News Articles

Microbloggers are having trouble being interesting, a new study says.    So they write more often, just to have something to say.  The top 5 most frequent postings on microblogging sites like Twitter, Jaiku and Mobile Facebook are “working,” “home,” “work,” “lunch,” and “sleeping”.  Hardly the stuff that would seem enchanting to most - and it isn't.   Most newcomers drop out soon after registering.

Some scientists believe that Mars is red due to rocks being rusted by water that once flooded the planet.That is not the case, say recent laboratory studies which show that red dust may be formed by ongoing grinding of surface rocks and liquid water need not have played any significant role in the formation process.  The data were presented at the European Planetary Science Congress by Dr Jonathan Merrison.

SHP-2, a common biological protein molecule, is central to placental growth and could hold the key to mitigating growth restriction of babies in the womb,  according to research is published today in Endocrinology.

In a survey conducted about patients’ expectations of electronic retina prostheses (retina implants) a decade ago, visually impaired or blind patients with degenerative retina conditions stated they would be happy if they were able to regain some mobility and recognize faces and read again. According to the presentations given at the international symposium “Artificial Vision” September 19th, 2009 at the Wissenschaftszentrum Bonn, that's gotten a lot closer.

Scientists at a research institute in Austria are trying to figure out how life might evolve under different biochemistry conditions and with exotic solvents than what would exist on a world similar to Earth - think sulphuric acid instead of water.Traditionally, planets that might sustain life are looked for in a ‘habitable zone’ - the region around a star in which Earth-like planets with carbon dioxide, water vapor and nitrogen atmospheres could maintain liquid water on their surfaces.

Black holes are invading stars, according to a new hyposthesis for the origin of the bright flashes in the universe that are one of the biggest mysteries in astronomy today. Those flashes, known as gamma ray bursts, are beams of high energy radiation produced by jets of plasma from massive dying stars.   The current model for these cosmic 'jet engines' involves plasma being heated by neutrinos in a disk of matter that forms around a black hole, which is created when a star collapses. 

Meteorites discovered with known orbits are incredibly rare but researchers using cameras which capture fireballs streaking across the night sky have managed to find not only a tiny meteorite on the vast Nullarbor Plain, but also mathematically determine its orbit and the asteroid it came from.The ability to track meteorites back to their asteroid home also means it is an incredibly cheap way of sampling that asteroid, rather than conducting an expensive space mission.To find the meteorite, the team deployed three 'all sky cameras' on the Nullarbor Plain to form a fireball camera network.   The cameras take a single time lapse picture of the sky throughout the entire night to record any fireballs over the Plain.

Freedom of the press is integral to a functioning democracy and respect for human rights, it is said, and a new study tackles the effects of media freedom in countries that lack democratic institutions like fair elections. The findings?   By itself, freedom of the press doesn't accomplish much.   Media freedom in the absence of other institutional outlets for dissent is actually associated with greater oppression of human rights, Jenifer Whitten-Woodring, a doctoral candidate in political science and international relations at USC, found utilizing data from 93 countries for the years 1981-1995. 

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), launched on June 18th, 2009,  will return more data about the Moon than any previous mission. The Lyman-Alpha Mapping Project (LAMP), developed by Southwest Research Institute,  uses a novel method to peer into the perpetual darkness of the Moon's so-called permanently shadowed regions - the dark side of the moon.

A 9-foot dinosaur excavated illegally from northeastern China and purchased by a private collector who brought it to the attention of paleontologists (hey, they'll return it after they're done)  is about the same weight as a grown human yet had still evolved all the hallmark anatomical features of Tyrannosaurus rex - except 30 million years earlier, according to a study in Science.Raptorex displays the hallmarks of its famous descendant, Tyrannosaurus rex, like an oversized head, tiny arms and feet well-suited for running. The Raptorex brain cast also shows enlarged olfactory bulbs, like T. rex, indicating a highly developed sense of smell.

If you want to create a micro-aircraft that flies with the maneuverability and energy efficiency of an insect (and you know you do) decoding the aerodynamic secrets of insect flight is key because optimization through evolutionary pressures over millions of years far outstrips what we can achieve artificially. But it's not that simple.  Consider the 'bumblebee paradox' that plagued researchers for decades.    It turned out not to be a paradox but rather an issue with what we could model aerodynamically.   Look at mister bee below:

Scientists have observed ferromagnetism in an atomic gas for the first time, addressing the decades-old question of whether gases could show properties similar to a magnet made of iron or nickel.A team observed the ferromagnetic behavior in a gas of lithium atoms cooled to 150 billionth of 1 Kelvin above absolute zero (-273 degrees C or -459 degrees F). Team members used the lithium-6 isotope, which consists of three protons, three neutrons and three electrons. Since the number of constituents is odd, lithium-6 is a fermion — a class of exotic particles that have a half-integral spin — and has properties similar to an electron. Therefore, lithium atoms can be used to simulate the behavior of electrons.