The term "genome" is oft-heard but seldom defined, and indeed has more than one meaning. Little wonder, then, that discussions about genome sequences and comparisons thereof can leave otherwise…

Here we go again, just this morning the Florida House of Representatives passed a bill that directs teachers to engage in “critical analysis” of evolution in public schools. The bill’s chief sponsor,…

Fungi produce a number of natural products. Some are potent toxins, like the amanitins primarily responsible for the toxicity of the death cap fungus. Others are life-saving drugs such as…

Research by Yale scientists shows that males and females have essentially unisex brains — at least in flies — according to a recent report in Cell designed to identify factors that are responsible…

A group of scientists from the Nutrition and Food Science Department from the Faculty of Pharmacy of the University of Granada have reported the beneficial effects of extra virgin olive oil on human…

Scientists at The Australian National University are a step closer to understanding the rare Hartnup disorder after discovering a surprising link between blood pressure regulation and nutrition that…

Using microphone arrays and photographic methods to reconstruct flight paths of bats in the field when they find and capture prey in air using their sonar system, Annemarie Surlykke from the…

Well, the move to the new site has gone ok, though it seems some old readers are a bit unhappy. All I can say is that the site is a work in progress and that some exciting changes are in the works.…

Metastasis, the spread of cancer throughout the body, can be explained by the fusion of a cancer cell with a white blood cell in the original tumor, according to Yale School of Medicine researchers,…

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Max Planck Institute for Physics in Germany believe they can achieve a significant increase in the accuracy of one of…

CSIRO researchers have discovered a new class of fatty acids -- alpha-hydroxy polyacetylenic fatty acids -- that they say could be used as sensors for detecting changes in temperature and mechanical…

New findings suggest that the ancient human “cousin” known as the “Nutcracker Man” wasn’t regularly eating anything like nuts after all. A University of Arkansas professor and his colleagues used a…

The ability to regenerate lost body parts is unevenly distributed among higher organisms. Among vertebrates, some amphibians are able to replace lost limbs completely, while mammals are unable to…

Degas, van Gogh and Picasso swore it enhanced their creativity but thujone, the compound widely believed responsible for absinthe’s mind-altering effects, is not really a factor, according to a new…

We're working on connecting the feed from this new Genomicron to the Feedburner feed so that everyone gets counted, but obviously there's something funny going on in the meanwhile. Here is how my…

Interested in being a scientist? Then you had better get used to rejection and failure, because the truth is that most of your experiments will fail, most of your original ideas will be wrong, and…

Believe it or not, scientists do not always take themselves too seriously. We can laugh at ourselves and the sometimes rigid conventions of our profession. Take, for example, this guide to…

Because dogs didn't exist back then, more relevant analogies had to be used in that title. Why? Because analyses of Chengjiang and Burgess Shale food-web data suggest that most, but not all,…

In the rapid and fast-growing world of nanotechnology, researchers are continually on the lookout for new building blocks to push innovation and discovery to scales much smaller than the tiniest…

A breakthrough barrier technology from Singapore A*STAR’s Institute of Materials Research and Engineering (IMRE) protects sensitive devices like organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) and solar cells…