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278,908 articles from PhysOrg

Science denied: Why does doubt persist?

The sign in front of the tall display case at the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of Natural History lures visitors to "meet one of your oldest relatives." Inside stands a morganucodon, a mouse-like animal from the Late Triassic period, 210 million years ago. "A close relative of this tiny creature was the first mammal on earth," the sign says. "Its DNA was passed on to billions of descendants,...

Scientists discover that shape matters in DNA nanoparticle therapy

Researchers from Johns Hopkins and Northwestern universities have discovered how to control the shape of nanoparticles that move DNA through the body and have shown that the shapes of these carriers may make a big difference in how well they work in treating cancer and other diseases.

Small weed helps unravel complex plant defence system 

(Phys.org)—Arabidopsis thaliana, or thale cress as it is commonly known, made history back in 2000 by becoming the first plant to have its entire genetic code read by scientists, contributing to what is often referred to as biology's version of the book of life.  Today, the 'microscopes' scientists have access to allow them to zoom down much further into the structure of the proteins that are...

3G protocols come up short in privacy, say researchers

(Phys.org)—Researchers from the UK and Germany have found that 3G telephony systems pose a security weakness that results in threats to user privacy. The weakness makes it possible for stalkers to trace and identify subscribers. Their paper, "New Privacy Issues in Mobile Telephony: Fix and Verification," says that 3G systems come up short in preventing unauthorized parties from tracking the...

First evidence of dynamo generation on an asteroid found

About 4.6 billion years ago, the solar system was little more than a tenuous disk of gas and dust. In the span of merely 10 million years, this soup evolved to form today's massive, complex planets. In the intervening period, however, the solar system contained a mixture of intermediary bodies—small chunks of rock, the remnants of which today are known as asteroids.


THURSDAY 11. OCTOBER 2012


Las Cumbres Observatory achieves first light with NRES spectrograph

Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope (LCOGT), a private, nonprofit scientific institution conducting time domain astrophysics and education, and a provider of global telescope resources, achieved first light with their prototype Network of Robotic Echelle Spectrograph (NRES) this week. The event took place earlier in the week at LCOGT's Byrne Observatory located at the UC Santa Barbara...

Mars rock touched by Curiosity has surprises

(Phys.org)—The first Martian rock NASA's Curiosity rover has reached out to touch presents a more varied composition than expected from previous missions. The rock also resembles some unusual rocks from Earth's interior.

New studies reveal connections between animals' microbial communities and behavior

(Phys.org)—New research is revealing surprising connections between animal microbiomes—the communities of microbes that live inside animals' bodies—and animal behavior, according to a paper by University of Georgia ecologist Vanessa O. Ezenwa and her colleagues. The article, just published in the Perspectives section of the journal Science, reviews recent developments in this emerging...

Researchers make Sudoku puzzles less puzzling

For anyone who has ever struggled while attempting to solve a Sudoku puzzle, University of Notre Dame researcher Zoltan Toroczkai and Notre Dame postdoctoral researcher Maria Ercsey-Ravaz are riding to the rescue. They can not only explain why some Sudoku puzzles are harder than others, they have also developed a mathematical algorithm that solves Sudoku puzzles very quickly, without any guessing...