Archive by date | March 2012

High-flying cosmic-ray detector offers hints but no results yet

High-flying cosmic-ray detector offers hints but no results yet

When Samuel Ting  got up to give his plenary talk at the opening session of the American Physicial Society’s spring meeting here in Atlanta, the vast hotel ballroom was close to standing-room only. Not only is the MIT physicist a Nobel laureate, but he the principal investigator and prime mover of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer: the hugely controversial, US$1.5 billion cosmic ray detector that has been riding on the International Space Station since its launch last May (see  Nature 455, 854-7; 2008). If AMS works as advertised, it could detect positrons from the self-annihilation of the mysterious particles comprising dark matter, thus providing the first solid clue as to what those particle are. It might also see anti-helium nuclei created right after the Big Bang, thus shedding fresh light on why matter is so much more common than anti-matter.  Read more

Welcome to the biobank

Anyone interested in combing through data on over half a million ageing Brits will have their chance beginning today, when the UK Biobank throws open its databanks to researchers. The bank, unusual for its size and depth of data, should help scientists to identify the genetic and environmental causes of diabetes, obesity, cancer, depression and many other diseases.  Read more

Gaining control of our circadian rhythms

Gaining control of our circadian rhythms

The woes of those affected by jet lag may soon come to an end. Two papers published today in Nature (here and here) explore how our internal clocks are regulated at the molecular level and how two compounds that alter this regulation could help us readjust to new time zones.  Read more