Scientists in Cambridge, UK, using a mouse with a human chromosome in its cells, discovered that gene expression, contrary to what was previously thought, is mostly controlled by regulatory DNA…

Phones can do almost anything these days - photos, music, television - but safely protecting biometric data is something new.   Ileana Buhan, a PhD student at the University of Twente, has been…

The leading cause of death in all cancer patients continues to be the resistance of tumor cells to chemotherapy, a form of treatment in which chemicals are used to kill cells.   A study by UC…

I was planning to wait until the issue was actually in print, or at least until all the articles were available in preprint, but there is already some buzz starting so here it is. The upcoming issue…

Andrew Sullivan on the extreme sport of blogging: A columnist can ignore or duck a subject less noticeably than a blogger committing thoughts to pixels several times a day. A reporter can wait—must…

An enigma unique to flowering plants  has been solved, say researchers from the University of Leicester (UK) and POSTECH, South Korea.  Scientists already knew that flowering plants, unlike…

The journal Evolution: Education and Outreach is coming out with an issue devoted to the evolution of the eye, and some of the articles are already online. This journal is non-technical, aimed at…

Ethnomathematics! Doesn’t the very term conjure up visions of politically correct wallahs (and walis) trying to prove, in a postmodern way, that “all cultures are equal”? True, previous generations…

The Bill Melinda Gates Foundation today announced 104 grants to explore bold and largely unproven ways to improve global health. The grants of US$100,000 each will be made to scientists from 22…

Researchers from McGill University, the California Institute of Technology, the Curie Institute in Paris, Princeton University and other institutions, have unearthed crystalline magnetic fossils of a…

A drug which was developed in Cambridge and initially designed to treat a form of leukaemia has also proven effective against combating the debilitating neurological disease multiple sclerosis (MS).…

Chandrayaan-1, India’s first mission to the Moon, was successfully launched earlier this morning from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SHAR) in Sriharikota, India. The PSLV-C11 rocket, an upgraded…

The following makes perfect sense - to the government. Let companies that generate no carbon emissions now be treated like they do. Sell those 'emission rights' to companies that are heavier…

Researchers say they have assembled the most complete catalog to date of the genetic changes underlying the most common form of lung cancer. They identified 26 genes that are frequently mutated in a…

Cortisol helps our bodies cope with stress, but what about its effects on the brain? A new study appearing in the October 15th issue of Biological Psychiatry, says that in an animal model of…

People living with synaesthesia (known as synaesthetes) experience abnormal interactions between the senses. Digit-color synaesthetes, for instance, will experience certain numbers in specific colors…

The College of Agriculture and Life Sciences' (CALS) Bioenergy Feedstock Project, now in its second year, is the only project of its kind devoted to exploring the many species of field grass that…

Many people believe that as soon as you start using a skin cream, you have to continue with it; if you stop lubricating, your skin becomes drier than when you started. And now there is research to…

Aesthetics or your personal preferences aside, who do you think is in better physical condition,  international ballet dancers or international swimmers?   A study led by Professor Tim…

Scientists at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz have, for the first time, succeeded in rendering the spatial distribution of individual atoms in a Bose-Einstein condensate visible. Bose…