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Researchers figure out how galaxies like the Milky Way formed

researchers in Boston, US, discovered a way to target cancer stem cells

Astronomers have found a new way to search for high-energy cosmic rays, the most energetic particles in the universe, by scanning the face of the Moon.

It's just plain silly to make claims like this about a basic science paper given that, as I have discussed before, it often takes decades for basic science observations to wend their way through that long strange trip to becoming actual therapies used by clinicians. The life cycle of translational research is long, and efforts to speed it up have only met with mixed success.

The most distant known galaxy to host a supermassive black hole has been discovered in a galaxy that formed in the early history of the universe. The galaxy, as large as the Milky Way, is about 12.8 billion light-years away and harbors a supermassive black hole that contains at least a billion times as much matter as our sun.

Scientists may have discovered a way to glean information about stored memories by tracking patterns of eye movements, even when an individual is unable (or perhaps even unwilling) to report what they remember.

"It's a hoax," said coal company CEO Don Blankenship, "because clearly anyone that says that they know what the temperature of the Earth is going to be in 2020 or 2030 needs to be put in an asylum because they don't." On the other side of the debate was environmentalist Robert Kennedy, Jr. "Ninety-eight percent of the research climatologists in the world say that global warming is real, that its impacts are going to be catastrophic," he argued. "There are 2 percent who disagree with that. I have a choice of believing the 98 percent or the 2 percent." To social scientist and lawyer Don Braman, it's not surprising that two people can disagree so strongly over science. Braman is on the faculty at George Washington University and part of The Cultural Cognition Project, a group of scholars who study how cultural values shape public perceptions and policy

Acupuncture appears to be an effective way to reduce depression symptoms during pregnancy, according to a first-of-its-kind study from Stanford University School of Medicine researchers.

You may have more in common with Kanzi, Panbanisha and Nyota, three language-competent bonobos living at Great Ape Trust, than you thought. And those similarities, right at your fingertip, might one day tell scientists more about the effect of culture on neurological disorders that limit human expression. Among humans, pointing is a universal language, an alternative to spoken words to convey a message. Before they speak, infants point, a gesture scientists agree is closely associated with word learning. But when an ape points, scientists break rank on the question of whether pointing is a uniquely human behavior. Some of the world's leading voices in modern primatology have argued that although apes may gesture in a way that resembles human pointing, the genetic and cognitive differences between apes and humans are so great that the apes' signals have no specific intent. Not so, say Great Ape Trust scientists, who argued in a recently published scientific paper, "Why Apes Point: Pointing Gestures in Spontaneous Conversation of Language-Competent Pan/Homo Bonobos," that not only do Kanzi, Panbanisha and Nyota point with their index fingers in conversation as a human being might, these bonobos do so with specific intent and objectives in mind.

Using entire galaxies as lenses to look at other galaxies, researchers have a newly precise way to measure the size and age of the universe and how rapidly it is expanding, on a par with other techniques. The measurement determines a value for the Hubble constant, which indicates the size of the universe, and confirms the age of the universe as 13.75 billion years old, within 170 million years. The results also confirm the strength of dark energy, responsible for accelerating the expansion of the universe.

Novel but impractical way of redistributing dust to give the illusion of cleanliness. Interesting theory nevertheless.

ScienceDaily (Jan. 7, 2011) - A new study, led by Dr Manos Tsakiris from Royal Holloway, University of London, suggests that the way we experience the internal state of our body may also influence how we perceive our body from the outside, as for example in the mirror.

MIT scientists have discovered that endothelial cells, which line the blood vessels, secrete molecules that suppress tumor growth and keep cancer cells from invading other tissues, a finding that could lead to a new way to treat cancer.

Peak Oil is the point at which petroleum production reaches its greatest rate just before going into perpetual decline. In "Peak Oil and a Changing Climate," a new video series from The Nation and On The Earth productions, radio host Thom Hartmann explains that the world will reach peak oil within the next year if it hasn't already. As a nation, the United States reached peak oil in 1974, after which it became a net oil importer. Bill McKibben, Noam Chomsky, Nicole Foss, Richard Heinberg and the other scientists, researchers and writers interviewed throughout "Peak Oil and a Changing Climate" describe the diminishing returns our world can expect as it deals with the consequences of peak oil even as it continues to pretend it doesn't exist. These experts predict substantially increased transportation costs, decreased industrial production, unemployment, hunger and social chaos as the supplies of the  fuels on which we rely dwindle and eventually disappear. Chomsky urges us to anticipate the official response to peak oil based on how corporations, news organizations and other institutions have responded to global warming: obfuscation, spin and denial. James Howard Kunstler says that we cannot survive peak oil unless we "come up with a consensus about reality that is consistent with the way things really are." This documentary series hopes to help build that consensus. Click here to watch the introductory video, and check back here for new videos each Wednesday.

Hydrogen is in many ways an ideal fuel. It possesses a high energy content per unit mass when compared to petroleum, and it can be used to run a fuel cell, which in turn can be used to power a very clean engine.

Quantum dots are man-made atoms that confine electrons to a small space. They have atomic-like behavior that results in unusual electronic properties on a nanoscale. These unique properties may be particularly valuable in tailoring the way light interacts with matter.

"By Casey Johnston | The standard model of particle physics dictates that the world is made up of sixteen types of particles divided into two types: fermions and bosons. The way these particles behave with each other shows that there are four possible kinds of interactions: electromagnetic, strong, weak, and gravitational."

COULD the structure of space and time be sketched out inside a cousin of plain old pencil lead? The atomic grid of graphene may mimic a lattice underlying reality, two physicists have claimed, an idea that could explain the curious spin of the electron. Graphene is an atom-thick layer of carbon in a hexagonal formation. Depending on its position in this grid, an electron can adopt either of two quantum states - a property called pseudospin which is mathematically akin to the intrinsic spin of an electron. Most physicists do not think it is true spin, but Chris Regan at the University of California, Los Angeles, disagrees. He cites work with carbon nanotubes (rolled up sheets of graphene) in the late 1990s, in which electrons were found to be reluctant to bounce back off these obstacles. Regan and his colleague Matthew Mecklenburg say this can be explained if a tricky change in spin is required to reverse direction. Their quantum model of graphene backs that up. The spin arises from the way electrons hop between atoms in graphene's lattice, says Regan. So how about the electron's intrinsic spin? It cannot be a rotation in the ordinary sense, as electrons are point particles with no radius and no innards. Instead, like pseudospin, it might come from a lattice pattern in space-time itself, says Regan. This echoes some attempts to unify quantum mechanics with gravity in which space-time is built out of tiny pieces or fundamental networks (Physical Review Letters, vol 106, p 116803). Sergei Sharapov of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in Kiev says that the work provides an interesting angle on how electrons and other particles acquire spin, but he is doubtful how far the analogy can be pushed. Regan admits that moving from the flatland world of graphene to higher-dimensional space is tricky. "It will be interesting to see if there are other lattices that give emergent spin," he says.

A new study by MIT shows that babies can perform sophisticated analyses of how the physical world should behave. The scientists developed a computational model of infant cognition that accurately predicts infants' surprise at events that violate their conception of the physical world. The model, which simulates a type of intelligence known as pure reasoning, calculates the probability of a particular event, given what it knows about how objects behave. The close correlation between the model's predictions and the infants' actual responses to such events suggests that infants reason in a similar way, says Josh Tenenbaum, associate professor of cognitive science and computation at MIT.

Top prevention tips worth their weight in wits for keeping your mind sharp and to enhance memory.