News Articles

'Dry' water, which resembles powdered sugar yet consists of 95 percent water, was discovered in 1968 and got attention in the cosmetics industry.   Each powder particle contains a water droplet surrounded by modified silica, which is much like ordinary beach sand. The silica coating prevents the water droplets from combining and turning back into a liquid so the result is a fine powder that can soak up liquids - or gases - which chemically combine with the water molecules to form a hydrate.  

Politics is funny business because there will always be a conflict between freedom, democracy and the Constitution and political winds blow decisions in various directions - that's the way it was written and part of why it works.   Given the power of the courts to determine which part wins there will also be competition between the three branches of the federal government and it's a reason why various sides of the political spectrum should hope for balance rather than stacking the court with like-minded judges.   If it becomes okay to stack the court your way it will be okay to stack the court against you too.

A completely man-made chemical enzyme has successfully neutralized a toxin found naturally in fruits and vegetables.   Dr. Jeannette Bjerre at the University of Copenhagen showed how a novel 'chemzyme' was able to decompose glycoside esculin, a toxin found in horse-chestnuts.Chemzymes are designed molecules emulating the targeting and efficiency of naturally occurring enzymes.   Most people know enzymes as an ingredient in detergents but in our bodies enzymes are in charge of decomposing everything we eat, so that our bodies can absorb the nutrients. They also decompose ingested toxins, ensuring that our bodies survive the encounter.

The soon-to-be-published and complete Danish translation of all the Icelandic sagas, a literary cornerstone of the Western canon, will fundamentally change our perception of the Viking heroes that populate the stories.Saucy poems, supernatural creatures, explicit violence and emotional outbursts are an integral part of the Icelandic sagas, says assistant professor Annette Lassen from the Department of Scandinavian Research at the University of Copenhagen, but Danish translator N.M. Petersen, whose translations have been the  standard for the past 170 years, left passages out and even ignored entire stories because they did not conform to contemporary Romantic norms. 

Given an aggressive public relations campaign designed to obscure facts about the organic food industry, we are clarifying what an 'organic' label means and does not mean.To be certified 'organic' a producer needs to prepare documentation (fill out forms) testifying they obey the guidelines below and pay a fee.  There is no 'on the spot' checking of farms to insure compliance.Organic regulations restrict and in some cases ban additives like preservatives, artificial sweeteners, colorings and flavorings, and monosodium glutamate (MSG).  

Our universe is thought to be around 14 billion years old and astronomers recently determined that big galaxies formed much earlier in the universe's history than previously thought, within the first 1 billion years, and for more than two decades the prevailing wisdom among astronomers has been that galaxies evolved hierarchically - gravity drew small bits of matter together first and then those small bits gradually came together to form larger structures.A new model seeks to turn that idea on its head.  And the researchers say the very large umbrella of 'dark matter' may be the explanation.

Eusociality is the social structure where individuals cooperate to raise offspring.   How does it happen?   Some proponents have found the answer in kin selection theory, a 'gene's-eye' view of evolution made explicit by William Hamilton (1) in a pair of seminal papers and which sees organic evolution as a result of competition among genes for representation in the gene-pool -  organisms are simply vehicles that genes constructed to aid in propagation.

If the freezing point of fish blood is -0.9 ° Celsius, how are Antarctic fish able to keep moving at a temperature like -1.8 ° C?You're not the only one to ask, researchers have wondered for 50 years, and it known that fish in the Arctic have a special sort of antifreeze, similar to what we put in cars, but just how these special frost protection proteins work has been unclear.

Previously undetected landforms indicate the Moon is ... shrinking.Lobate scarps  are thrust faults that occur primarily in the Moon's lunar highlands. They were first recognized in photographs taken near the moon's equator by the panoramic cameras flown on the Apollo 15, 16 and 17 missions. Fourteen previously unknown lobate scarps have now been revealed in very high resolution images taken by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera. The newly detected scarps indicate that the thrust faults are globally distributed and not clustered near the moon's equator.

Education experts are going to have input into a  'classroom of the future' at a forthcoming summit in Bahrain.

'Zombies', most famous from Haitian folklore, have actually been witnessed in nature and a new fossil study has them extending back 48 million years. This sort of zombie control happens when a parasite takes control of its host and many types of animals are susceptible to the often deadly body invasion, but scientists have been trying to track down when and where such parasites evolved.  A molecular clock approach can be used to estimate where and when they developed and fossils are an important source of information to calibrate such clocks.

A study in the latest JAMA using data from two nationally representative surveys indicates that hearing loss among U.S. adolescents increased by about 30 percent in a 12 year period ending 2006, with 1 in 5 adolescents having hearing loss in the 2005-2006 results.Hearing loss is a common sensory disorder, affecting tens of millions of people in the United States. Adolescent hearing loss is not well understood but some risk factors, like loud sound exposure from listening to music, may be of particular importance to both adolescents and parents.