Herschel telescope bows out after successful mission
Europe's deep-space Herschel telescope has given up the ghost—running out of coolant after a successful mission to observe the birth of stars and galaxies, the European Space Agency said Monday.
View ArticleNo Redoubt: Volcanic eruption forecasting improved
Forecasting volcanic eruptions with success is heavily dependent on recognizing well-established patterns of pre-eruption unrest in the monitoring data. But in order to develop better monitoring...
View ArticleScientists discover one gene is necessary for mice to avoid predators
When a mouse smells a cat, it instinctively avoids the feline or risks becoming dinner. How? A Northwestern University study involving olfactory receptors, which underlie the sense of smell, provides...
View ArticleDinosaur predecessors gain ground in wake of world's biggest biodiversity crisis
Many scientists have thought that dinosaur predecessors missed the race to fill habitats emptied when nine out of 10 species disappeared during the Earth's largest mass extinction, approximately 252...
View ArticleMicrochip proves tightness provokes precocious sperm release
Sperm cell release can be triggered by tightening the grip around the delivery organ, according to a team of nano and microsystems engineers and plant biologists at the University of Montreal and...
View ArticleFeast clue to smell of ancient Earth
Tiny 1,900 million-year-old fossils from rocks around Lake Superior, Canada, give the first ever snapshot of organisms eating each other and suggest what the ancient Earth would have smelled like.
View ArticleAdults lack stem cells for making new eggs, research shows
Mammalian females ovulate periodically over their reproductive lifetimes, placing significant demands on their ovaries for egg production. Whether mammals generate new eggs in adulthood using stem...
View ArticleCicadas get a jump on cleaning (w/ Video)
As cicadas on the East Coast begin emerging from their 17-year slumber, a spritz of dew drops is all they need to keep their wings fresh and clean. Researchers at Duke University and James Cook...
View ArticleTeam discovers how a protein finds its way
(Phys.org) —Proteins, the workhorses of the body, can have more than one function, but they often need to be very specific in their action or they create cellular havoc, possibly leading to disease.
View Article'Super-resolution' microscope possible for nanostructures
(Phys.org) —Researchers have found a way to see synthetic nanostructures and molecules using a new type of super-resolution optical microscopy that does not require fluorescent dyes, representing a...
View ArticleSilicone liquid crystal stiffens with repeated compression
(Phys.org) —Squeeze a piece of silicone and it quickly returns to its original shape, as squishy as ever. But scientists at Rice University have discovered that the liquid crystal phase of silicone...
View ArticleSmoke signals: How burning plants tell seeds to rise from the ashes
In the spring following a forest fire, trees that survived the blaze explode in new growth and plants sprout in abundance from the scorched earth. For centuries, it was a mystery how seeds, some long...
View ArticleResearchers develop 'nanotrain' for targeted cancer drug transport
(Phys.org) —University of Florida researchers have developed a "DNA nanotrain" that fast-tracks its payload of cancer-fighting drugs and bioimaging agents to tumor cells deep within the body. The...
View ArticleDetection of two new exoplanets with Kepler, SOPHIE and HARPS-N
An international team of astronomers, including Alexandre Santerne of the EXOEarths team at CAUP, identified and characterized two new exoplanets, thanks to combined observations from the Kepler space...
View ArticleRobots able to reach through clutter with whole-arm tactile sensing (w/ video)
(Phys.org) —Whether reaching for a book out of a cluttered cabinet or pruning a bush in the backyard, a person's arm frequently makes contact with objects during everyday tasks. Animals do it too, when...
View ArticleResearch helps to show how turbulence can occur without inertia
(Phys.org) —Anyone who has flown in an airplane knows about turbulence, or when the flow of a fluid—in this case, the flow of air over the wings—becomes chaotic and unstable. For more than a century,...
View ArticleWrite timing: ZoomBoard works for smartwatch text entry (w/ video)
(Phys.org) —If you did not hear it from somebody else, you probably asked the same question yourself: What would I really do with a smartwatch, if it's for viewing only, when I need something for text...
View ArticleResearchers find high-fructose corn syrup may be tied to worldwide collapse...
(Phys.org) —A team of entomologists from the University of Illinois has found a possible link between the practice of feeding commercial honeybees high-fructose corn syrup and the collapse of honeybee...
View ArticleStudy on human fertility models find those based on economics the most reliable
(Phys.org) —A team made up of American anthropologists and zoologists along with a demographer from Bangladesh has been comparing various models that have been developed over the years to explain...
View Article20 years on, world's first Web page to be reborn (Update)
The world's first web page will be dragged out of cyberspace and restored for today's Internet browsers as part of a project to celebrate 20 years of the Web, organisers said on Tuesday.
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