PHYSorg Headline News Reader

Beats Music, the digital music spinoff of headphone maker Beats Electronics LLC, is set to launch in January.

Love them or hate them, cockroaches are notoriously good escape artists and can flee at astonishing speeds. However, this speed can make it difficult to sense the world around them: 'When animals move slowly they rely mostly on their nervous system for…

As darkness descends upon the tropical rainforests of Malaysia, male chirping katydids of the Mecopoda complex are just getting warmed up for their usual nightly concerts to woo the females. These nocturnal suitors are favoured for chirping in synchrony as a…

Activist investor Carl Icahn on Wednesday stepped up pressure on Apple to boost its share repurchase plan with a formal proposal to the tech giant's board of directors.

Turns out the crocodile can be a shrewd hunter himself. A University of Tennessee, Knoxville, researcher has found that some crocodiles use lures to hunt their prey.

Human beings don't come with power sockets, but a growing numbers of us have medical implants that run off electricity. To keep our bionic body parts from powering down, a group of Arizona researchers is developing a safe, noninvasive, and efficient means of…

(Phys.org) —NASA's Cassini spacecraft has obtained the highest-resolution movie yet of a unique six-sided jet stream, known as the hexagon, around Saturn's north pole.

(Phys.org) —Humans have been deceiving themselves for thousands of years that they're smarter than the rest of the animal kingdom, despite growing evidence to the contrary, according to University of Adelaide experts in evolutionary biology.

After capturing the first brain images of two alert, unrestrained dogs last year, researchers at Emory University have confirmed their methods and results by replicating them in an experiment involving 13 dogs.

In the remote province of Niassa, Mozambique, a new species and genus of fossil vertebrate was found. The species is a distant relative of living mammals and is approximately 256 million years old. This new species belongs to a group of animals called…

The competition between Microsoft and Google is stretching to the North Pole as the Internet search rivals vie to be top Santa tracker this Christmas.

Since the first up-close observations of Saturn, made by the Pioneer 11 probe in 1979, a great deal has been learned about the dynamics of the gas giant's magnetosphere. In-depth observations made by the Cassini orbiter, which has been circling Saturn since…

(Phys.org) —A new study using observations from a novel instrument provides the best look to date at magnetic fields at the heart of gamma-ray bursts, the most energetic explosions in the universe. An international team of astronomers from Britain, Slovenia…

The Giant Magellan Telescope's third primary mirror will be unveiled at the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory Mirror Lab on December 6, 2013. The combined surface area of the three mirrors created to date surpasses that of any existing telescope and…

US President Barack Obama admitted Wednesday he was not allowed to have an iPhone owing to security fears—explaining why he is sometimes seen with a bulky super secure Blackberry.

A protein called Tet1 is partly responsible for giving primordial germ cells a clean epigenetic slate before developing into sperm and egg cells, according to a new study by researchers at Boston Children's Hospital. This discovery could help provide clues to…

NASA's TRMM satellite noticed that rainfall became scarce in the Northwestern Pacific Ocean's thirty-third tropical depression in its second day of life. Tropical Depression 33W or TD 33W had weakened and TRMM showed only two isolated areas of heavy rainfall…

A new research study combining marine physiology, neuroscience, pharmacology, and behavioral psychology has revealed a surprising outcome from increases of carbon dioxide uptake in the oceans: anxious fish.

In all but the shortest supply chains, food travels through wholesale distribution centers on its way from farm to consumer, and the location of these distributors can have a big impact on the efficiency of a food system. Now, a new mathematical model can help…

X-rays streaming toward Earth from the region near a neutron star that is cannibalizing its companion star have revealed the pair to be the youngest "X-ray binary" yet known. The discovery by a team that includes a Penn State astronomer is being published in…

A Singapore court on Wednesday denied bail to a man charged with hacking the district website of the Prime Minister, using the symbol of international hacker group Anonymous.

If they don't believe their parents, maybe America's teens will listen to the Pentagon's top general.

China has issued licences for "fourth generation", or 4G, mobile phone services, the government said Wednesday, in a move to boost economic growth and job creation.

What's the best place to conduct a conversation about a confidential or even classified matter? Surprisingly, probably not a conference room designed in accordance with acoustical criteria approved by the Department of Defense (DOD).

Drones like quadrocopters have become very popular with hobbyists due to their simplicity and agility. But they are also increasingly being used for commercial applications such as aerial photography and cinematography, inspection and transportation of cargo.…

Massive earthquakes that strike deep within the Earth may be more efficient at dissipating pent up energy than similar quakes near the surface, according to new research by Wei et al. The authors analyzed the rupture of the most powerful deep earthquake ever…

Left to themselves, coastal wetlands can resist rapid levels of sea-level rise. But humans could be sabotaging some of their best defenses, according to a Nature review paper published Thursday from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science and the Smithsonian…

In a technical tour de force, UC San Francisco (UCSF) scientists have determined, at near-atomic resolution, the structure of a protein that plays a central role in the perception of pain and heat.

The American English speech variant known as uptalk, or "Valley Girl speak" – marked by a rise in pitch at the ends of sentences – is typically associated with young southern Californian females. New research shows uptalk is expanding to other demographic…

Using novel techniques to extract and study ancient DNA researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, have determined an almost complete mitochondrial genome sequence of a 400,000-year-old representative of the…