Andrei Linde lauds the new era of precision cosmology

For most of us, “inflation” is a term that comes up only in conversations about the economy or flat tires. But for many cosmologists, inflation is the ultimate word in understanding how the universe was created.

In the beginning, according to inflation theory, the universe was tinier than an atom. Then, in an unimaginably brief period of time – .00000000000000000000000000000001 second, to be precise – it expanded (“inflat

Study shows surprisingly sophisticated nesting behavior in common marsh birds

Coots, the Rodney Dangerfields of the bird world, just might start to get some respect as a result of a new study showing that these common marsh birds are able to recognize and count their own eggs, even in the presence of eggs laid by other birds.

The counting ability of female coots is part of a sophisticated set of defense mechanisms used to thwart other coots who lay eggs in their neighbors&#1

Ammonia is a problem. All animal cells produce it, but how do they get rid of it? New research by Dr Dirk Weihrauch (University of Illinois at Chicago) to be presented on Wednesday 2 April (session A2.2) suggests that the crab may have evolved a rather novel solution.

For us mammals, the key to getting rid of waste ammonia is to detoxify it into urea in the liver. Marine organisms can employ the rather simpler solution of allowing the toxic ammonia to diffuse into their environment. However,

A team of Carnegie Mellon University and NASA scientists will travel to the Atacama Desert in northern Chile in April to conduct research that will help them develop and deploy a robot and instruments that may someday enable other robots to find life on Mars. The researchers will be using the Atacama, described as the most arid region on Earth, as a Martian analog.

The group is funded with a $3 million, three-year grant from NASA to the university’s Robotics Institute. They are collabo

The expensive, energy-intensive process of turning wood into paper costs the pulp and paper industries more than $6 billion a year. Much of that expense involves separating wood’s cellulose from lignin, the glue that binds a tree’s fibers, by using an alkali solution and high temperatures and pressures. Although the lignin so removed is reused as fuel, wood with less lignin and more cellulose would save the industry millions of dollars a year in processing and chemical costs. Research at North Caroli

’Hamlet’ algorithm answers the question: ’To buy, or not to buy?’

It’s a classic dilemma for air travelers in today’s world of wildly varying ticket prices – should you purchase now if the rate seems reasonable, or wait for a better deal and take the risk that the price will go up?

Researchers at the University of Washington and the University of Southern California appear to have taken out some of the uncertainty with a new computer program tha