Until the last few decades, the frontal lobes of the brain were shrouded in mystery and erroneously thought of as nonessential for normal function. Now a review highlights groundbreaking studies of patients with brain damage that reveal how distinct areas of the frontal lobes are critical for a person's ability to learn, multitask, control emotions, socialize, and make decisions. The findings have...
About 400 million years ago a group of fish began exploring land and evolved into tetrapods – today's amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. But just how these ancient fish used their fishy bodies and fins in a terrestrial environment and what evolutionary processes were at play remain scientific mysteries. ...
A Bronze Age palace excavation reveals an ancient wine cellar. Wine production, distribution, and consumption are thought to have played a role in the lives of those living in the Mediterranean and Near East during the Middle Bronze Age (1900-1600 BC), but little archaeological evidence about Bronze Age wine is available to support art and documentation about the role wine played during this period....
(Phys.org) —When is an electron hole like a quasiparticle (QP)? More specifically, what happens when a single electron hole is doped into a two-dimensional quantum antiferromagnet? Quasiparticle phenomena in such a system are predicted by theory, but have eluded observation, complicating the understanding of electron behavior in high-temperature superconducting cuprates. A team of experimenters working...
(Phys.org) —Only recently has it become possible to accurately "see" the structure of a liquid. Using X-rays and a high-tech apparatus that holds liquids without a container, Kenneth Kelton, PhD, the Arthur Holly Compton Professor in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, was able to compare the behavior of glass-forming liquids as they approach the glass transition....
Magnetic refrigeration is attracting attention as an efficient way to chill sensitive scientific instruments. This refrigeration method exploits the magnetocaloric effect, in which an external magnetic field controls the temperature of a magnetic material. Effective magnetic refrigerants are often difficult to prepare, but now Andy Hor of the A*STAR Institute of Materials Research and Engineering and...
Computer hard drives store data by writing magnetic information onto their surfaces. In the future, magnetic effects may also be used to improve active memory in computers, potentially eliminating the need to 'boot up' a computer. One way to achieve this is through a memory technology known as STT-MRAM that utilizes information stored in a pair of thin magnetic layers....
Civil engineering has begun for the new Proton Driven Plasma Wakefield Acceleration Experiment (AWAKE) at CERN. This proof-of-principle experiment will harness the power of wakefields generated by proton beams in plasma cells, producing accelerator gradients hundreds of times higher than those used in current radiofrequency cavities....
Gallium is one of the few metals that turns into a liquid at room temperature. When that happens, its surface oxidizes, forming a "skin" over the fluid, almost like a water balloon or a water bed. Years ago, scientists often thought the coating a nuisance. Today they consider it an opportunity....
The field of astrophysics has a stubborn problem and it's called lithium. The quantities of lithium predicted to have resulted from the Big Bang are not actually present in stars. But the calculations are correct – a fact which has now been confirmed for the first time in experiments conducted at the underground laboratory in the Gran Sasso mountain in Italy. As part of an international team, researchers...
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Using one of the most sensitive neutrino detectors on the planet, an international team of physicists including Andrea Pocar, Laura Cadonati and doctoral student Keith Otis at the University of Massachusetts Amherst report in the current issue of Nature that for the first time they have directly detected neutrinos created by the "keystone" proton-proton (pp) fusion process going on at the sun's core....
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Astronomers have discovered that filaments of star-forming gas near the Orion Nebula may be brimming with pebble-size particles -- planetary building blocks 100 to 1,000 times larger than the dust grains typically found around protostars. ...
The birth of massive galaxies, according to galaxy formation theories, begins with the buildup of a dense, compact core that is ablaze with the glow of millions of newly formed stars. Evidence of this early construction phase, however, has eluded astronomers — until now. Astronomers identified a dense galactic core, dubbed "Sparky," using a combination of data from several space telescopes. Hubble...
Was Mars — now a cold, dry place — once a warm, wet planet that sustained life? Research underway may one day answer those questions — and perhaps even help pave the way for future colonization of the Red Planet. By analyzing the chemical clues locked inside an ancient Martian meteorite known as Black Beauty, scientists are revealing the story of Mars’ ancient, and sometimes startling, climate history....
Astronomers have obtained the best view yet of a collision between two galaxies when the Universe was only half its current age. To make this observation, the team also enlisted the help of a gravitational lens, a galaxy-size magnifying glass, to reveal otherwise invisible detail. ...
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