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Amazon, Yelp and similar Web sites rely on customer reviews to help users with their purchases. A nagging concern of shoppers, however, is how reliable these critiques are. [More]

(PhysOrg.com) -- After just three months of operation, the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment has far surpassed expectations, recording tens of thousands of particle interactions and paving the way to a better understanding of neutrinos and why the universe is built of matter rather than antimatter.

The teenage brain is special. Less plastic than a child's developing brain, but not yet with all of the executive functions of an adult noggin. And that makes them more vulnerable to long-term effects of head injury, according to new research

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.--At least three forms of security depend on inventing a future of cheap, clean energy: national, economic and environmental. President Barack Obama launched the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy ( ARPA-E ) in 2009 to fund innovative research in the hopes of delivering such technologies

By Valerie Volcovici Washington - The Environmental Protection Agency overstepped its authority by moving to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and industrial facilities, industry groups and representatives argued in federal court on Wednesday. In the second day of two-day arguments on a case seeking to overturn the agency's proposed greenhouse gas regulations, challengers took on two of the EPA's proposed rules to regulate stationary sources under the Clean Air Act. Wednesday's oral arguments centered on the so-called "tailoring rule," which the EPA issued in 2009 to shield small stationary polluters, such as schools, from having to obtain permits for greenhouse gas emissions

A team of religion scholars ignited a firestorm of controversy this week with the release of a documentary film and book claiming to shed light on the burial practices of 1st-century Christians living near Jerusalem. Although there’s a good deal of debate over what the researchers have actually discovered, it’s interesting to note that this debate has been made possible by a high-definition camera setup enabling documentary filmmakers to capture images from inside a tomb buried beneath two meters of rock without entering the site or in any way disturbing its contents. In December 2010, filmmaker Simcha Jacobivici and his crew snaked a high-definition camera down into what’s come to be known as the “Patio tomb,” discovered in 1981 about five kilometers south of the Old City in East Jerusalem and so named because it’s now located beneath an apartment patio.

When you dive into the frigid waters of the Pacific Ocean off the coast of southern California, the first thing you notice is the silence. Other than the bitter cold

Editor's note: Climate Query is a semi-weekly feature offered by Daily Climate, presenting short Q&A's with players large and small in the climate arena. Read others in the series at http://wwwp.dailyclimate.org/tdc-newsroom/query/climate-queries . [More]

Using exotic man-made materials, scientists from Duke University and Boston College believe they can greatly enhance the forces of electromagnetism (EM), one of the four fundamental forces of nature, without harming living beings or damaging electrical equipment.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Geraldo Barbosa, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Northwestern University has posed an interesting challenge. He wonders if the human eye and brain together are capable of actually seeing entangled images. This is not a philosophical question, as he has phrased the query as part of a practical experiment that someone with the proper lab could actually carry out.

(PhysOrg.com) -- A surprising atomic-scale wiggle underlies the way a special class of materials reacts to light, according to research that may lead to new devices for harvesting solar energy.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Physics researchers at the University of Kansas have discovered a new method of detecting electric currents based on a process called “second-harmonic generation,” similar to a radar gun for electrons that can remotely detect their speed.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Just as NASA engineers test new rocket designs in computer studies before committing themselves to full prototypes, so physicists will often model matter under various circumstances to see whether something new appears. This is especially true of atomtronics, a relatively new science devoted to creating artificial tailored materials consisting of neutral atoms held in an array with laser beams, or atoms moving along a desired track under electric or magnetic influence. A new study shows how a simple "joystick" consisting of an adjustable magnetic field can create several new phases of atomtronic matter, several of them never seen before.

Individual atoms of a certain chemical element can be very stubborn when it comes to separation, mainly because techniques rely on a difference in chemical and physical properties — atoms are almost identical in both regards.

Scientists realize one of the most elementary and oldest "gedanken" experiments in modern physics, namely, excitation of a single molecule with a single photon. This paves the way for further investigations in which single photons act as carriers of quantum information to be processed by single emitters.