A study of mortality and fertility patterns using seven species of wild primates (apes, monkeys etc.) compared with similar data from hunter-gatherer humans found that menopause sets humans apart…

Positive psychology is so powerful it can change gene expression, according to a paper in PNAS. A good state of mind, your happiness levels, affect your genes, say academics in psychoneuroimmunology,…

Exoplanets - planets around stars other than the sun - were discovered almost 20 years ago,but for the first time, X-ray observations have detected an exoplanet passing in front of its parent star.…

In what the authors are calling perhaps the most comprehensive and definitive effort to date, zoologists say they have explained the processes that drove male mammals to adopt social monogamy as a…

There's still no free lunch. Finite budgets based on taxes that give equal treatment to everyone aren't really resulting in equal quality. Instead, most ward nurses in NHS hospitals say they are…

Most mammals aren't monogamous, nor are most anything except birds, where it happens in about 90% of cases.  It's actually quite rare in mammals (5%), so why did it evolve? Was it to be better…

If you talk to someone who knows food but not science, it won't be long before some jab at Monsanto issues forth. And if you persist in discussing biology, it really won't be long before you get…

New biological insecticides, which make use of “entomopathogenic” viruses that are harmful to insects, have emerged in recent years. The big advantage versus regular pesticides is that they are…

2 000 years ago, Roman fishermen knew that some species of fish liked to gather under floating objects. No one knew why and it didn't matter, that behavioral mechanism was just used to catch more…

In J.R.R. Tolkeins's fantasy epic "The Lord of the Rings", a hobbit discovers a giant in the caves under Mt. Doom. More recently, another famous hobbit helped discover a much smaller kind of spider.…

A year-round ice-free Arctic Ocean surface could explain why the Earth of the Pliocene Epoch had the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that we have today, but we remain 3 to 9 degrees cooler…

At a young age, kids learn that the cookies are still there, even though they have been placed in a jar. And they learn that a car driven into a tunnel will reappear on the other side.  The…

A new solar cell and a photo anode made of a metal oxide has resulted in storing nearly five percent of solar energy chemically, in the form of hydrogen. The solar cell is simpler than that of…

The Dolomites are a mountain range in north-eastern Italy. They take their name from the mineral called dolomite, a carbonate rock which gives these mountains a characteristic pale pink colour,…

Like with cigarettes and alcohol, no amount of awareness campaigns about health risks are needed. People know by now and some choose to do it anyway. Among Swiss men, average age 20, 91 percent drink…

University of Leicester archeologists lifted the lid of a medieval stone coffin near the final resting place of Richard III this week - and found a mysterious coffin-within-a-coffin. This is their…

9-year-old Carissa Yip is probably better at chess than you. She is certainly better than me and already better than 93 percent of the 51,000 plus players registered with the U.S. Chess Federation.…

Though we have access to a seemingly limitless amount of new music each day, we keep coming back to songs or albums, mostly stuff we liked at college age. It's common to prefer the familiar - even by…

The Canadian boreal forest,  stretching from the Yukon in the west to Newfoundland and Labrador in the east, remains one of the world's great natural treasures. The ecologically diverse region…

Hemp (Cannabis sp.) has been a fundamental plant for the development of human societies. Its fibers have long been used for textiles and rope making, which requires prior stem retting. This process…