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Last week, I spent a pleasant hour over lunch talking to my 60-year-old aunt and her 80-something husband about "this Twitter thing" and how one defines a blog. They had heard that social media had played a role in the protests in Egypt and wanted to learn more. Good students, they nodded and asked questions as I showed them the screens and tools on my computer in a restaurant chosen mostly because it had wi-fi

A new mother’s body goes through many changes--among them, key parts of her brain get bigger, according to research reported in October’s Behavioral Neuroscience .

If you had four pictures of a person at different ages, how would you lay them out in chronological order? As an English speaker, you would almost certainly put childhood scenes on the left and pictures from old age on the right. But if you spoke another language, you might arrange the photos in a column or even from east to west

CHERNOBYL, Ukraine--Imagine a metal arch taller than the Statue of Liberty. Now picture it sliding a distance of roughly three football fields, making it the largest movable structure ever .

Researchers have come a step closer to gaining complete control over a mind, even if that mind is smaller than a grain of sand. A team at Harvard University has built a computerized system to manipulate worms--making them start and stop, giving them the sensation of being touched, and even prompting them to lay eggs--

Serious nuclear incidents that followed Friday's catastrophic Japan earthquake has raised fears of radiation leakage, a weather-dependent matter that could have a far-reaching impact. [More]

By Ewen Callaway A sperm's path to an egg is more a deadly obstacle course than a track sprint. [More]

(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers utilizing the U.S.

KIEV, Ukraine--In 1986 the worst nuclear accident in history took place when reactor No. 4 in the power plant at nearby Chernobyl exploded, spewing large amounts of radiation into the atmosphere. Now, almost 25 years later, the lesson that scientists are learning is that radiation might not be the only cause of this disaster's long-term medical effects, and perhaps not even the main one.

A team of physicists in the United Kingdom has taken a giant step toward realizing efficient single-photon sources, which are expected to enable much-coveted completely secure optical communications, also known as "quantum cryptography." The team presents its findings in Applied Physics Letters, a journal published by the American Institute of Physics.

Measuring the mechanical strength of cancer cell mucus layers provides clues about better ways to treat cancer, and also suggests why some cancer cells are more resistant to drugs than others, according to Kai-tak Wan, associate professor of engineering at Northeastern University, Boston, Mass.

The African nation of Rwanda recently set a goal of circumcising an estimated two million adult men by the end of 2012 to fight the spread of HIV, and is investigating a new nonsurgical device that is said to allow practitioners to perform the procedure in less than four minutes--without anesthesia. The patent pending PrePex device includes an elastic mechanism that fits around an inner ring, trapping the penis foreskin--the loose fold of skin that covers its glans--which cuts its blood supply

Congress has finally acted on global warming--by denying it exists.

Braving explosions and invisible hydrogen fires as well as bursts of radiation at least eight times higher than government hourly safety standards, a cohort of 50 or so workers has returned to the embattled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan. The workers represent the last line of defense in cooling the overheating reactors and spent fuel pools, such as reactor No

Since a magnitude 9.0 earthquake rocked Japan and set loose a massive tsunami March 11, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) has been scrambling to avert a nuclear disaster at its hardest hit plant. The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station, home to six nuclear reactors, has witnessed explosions at three reactors and a fire in a spent-fuel pool at a fourth. At two reactors, units No.