It's a bad thing in sports, but a goose egg in a warming Arctic could be a good thing - for polar bears.   New calculations show that changes in the timing of sea-ice breakup and of snow goose…

As ice melts away from Antarctica, parts of the continental bedrock are rising in response -- and other parts are sinking, scientists have discovered, and the finding will give much needed…

A carbon nanotube-coated "smart yarn" that conducts electricity could be woven into soft fabrics that detect blood and monitor health, engineers at the University of Michigan have demonstrated.…

You can't stop cancer.   The nature of mutations is that they aren't predictable so they can't be vaccinated against or prevented in any way we understand those terms today.   Stopping…

The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey, Spencer WellsRandom House, 2002 Spencer Wells, in his short, accessible book designed to accompany a similarly titled documentary film, describes the deep…

The Iberian Lynx is now the most endangered cat in the world with only about 160 animals remaining in the wild and, despite extensive research and millions of Euros spent in decades of protection,…

I’m used to some American media outlets shamelessly feeding crap to the public. Think Fox so-called News, for instance. But the Los Angeles Times? That’s supposed to be one of the most highly…

This week I participated in a Social Media Day at NIST. During my talk I provided an overview of our current work in using Web2.0 tools for doing Open Notebook Science in fields related to chemical…

This week I participated in a Social Media Day at NIST. During my talk I provided an overview of our current work in using Web2.0 tools for doing Open Notebook Science in fields related to chemical…

Well, two reasons; reason one is that if we write about bdelloid rotifers we just make reference to bdelloid rotifers but if they write about bdelloid rotifers, they find a way to incorporate lesbian…

So says an article in the Sunday Telegraph, following the death of Oliver Postgate, creator and writer of some of Britain’s most popular children’s television programmes, namely Pingwings, Pogles’…

Men determine the sex of a baby depending on whether their sperm is carrying an X or Y chromosome. An X chromosome combines with the mother's X chromosome to make a baby girl (XX) and a Y chromosome…

The immune system's battle against invading bacteria reaches its peak activity at night and is lowest during the day, according to Stanford researchers who based it on experiments with Drosophila…

Is obesity all in your head? A new study says that genes that predispose people to obesity act in the brain and that perhaps some people are simply hardwired to overeat. An international research…

The first demonstration that a single adult stem cell can self-renew in a mammal was reported at the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) 48th Annual Meeting, Dec. 13-17, 2008 in San Francisco.…

Meiosis, the process of halving a germ cell’s chromosomes in preparation for egg or sperm production, has been one of the most studied areas of cell biology. But in mammals, the field has been…

Determining the mechanisms that shape biological membranes has long been a tricky business. Like a factory assembly line, eukaryotic cells are organized into membrane-bound, functional compartments…

You're in the store and you have a choice between buying Gears Of War 2, with its innovative third-person tactical action gameplay and jaw-dropping graphics with effects like ambient occlusion,…

A possible new therapeutic target for pancreatic cancer, the most lethal form of human cancer, has been identified in the proteins whose DNA recipe comes from the gene named "Seven-In-Absentia,"…

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has discovered carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of a planet orbiting another star.    The Jupiter-sized planet, called HD 189733b, is too hot for life, but the…