A research team has discovered DNA from living bacteria that are more than half a million years old. This is the oldest example of a still-living organism. The discovery was made by Professor Eske Willerslev from the University of Copenhagen and his international research team.

All cells decompose with time but some cells are better than others at delay the aging process. Some organisms are capable of regenerating and thereby repairing damaged cells. These cells – their DNA – are important to the understanding of the process of how cells break down with age.

Hot spots across Southeastern Europe from 21 to 26 August have been detected with instruments aboard ESA satellites, which have been continuously surveying fires burning across the.

Working like thermometers in the sky, the Along Track Scanning Radiometer (ATSR) on ESA’s ERS-2 satellite and the Advanced Along Track Scanning Radiometer (AATSR) on ESA’s Envisat satellite measure thermal infrared radiation to take the temperature of Earth's land surfaces.

Haze of the smoke over Greece, covering in particular the area of Olympia.

Greenhouse gases likely accounted for over half of the widespread warmth across the continental United States in 2006, according to a new study in Geophysical Research Letters. Last year's average temperature was the second highest since recordkeeping began in 1895. The team found that it was very unlikely that the 2006 El Nino played any role, though other natural factors likely contributed to the near-record warmth.

When average annual temperature in the United States broke records in 1998, a powerful El Nino was affecting climate around the globe. Scientists widely attributed the unusual warmth in the United States to the influence of the ongoing El Nino. El Nino is a warming of the surface of the east tropical Pacific Ocean.

Female beetles mate to quench their thirst according to new research by a University of Exeter biologist. The males of some insect species, including certain types of beetles, moths and crickets, produce unusually large ejaculates, which in some cases can account for around 10% of their body weight. The study shows that dehydrated females can accept sexual invitations simply to get hold of the water in the seminal fluid.

Dr Martin Edvardsson, whose research is published in the journal Animal Behaviour (August 2007), studied the bruchid beetle Callosobruchus maculatus, a serious pest in warmer parts of the world. Some females were given unlimited access to water while others were not.

Researchers may be able to tinker with a single amino acid of an enzyme that helps viruses multiply to render them harmless, according to molecular biologists who say the discovery could pave the way for a fast and cheap method of making vaccines.

"We have successfully tested this technique with poliovirus," said Craig Cameron, the Paul Berg professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at Penn State. "And we think it is applicable to most other viruses."

Viruses have a simple mission; infect a cell, make more viruses, and then break out of the cell to infect more cells. This calls for fast and efficient multiplication. Viruses do this with the help of an enzyme called polymerase, whose main job is to assist in making more copies of the virus.

A study about predicting the outcome of actual conflicts found that the forecasts of experts are little better than those of novices, according to a new study.

When presented with actual crises, such as a disguised version of a 1970s border dispute between Iraq and Syria and an unfolding dispute between football players and management, experts were able to forecast the decisions the parties made in only 32% of the cases, little better than the 29% scored by undergraduate students. Chance guesses at the outcomes would be right 28% of the time.

Kesten C. Green of Monash University in Australia says, “Political leaders in the West are pondering how best to deal with the threat of the Iranian government’s nuclear ambitions.

Following are five myths about girls and science, according to the National Science Foundation.

1. Myth: From the time they start school, most girls are less interested in science than boys are.

Reality: In elementary school about as many girls as boys have positive attitudes toward science. A recent study of fourth graders showed that 66 percent of girls and 68 percent of boys reported liking science. But something else starts happening in elementary school. By second grade, when students (both boys and girls) are asked to draw a scientist, most portray a white male in a lab coat. The drawings generally show an isolated person with a beaker or test tube. Any woman scientist they draw looks severe and not very happy.

Our second session of SciFoo Lives On took place today on Nature Island in Second Life (SLURL). The topic was Medicine and Web 2.0, as suggested by Bertalan Mesko (Berci) at the last session. We had a very good turnout, with about 30 people. Many returned from last week's session but there were many new faces also. Berci ran the session with me and helped out all week with getting our presenters set up with posters and general navigation.

It turns out boyfriends really do try harder than husbands, according to a new study from George Mason University.

The study of more than 17,000 people in 28 countries found that married men report doing less housework than men who are live-in boyfriends. Still no word on whether or not married men also get less sex. Not that correlation equals causation.

This study was recently published in the Journal of Family Issues by Shannon Davis and co-authors Theodore Greenstein and Jennifer Gerteisen Marks of North Carolina State University.

Genetic markers contain pieces of foreign DNA that allow researchers to know when the gene they inserted into a cell has produced the desired trait, like glowing when exposed to ultraviolet light. This is important because results are not easy to see.

Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research postdoctoral researchers Alexander Meissner and Marius Wernig have demonstrated that it’s possible to convert specialized mouse skin cells into unspecialized stem cells and have identified successfully reprogrammed cells by looks alone.

Their findings bring human stem cell therapies a step closer to reality.