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168,137 articles from ScienceDaily

Chinese Herbal Medicines For Preventing Diabetes In High Risk People: Still Not Enough Hard Scientific Evidence

More research is required to establish whether Chinese herbal medicines can reduce the likelihood of developing diabetes, according to researchers. Although herbal medicines are widely used in Asian countries to treat pre-diabetes (impaired glucose tolerance or IGT), the precursor of the disease, researchers say there is still not enough hard scientific evidence to confidently recommend their...

Nanometric Butterfly Wings Created

Researchers have developed a technique to replicate biological structures, such as butterfly wings, on a nano scale. The resulting biomaterial could be used to make optically active structures, such as optical diffusers for solar panels.

Smaller And More Efficient Nuclear Battery Created

Batteries can power anything from small sensors to large systems. While scientists are finding ways to make them smaller but even more powerful, problems can arise when these batteries are much larger and heavier than the devices themselves. Researchers are developing a nuclear energy source that is smaller, lighter and more...

Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis May Involve A Form Of Sudden, Rapid Aging Of The Immune System

Results from a new study suggest that premature aging of the immune system appears to play a role in the development of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig's disease. The researchers found that thymic malfunction occurs simultaneously with motor neuron dysfunction, both in laboratory mice bred to mimic amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and in humans suffering from the...

Last Time Carbon Dioxide Levels Were This High: 15 Million Years Ago, Scientists Report

You must go back 15 million years to find carbon dioxide levels as high as they are today, Earth scientists report. "The last time carbon dioxide levels were apparently as high as they are today and sustained at those levels, global temperatures were five to 10 degrees Fahrenheit higher than they are today," said Aradhna Tripati, UCLA assistant professor of Earth and Space Sciences and lead...

Buying Green Can Be License For Bad Behavior, Study Finds

Just being around green products can make us behave more altruistically, a new study in Psychological Science has found. But buying those same products can have the opposite effect. Researchers found that buying green can lead people into less altruistic behavior, and even make them more likely to steal and lie than after buying conventional...

First 'One-way Roads' For Light Could Lead To Simpler Lightwave Technology

Light readily bounces off obstacles in its path. Some of these reflections are captured by our eyes, thus participating in the visual perception of the objects around us. In contrast to this usual behavior of light, researchers have implemented for the first time a one-way structure in which microwave light flows losslessly around obstacles or defects. This concept, when used in lightwave...

'Blue Stonehenge' Discovered By UK Archaeologists

Archaeologists have released an artist's impression of what a second stone circle found a mile from Stonehenge might have looked like. The drawing shows the sensational discovery of "Blue Stonehenge" by a team led by UK archaeologists on the West bank of the River Avon last...

NASA Goddard Visualization Team Previews Lunar Impact

At 7:30 a.m. EDT on Oct. 9, a two-ton rocket body will slam into a crater near the moon's south pole. By studying the resulting plume of gas and dust, scientists hope this grand experiment will confirm the presence of ice in permanently shadowed craters at the lunar poles. A NASA Goddard Space Flight Center visualization team previewed the lunar...


THURSDAY 8. OCTOBER 2009


Scientists Measure The Rate Of Ascent Of Volcanic Magma

Plinian eruptions are rare but highly explosive volcanic eruptions, which are often preceded by quite short periods of tectonic activity. Researchers in Germany have now been able experimentally to determine the speed at which the molten rock in the magma chamber rises to the...

Canadian Astronomers Capture Spectacular Meteor Footage And Images

Astronomers in Canada have released footage of a meteor that was approximately 100 times brighter than a full moon. The meteor lit up the skies of southern Ontario two weeks ago and Western astronomers are now hoping to enlist the help of local residents in recovering one or more possible meteorites that may have crashed in the area of Grimsby,...

Nitrogen Deposition Limits Climate Change Impacts On Carbon Sequestration

The role of the forests is assumed to increase in the future, as an important buffer of climate change and increasing carbon dioxide concentrations. So-called Earth system models, computer systems making predictions for the globe, estimate that this effect can be very large. However, new research results, based on measurements at hundreds of European forests, indicate that predicted effects by...