This is why politicians shouldn't choose what science projects get funded: John McCain puts his science ignorance on display by knocking a population genetic study on bears he knows nothing about.…

In a find that sheds light on how Earth-like planets may form, astronomers this week reported finding the first evidence of small, sandy particles orbiting a newborn solar system at about the same…

Individual genes do not cause depression, but they are thought to increase the probability of an individual having a depression in the face of other accumulating risk factors, such as other genes and…

Researchers have identified 25 genes regulating lifespan in two organisms separated by about 1.5 billion years in evolutionary change. At least 15 of those genes have very similar versions in humans,…

Odd Numbers, an excellent blog by Jubin Zelveh at Portfolio.com, recently listed a few findings from the American Time Use Survey, which is in danger of being ended. They included: - First-born…

Grammar is a complex human ability yet by the age of three most children can make grammatically correct sentences. Kids with a specific language impairment(SLI), however, continue to make…

There are ten key questions we have to answer this century, says a new report by the National Research Council. The questions represent where earth science stands, how it arrived at this point, and…

Wild sex is a staple of nature films, but there is one sex scene David Attenborough has never narrated: the mating ritual of yeast. That's right: yeast. Sex isn't just limited to lions, birds of…

Obesity is associated with clear changes in gene-networks and the dysfunction of mitochondria, say researchers at the University of Helsinki and the National Public Health Institute - worse, the…

Modern day logic and embedded systems are all around us. They are so ubiquitous and their design so efficient, say researchers at the RUNES (Reconfigurable Ubiquitous Networked Embedded Systems)…

The productivity and biodiversity of an ecosystem is significantly affected by the rate at which organisms move between different parts of the ecosystem, according to new research. Ecologists and…

On Sept. 15, 2007, an object hurtled through the sky and crashed near the village of Carancas in Peru. Scientists dispatched to the site found a gaping hole in the ground. Peter Schultz, professor of…

Developmental biologists at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health (SMPH) say they have gained new understanding of how digits grow and why each digit is different from the…

Despite decades of research, the biological basis of depression is unknown, and the molecular and cellular targets of antidepressant treatment remain elusive, although it is likely that these drugs…

Though they perch far apart on the avian family tree, birds with the ability to learn songs use similar brain structures to sing their tunes. Neurobiologists at Duke University Medical Center now…

Bipolar Disorder (BPD or manic-depressive illness) is one of the most serious of all mental disorders, affecting millions of individuals worldwide. Affected individuals alternate between states of…

Cocaine addicts often suffer a downward emotional spiral that is a key to their craving and chronic relapse. While researchers have developed animal models of the reward of cocaine, they have not…

In the first installment of this series, we encountered the common misconception that the order of the terminal nodes ("tips") on an evolutionary tree reflects the actual relatedness among the…

Photosynthesis by plants, algae, and some bacteria is crucial to life on Earth. It results in food from sunlight and in its process organisms release oxygen and absorb carbon dioxide. Scientists at…

Macrophages, derived from Greek and meaning “eating cells”, are biological cells that spring from white blood cells to destroy foreign or dying cells. They are basically cellular “policemen” that…