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Much of what we know about sex, or think we know, stems from the animal kingdom.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Cosmologists Alan Coley from Canada's Dalhousie University and Bernard Carr from Queen Mary University in London, have published a paper on arXiv, where they suggest that some so-called primordial black holes might have been created in the Big Crunch that came before the Big Bang, which lends support to the theory that the Big Bang was not a single event, but one that occurs over and over again as the universe crunches down to a single point, then blows up again, over and over.

Mergers and acquisitions can create strange bedfellows, but the drawbacks of companies' cultures not meshing together can have an impact on the bottom line. Through all the mergers he's been a part of, Mike Sprouse has yet to see one that doesn't entail at least a few hiccups.

For carbon, the basis of life, to be able to form in the stars, a certain state of the carbon nucleus plays an essential role. In cooperation with US colleagues, physicists from the University of Bonn and Ruhr-Universitat Bochum have been able to calculate this legendary carbon nucleus, solving a problem that has kept science guessing for more than 50 years.

Most of us have seen it happen: a friend or colleague with enviable energy and dedication to a stressful job suddenly burns out. In place of tireless toil comes un

(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at Yale University have succeeded in building a new kind of laser based on the way brightly colored birds show their colors. Building on the new approach to creating laser beams, whereby holes are drilled in a material in such a way as to trap light inside for a long enough period of time to create the laser light they are after, researchers Hui Cao, Heeso Noh and their colleagues describe in a paper they've published in Physical Review Letters, how they've emulated the way birds use air holes to display their colors.

IBM has announced the 50 recipients of its “Smarter Planet Faculty Innovation Awards” and $10,000 grants for designing classes geared toward the technologies, markets, and applications in which IBM has a vested interest. Including one particularly gnarly Chicago transit hub. On Thursday, technology giant IBM announced the 50 recipients of its inaugural “ Smarter Planet Faculty Innovation Awards ,” in essence a $10,000 grant for designing classes geared toward the technologies, markets, and applications in which IBM has a vested interest--urban transportation and health care apps, for example.

Despite the ongoing rush of alternative-fuel tech, the gasoline engine's having a moment thanks to advances from Jaguar and the Department of Energy. Jaguar CX75 million-dollar hybrid Last year Jaguar teased an incredible concept car, the CX75, that had an electric engine in each wheel and a pair of high-performance gas turbines in its truck to provide the electrical power

With images of the Japan earthquake and tsunami fresh in the minds of coastal dwellers everywhere, tsunami science is getting a fresh infusion of interest, and cash, in the U.S. From giant wave basins in Oregon to current-speed detectors in California, the U.S. is expanding its tsunami research, especially in the Pacific Northwest states that researchers say face grave risk of big-wave destruction

Researchers of the University of Vienna used a quantum mechanical system in the laboratory to simulate complex many-body systems. This experiment promises future quantum simulators enormous potential insights into unknown quantum phenomena.

By Lucas Laursen of Nature magazine Nuclear accidents can have devastating consequences for the people and animals living in the vicinity of the damaged power plants, but they also give researchers a unique opportunity to study the effects of radiation on populations that would be impossible to recreate in the lab. Tim Mousseau, who directs the Chernobyl Research Initiative at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, together with an international team, is studying the long-term ecological and health consequences of the 1986 accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Ukraine. [More]

A series of new video games for kids with cystic fibrosis not only helps them stick to treatment regimens, but also significantly improves breathing performance. Gamification to the rescue! One of the hardest parts of treating cystic fibrosis in children is convincing them to perform tedious breathing exercises required to keep airways clear. However, a new study that applies gamification techniques to cystic-fibrosis treatment indicates that specially made video games not only get children to perform breathing exercises--they also improves breathing performance when not playing games

The death of Osama bin Laden elicited many different types of responses and feelings--triumph, sorrow and anger among them. Each of us, as individuals, is capable of having conflicting feelings about the death of the al Qaeda leader, depending on how we happen to see ourselves at any given moment--as parents, spouses, workers, Americans, and so forth. The variety of our responses reveals the subtle and powerful forces surrounding social identity: how we relate to different groups and roles, which is changeable and influenced by circumstances

Decades of optimization have made the electronic switch both tiny and efficient.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Physicist Stefano Lepri of the Italian National Research Council and his partner Giulio Casati of the University of Insubria, have published a paper in Physical Review Letters, where they demonstrate through mathematical theory that it should be possible to create asymmetric materials that allow most light or sound waves to pass through in one direction, while mostly preventing them from doing so when going the opposite way.