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The Amazon rainforest is in flux, thanks to agricultural expansion and climate change. In other words, humans have "become important agents of disturbance in the Amazon Basin," as an international consortium of scientists wrote in a review of the state of the science on the world's largest rainforest published in Nature on January 19.

Heisenberg's Uncertainty principle is arguably one of the most famous foundations of quantum physics. It says that not all properties of a quantum particle can be measured with unlimited accuracy.

By Nicola Jones of Nature magazine This month, scientists will test a new way to extract methane from beneath the frozen soil of Alaska: they will use waste carbon dioxide from conventional wells to force out the desired natural gas. The pilot experiment will explore the possibility of `mining' from gas hydrates: cages of water ice that hold molecules of methane

Astronomers have found the most distant Type 1a supernova, a kind of star explosion that should help scientists better understand the ever-expanding universe and the nature of dark energy, the strange force accelerating that expansion. [More]

By Arron Frood of Nature magazine Has a cheap and effective treatment for chronic pain been lying under clinicians' noses for decades? Researchers have found that a very high dose of an opiate drug that uses the same painkilling pathways as morphine can reset the nerve signals associated with continuous pain--at least in rats. If confirmed in humans, the procedure could reduce or eliminate the months or years that millions of patients spend on pain-managing prescription drugs

By Natasha Gilbert of Nature magazine Alarmed at signs that the overuse of antibiotics in farm animals is blunting these key weapons against human disease, governments are taking action. In industrial farming, antimicrobials are commonly given to farm animals to treat infections, and prophylactically to prevent disease or spur growth. [More]

By Quirin Schiermeier of Nature magazine Natural disasters around the world last year caused a record $380 billion in economic losses. [More]

By Eric Hand of Nature magazine The Netherlands, one of the most densely populated countries in Europe, would seem to be an inauspicious place to detect radio whispers from the distant Universe.

By Heidi Ledford of Nature magazine Protective caps known as telomeres that help to preserve the integrity of chromosomes can also predict lifespan in young zebra finches ( Taeniopygia guttata ), researchers have found. Telomeres are stretches of repetitive DNA sequence that are found at the ends of chromosomes, where they help to maintain cell viability by preventing the fraying of DNA and the fusion of one chromosome to another

By Katherine Rowland of Nature magazine Carnivorous plants catch their prey in pools, glue and snap traps. [More]

By Nina Chestney LONDON (Reuters) - High levels of carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere mean the next ice age is unlikely to begin for at least 1,500 years, an article in the journal Nature Geoscience said on Monday. [More]

(PhysOrg.com) -- Landmark technology that could revolutionise cancer therapy and pave the way for cleaner, safer nuclear reactors in the future, has been published in Nature Physics today.

(PhysOrg.com) -- A Cambridge team have built a semiconductor chip that converts electrons into a quantum state that emits light but is large enough to see by eye. Because their quantum superfluid is simply set up by shining laser beams on the device, it can lead to practical ultrasensitive detectors.

By Eugenie Samuel Reich of Nature magazine An Irish mathematician has used a complex algorithm and millions of hours of supercomputing time to solve an important open problem in the mathematics of Sudoku , the game popularized in Japan that involves filling in a 9x9 grid of squares with the numbers 1-9 according to certain rules. Gary McGuire of University College Dublin shows in a proof posted online on January 1 that the minimum number of clues--or starting digits--needed to complete a puzzle is 17; puzzles with 16 or fewer clues do not have a unique solution. [More]

Drones on Titan Titan, a moon of Saturn, is mysterious and fascinating to us: Its cloudly atmosphere and slushy liquid-methane surface is a true glimpse into an alien world, and it's not too far away. We've briefly explored its atmosphere and its odd chemical-soaked surface, but