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279,032 articles from PhysOrg

Pa. vendor confirms link to Target data probe

A Pittsburgh-area heating and refrigeration contractor says it was the victims of a "sophisticated cyber attack operation" that is being investigated by the Secret Service and possibly linked to the data breach that enabled hackers to access millions of credit card numbers belonging to Target store customers.

Proteins snap those wrinkly fingers back into shape

You know how your fingers wrinkle up in the bath? The outer layer of your skin absorbs water and swells up, forming ridges – but quickly returns to its old state when dry. Two physicists, Professor Roland Roth of Tübingen University and Dr. Myfanwy Evans at Erlangen University have shown just why skin has this remarkable ability. Their conclusions were published recently in the journal Physical...

A linguistic mystery yields clues in Russian

When it comes to numbers, Russian grammar has a bewildering thicket of rules. A singular noun such as "table" ("stol" in Russian), used as the subject of a sentence, takes a special "case form" called the nominative singular. When used with numbers five and above, table takes a different form called the genitive plural ("pjat' stolov"). And with numbers from two to four, it takes still a different...

Drought affects the carbon cycle in Georgia blackwater rivers

(Phys.org) —Droughts might be affecting how Georgia's blackwater rivers process carbon, according to a new study led by an ecologist while he was at the University of Georgia. The results, which were published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences, report less carbon being transported downstream, higher concentrations of carbon in the water and increasing rates of carbon dioxide...

Excrement collected worldwide shows co-evolution of herbivores and their gut microbes

An extensive study by Radboud University Nijmegen on excrement and rumen fluids in plant-eating mammals from all over the whole world shows that the ciliates in their guts have evolved in parallel with them. This is the result of a five-year research project performed by evolution biologists, microbiologists and computer scientists at Radboud University Nijmegen and published this week in the...

Flying in comfort using virtual reality

Future technologies to help airline passengers experience increased comfort and space and an altered self-perception - Press release of Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics and Fraunhofer IAO

Mein Kampf worries fuel debate

More needs to be done to understand Hitler's infamous autobiographical manifesto "Mein Kampf" to avoid a resurgence of anti-Semitism when its copyright expires in 2016, according to a holocaust historian.

New mums shun Twitter and stick to baby-friendly Facebook

Although it might sometimes seem that your Facebook feed is overrun with chatter about babies, research from Microsoft has suggested that mums actually spend less time on the site after they have had children. And while the rest of the world tweets about their every waking move, mothers just aren't into using Twitter to share the latest milestone passed in the family home. When they post about...

Protein structure: Peering into the transit pore

The lipid-rich membranes of cells are largely impermeable to proteins, but evolution has provided a way through – in the form of transmembrane tunnels. A new study shows in unmatched detail what happens as proteins pass through such a pore.

Research team develops rapid smartphone-based mercury testing and mapping

(Phys.org) —A team of researchers from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science has developed a smartphone attachment and application to test water for the presence of mercury, a toxic heavy metal. The new platform could significantly reduce the time and cost of the testing, and it could be particularly useful in regions with limited technological resources.

Researchers solve nano mystery

A technique which may one day be used for tumor therapy and imaging could be greatly improved thanks to new insights obtained by scientists from the University of Twente, the Erasmus MC and the TU Delft.