NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer has lifted the veil off a ghost known to haunt the local universe, providing new insight into the formation and evolution of galaxies.  The eerie creature,…

Researchers have carried out the largest study of differences between human and chimpanzee genomes, identifying regions that have been duplicated or lost during evolution of the two lineages. The…

Three million Americans suffer from stuttering.  It afflicts  5% of all children and most eventually overcome it but childhood suffering from stuttering can be traumatic, producing…

A 19th-century historian traveling in southern Ohio later wrote about his first glimpse of Union Village, a Shaker community located near Harrison, Ohio: "When I caught sight of the first house, my…

A new study in the Journal of Marriage and Family found that serial cohabiters are less likely than single-instance cohabiting unions to result in marriage and, if serial cohabiters do marry, divorce…

Shrinkage is a good thing when you want it to happen. Energy consumption in buildings is a great candidate for shrinkage.  Do you have a building in mind? Two reports (1-2)…

Fenfluramine, the appetite suppressant drug banned in the US in 1997 due to fears over its links to heart conditions, has been shown to have serious long-term effects. In a report published today in…

Which species is more diverse, humans or chimps? Most of us would be tempted to answer 'humans'. Unless you're a primatologist or you work at a zoo, you would likely have trouble telling one chimp…

Dark matter is believed to account for 85 per cent of the Universe’s mass but has never been detected.   Scientists inferred its existence from gravitational effects of objects in space more…

is all over my face when I read the following in an article on UK MSN: Five-year-old finds dinosaur bone A five-year-old girl has found fossilised bones from an Ice Age rhinoceros on a day out with…

MIT engineers have outfitted cells with tiny “backpacks” that could allow them to deliver chemotherapy agents, diagnose tumors or become building blocks for tissue engineering. Michael Rubner,…

A new study published in the journal of Minerva Cardioangiologica says that Pycnogenol, pine bark extract from the French maritime pine tree, reduces jetlag in passengers by nearly 50 percent. The…

Research by the University of Warwick shows how death gave birth to the modern cult of celebrity as the sudden rise in the popularity of obituaries of unusual people in the 1700s provided people with…

The skeleton of a 12,000 year-old Natufian Shaman has been discovered in northern Israel by archaeologists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The burial is described as being accompanied by…

A VHF radio interferometer system that was designed by Zhang GuangShu, et al of Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute at Chinese Academy of Sciences was used to…

Yesterday, following a fifth orbit-raising maneuver, the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft successfully settled into a trajectory that will take it to the Moon.  After launch on 22 October, the…

In case you didn't know it, there's an election happening in America and it hasn't been called or conceded by anyone but only the staunchest Republican could have gone into this expecting a win.…

Transcription factors do a lot of things for us, like make arms and legs in the right places.  It turns out they may also make us go bald. We all know that being bald runs in families.…

An allergy refers to an exaggerated reaction by our immune systemin response to bodily contact with certain foreign substances. When anallergen comes in contact with the body, it causes the immune…

If you've already voted here in the US, or if you're not from the US and just burned out on US politics, here's a distraction: Basic Books' Feynman extravaganza - all of their products (of course),…