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| ©berly816 |
Science & Technology
Therapy that stimulates the hand muscles may help treat the condition called musician's dystonia, a movement disorder that causes muscles spasms in musicians, according to a study published in the December 26, 2007, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
Imagine being able to see every bit of a chemical reaction as it happens. To observe reactants form fleeting intermediates that seamlessly transform into products. Or to watch a movie of a protein as it folds in a nanosecond. Not a representation, not a model or simulation, but actual pictures showing what molecules, cells, and proteins look like and how they move.
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| ©David Flannigan |
| Channel Gating:
Microscope images of CuTCNQ with channel open (top left), channel closed (top right), and magnified (bottom). |
New fossils suggest ancient pandas competed with the largest known apes for habitat and food nearly half a million years ago on the tropical coast of southern China, scientists say.
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| ©National Geographic/Huang Wanbo |
| The bamboo-covered terrain of Hainan, China, was once home to ancient pandas and giant apes, new fossils found in this limestone cave suggest. |
"The basic principle in the law is that you have to distribute actual physical copies to be guilty of violating copyright. But recently, the industry has been going around saying that even a personal copy on your computer is a violation."
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| ©AP Photo/Vahid Salemi |
| A shepherd holds Royana, Iran's first surviving cloned sheep, in Isfahan, 234 miles (390 kilometers) south of the capital Tehran, Iran. |
ISFAHAN, Iran - Iranian scientists said Monday that the country's first cloned sheep is thriving 15 months after birth, eating well and frolicking among a flock of normal sheep. The cloned male sheep named Royana was born Sept. 30, 2006 in the historic central city of Isfahan, less than two months after the country's first cloned animal, also a lamb, died within minutes of birth.
If you've ever blistered your bare feet on a hot road you know that asphalt absorbs the sun's energy. A Dutch company is now siphoning heat from roads and parking lots to heat homes and offices. As climate change rises on the international agenda, the system built by the civil engineering firm, Ooms Avenhorn Holding BV, doesn't look as wacky as it might have 10 years ago when first conceived.
The farthest reaches of our solar system remain the most mysterious areas around the sun. Solving the mysteries of the outer solar system could shed light on how the whole thing emerged - as well as how life on Earth was born.
Why the rainbow of colors in the Kuiper belt?
For instance, the Kuiper belt past Neptune is currently the suspected home of comets that only take a few decades or at most centuries to complete their solar orbits - so-called "short-period comets." Surprisingly, Kuiper belt objects "show a wide range of colors - neutral or even slightly blue all the way to very red," said University of Hawaii astrophysicist David Jewitt.
The color of an object helps reveal details about its surface composition. It remains a mystery why Kuiper belt objects show a much wider range of color - and thus surface composition - than other planetoids, such as the asteroids.
Some researchers had suggested volcanic activity could have led to all these colors - "absurd in the context of 100-kilometer-sized (60-mile) bodies," Jewitt said, as volcanism needs something bigger.
Why the rainbow of colors in the Kuiper belt?
For instance, the Kuiper belt past Neptune is currently the suspected home of comets that only take a few decades or at most centuries to complete their solar orbits - so-called "short-period comets." Surprisingly, Kuiper belt objects "show a wide range of colors - neutral or even slightly blue all the way to very red," said University of Hawaii astrophysicist David Jewitt.
The color of an object helps reveal details about its surface composition. It remains a mystery why Kuiper belt objects show a much wider range of color - and thus surface composition - than other planetoids, such as the asteroids.
Some researchers had suggested volcanic activity could have led to all these colors - "absurd in the context of 100-kilometer-sized (60-mile) bodies," Jewitt said, as volcanism needs something bigger.
A sunspot located just out of sight over the sun's eastern limb has unleashed two strong C-class solar flares in the past 24 hours. The sun's rotation should bring this active region into view later today or tomorrow allowing us to evaluate its potential for more explosions. If you have a solar telescope, monitor the limb.
Antarctica is not a barren polar desert but a rich, complex environment that may contain a thriving "oasis of life," experts say.
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| ©Zina Deretsky/NSF |
| If scientists peeled back the Antarctic ice sheet, a complex system of complex rivers of lakes similar to Earth's surface would emerge. To date little is known about this inaccessible environment, although preliminary research suggests subglacial bodies of water may harbor some basic life-forms. |
Is the universe -- correction: "our" universe -- no more than a speck of cosmic dust amid an infinite number of parallel worlds?
A staple of mind-bending science fiction, the possibility of multiple universes has long intrigued hard-nosed physicists, mathematicians and cosmologists too.
A staple of mind-bending science fiction, the possibility of multiple universes has long intrigued hard-nosed physicists, mathematicians and cosmologists too.
