05 EST news252248254 While trust in science remained stable among people who self-identified as moderates and liberals in the United States between 1974 and 2010, trust in science fell among self-identified conservatives by more than 25 percent during the same period, according to new research from Gordon Gauchat, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill's Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research. http://phys.org/news252212964.html Other Sciences Thu, 29 Mar 2012 04:10:16 EST news252212964 The speedy lizard was streaking across the tabletop when suddenly one foot hit a slippery spot. http://phys.org/news245607021.html Biology Fri, 13 Jan 2012 04:10:02 EST news245607021 In a significant finding in the search for life beyond Earth, scientists from The University of Texas at Austin and elsewhere have discovered what appears to be a body of liquid water the volume of the North American Great Lakes locked inside the icy shell of Jupiter's moon Europa. http://phys.org/news240665131.html Space & Earth Wed, 16 Nov 2011 13:00:06 EST news240665131 Women are less likely than men to stay in engineering majors and to become engineers because they want to have families and are more insecure about their math abilities, right? Not necessarily, suggests a new study in the October issue of the American Sociological Review. http://phys.org/news238753457.html Other Sciences Tue, 25 Oct 2011 09:24:27 EST news238753457 Cod and other groundfish populations off the east coast of Canada are showing signs of recovery more than 20 years after the fisheries collapsed in the early 1990s, according to research published today in Nature. http://phys.org/news230999050.html Biology Wed, 27 Jul 2011 15:25:12 EST news230999050 There are ten microbial cells for every one human cell in the body, and microbiology dogma holds that there is a tight barrier protecting the inside of the body from outside invaders, in this case bacteria. Bacterial pathogens can break this barrier to cause infection and senior author Jeffrey Weiser, MD, professor of Microbiology and Pediatrics from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and first author Thomas Clarke, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in the Weiser lab, wondered how microbes get inside the host and circulate in the first place. Weiser and Clarke tested to see if microbes somehow weaken host cell defenses to enter tissues. http://phys.org/news227462954.html Biology Thu, 16 Jun 2011 17:09:31 EST news227462954 While more than half the academic life science researchers responding to a 2007 survey indicated having some relationship with industrial entities, the prevalence of such relationships - particularly direct funding for research studies - appears to be dropping. Results of the survey, appearing in the November/December 2009 issue of Health Affairs, also suggest that interest in commercial applications of research appears to be growing, even among investigators without industry funding. The new study is a follow-up to 1985 and 1995 surveys by members of the same team. http://phys.org/news176464659.html Medicine & Health Tue, 03 Nov 2009 10:10:01 EST news176464659