Thermonuclear fusion can be achieved through a controlled reaction between two light variants of hydrogen, called deuterium and tritium - that sounds simple enough but improving the ignition stage of…

The president Fernando Ferroni sent today an open, touching message to the personnel of the National Institute of Nuclear Physics, the Italian research organization he directs. The INFN contributed…

If you live in America and hadn't heard, the government is in a shutdown. We've had a full plate of political theater, with armed stand-offs at veteran's memorials and the National Zoo's Panda Cam…

In case you missed the memo (HOW COULD YOU), we're in the middle of International Cephalopod Awareness Days. Over the years the celebration has grown to encompass five full days of merriment (you can…

Kissing helps us size up potential partners and, once in a relationship, may be a way of getting a partner to stick around, according to psychologists in a new paper. The scholars set up an…

Research using DNA to map the history of human migration is helping unravel the timing and source of human settlement in Central Europe. One of the great debates in archaeological research for the…

Pamela Ronald, researcher at the University of California, Davis (and blogger at Scientific American) has outlined why a paper she contributed to in Science was retracted. No, it was not fraud or…

Pamela Ronald, researcher at the University of California, Davis (and blogger at Scientific American) has outlined why a paper she contributed to in Science was retracted. No, it was not fraud or…

Children who stutter have less grey matter in key regions of the brain responsible for speech production than children who do not stutter, according to brain scans of 28 children ranging from five to…

One of the more controversial issues from the recent first part of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) is the failure of global climate models to predict a…

If you talk to social scientists, egoism and narcissism appear are on the rise while empathy is on the decline. In recent years, the ability to put ourselves in other people's shoes has been deemed…

A new study says it has confirmed for the first time that the smell of stress sweat does  significantly alter how women are perceived by both males and females. Research has shown the ability…

Rocky basalt pillars that litter Iceland's Skaelingar valley likely formed in a surprising reaction where lava met water - but without any explosion occurring. The authors of a new paper say that non…

A week ago, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) delivered to massive media coverage an unsettling message – climate change is real, humans are the main cause of it, and unless we…

Discovery ‘could hold key to Alzheimer’s treatment’ New on the BBC web site today (10th October 2013).  The discovery of the first chemical to prevent the death of brain tissue in a…

Atrial fibrillation, the most frequently diagnosed type of irregular heart rhythm, is more prevalent in whites than people from other race or ethnic groups, according to researchers at UC San…

Researchers have come one step closer to understanding unstable atomic nuclei. The protons and neutrons inside the atomic nucleus exhibit shell structures in a manner similar to electrons in an atom…

Today I was in the mood of cleaning up some areas of my labyrintic hard drive, after having performed a periodic backup of its contents. I thus came across some pieces of text that had been sitting…

In 1968, after CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite formally came out against the Viet Nam war, President Lyndon B. Johnson was apocryphally to have said, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle…

A group at the University of Exeter used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology on the brains of 13 volunteers, all faculty members and graduate students in English at the school, to…