Herbal Viagra actually contains the real thing

IF IT looks too good to be true, it probably is. Several "herbal remedies" for erectile dysfunction sold online actually contain the active ingredient from Viagra. Michael Lamb at Arcadia University in Glenside, Pennsylvania, and colleagues purchased 10...

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Mystery ring of radiation briefly encircled Earth

What were you doing last September? The charged particles that dance around Earth were busy. Unbeknown to most earthlings, a previously unseen ring of radiation encircled our planet for nearly the whole month – before being destroyed by a powerful interplanetary shock wave. ...

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Quantum skyfall puts Einstein's gravity to the test

DIVIDING a falling cloud of frozen atoms sounds like an exotic weather experiment. In fact, it's the latest way to probe whether tiny objects obey Einstein's theory of general relativity, our leading explanation for gravity. General relativity is based...

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Newly spotted comet to buzz Mars in 2014

Lisa Grossman, physical sciences reporterA Martian sunset, as seen by NASA's Spirit rover in 2005. (Image: Mars Exploration Rover Mission, Texas A&M, Cornell, JPL, NASA)There's a new comet in town, and it is making a beeline for Mars. If projections of its orbit are correct, the icy visitor will buzz the Red Planet in October 2014.Dubbed C/2013 A1, the comet was discovered on 3 January by prolific...

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Today on New Scientist: 25 February 2013

First fruits of a groundbreaking art-science tie-up A pioneering collaboration between two of London's most prestigious cultural institutions shows that sci-art has come of ageThe great illusion of the self Your mind's greatest trick is convincing you of your own reality. Discover the elaborate illusions involved and what they mean in our special featureStunning seeds: a biological meteor wreathed...

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Ancient continent hides beneath Indian Ocean

The sands of Mauritius are hiding a secret: deep beneath them lurks an ancient continent. Trond Torsvik and colleagues at the University of Oslo, Norway, analysed grains of zircon found on the island's beaches, measuring the balance...

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Amazon to open market in second-hand MP3s and e-books

A new market for second-hand digital downloads could let us hold virtual yard sales of our ever-growing piles of intangible possessions WHY buy second-hand? For physical goods, the appeal is in the price – you don't mind the creases in a book or rust spots on a car if it's a bargain. Although digital objects...

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Rusty rocks reveal ancient origin of photosynthesis

SUN-WORSHIP began even earlier than we thought. The world's oldest sedimentary rocks suggest an early form of photosynthesis may have evolved almost 3.8 billion years ago, not long after life appeared on Earth. A hallmark of photosynthesis in plants is that the process...

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Mood-sensing smartphone tells your shrink how you feel

PEOPLE with anxiety, depression or stress are often asked to record their mood changes throughout the day, helping psychologists fine-tune their treatment. But they often forget, recording only sparse information at best. Now an emotion-sensing smartphone app that automatically generates someone's "mood diary" could give psychologists...

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Higgs may spell doom, unless supersymmetry saves us

Lisa Grossman, physical sciences reporter(Image: CERN)Is the Higgs boson a herald of the apocalypse? That's the suggestion behind a theory, developed more than 30 years ago, that is back in the headlines this week. According to physicists, the mass of the Higgs-like particle announced last summer supports the notion that our universe is teetering on the edge of stability, like a pencil balanced...

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Biofuel rush is wiping out unique American grasslands

Say goodbye to the grass. The scramble for biofuels is rapidly killing off unique grasslands and pastures in the central US. Christopher Wright and Michael Wimberly of South Dakota State University in Brookings analysed satellite...

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Wiping out top predators messes up the climate

Wiping out top predators like lions, wolves and sharks is tragic, bad for ecosystems – and can make climate change worse. Mass extinctions of the big beasts of the jungles, grasslands and oceans could already be adding to greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. ...

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False memories prime immune system for future attacks

IN A police line-up, a falsely remembered face is a big problem. But for the body's police force – the immune system – false memories could be a crucial weapon. When a new bacterium or virus invades the body, the immune system mounts...

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False memories prime immune system for future attacks

IN A police line-up, a falsely remembered face is a big problem. But for the body's police force – the immune system – false memories could be a crucial weapon. When a new bacterium or virus invades the body, the immune system mounts...

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Sand-grain-sized drum extends reach of quantum theory

The banging of a tiny drum heralds the intrusion of the weird world of quantum mechanics into our everyday experience. Though no bigger than a grain of sand, the drum is the largest object ever to have been caught obeying the uncertainty principle, a central idea in quantum theory. ...

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Water wars loom as the US runs dry

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Plants listen more closely to kin than strangers

It is not just humans that like a natter with their nearest and dearest – plants pay most attention to their closest relatives. When an insect bites a leaf, many plants release volatile chemicals to prime their neighbours for attack. The defences...

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Arctic sunshine cranks up threat from greenhouse gases

IT'S a solar double whammy. Not only does sunlight melt Arctic ice, but it also speeds up the conversion of frozen organic matter into carbon dioxide. The amount of carbon in dead vegetation preserved in the far northern permafrost is estimated...

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Liver cancer survival time tripled by virus

The virus used in the vaccine that helped eradicate smallpox is now working its magic on liver cancer. A genetically engineered version of the vaccinia virus has trebled the average survival time of people with a severe form of liver cancer, with only mild, flu-like side effects. ...

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