President Bush has signed into law the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2007 (H.R. 2764), which includes a provision directing the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to provide the public with…

Protests couldn't happen without college students, who have plenty of time on their hands, but research carried out at the University of Granada reveals that busy housewives raising future college…

In mammals, male or female development depends on the presence of the Y chromosome, which is only found in males because it includes masculinizing genes. But other animal groups have evolved…

An international team of astronomers, led by Professor Svetlana Berdyugina of ETH Zurich’s Institute of Astronomy, has for the first time ever been able to detect and monitor the visible light that…

Someone named Scylla waterboarded himself and provided a detailed account of what happened. “Old” self-experimentation, you could say, was doctors doing dangerous things to themselves for a short…

A genetic mutation already known to be more common in Ashkenazi Jewish breast cancer patients is also prevalent in Hispanic and young African-American women with breast cancer, according to one of…

People with clinical addictions know first-hand the ravages the disease can take on almost every aspect of their lives. So why do they continue addictive behaviors, even after a period of peaceable…

It's good news that we are living longer, but bad news that the longer we live, the better our odds of developing late-onset Alzheimer's disease. Alzheimer's is a debilitating neurodegenerative…

One person out of every thousand has synaesthesia, a psychological phenomenon in which they can smell a sound or hear a color. Most of these people are not aware they are synaesthetes and feel…

In a late-year flurry, Congress passed many bills last week. Among others, Congress passed an all-in-one spending bill. It combined eleven spending bills and additional spending for the Iraq war into…

A unique electron microscope that can help create four-dimensional “movies” of molecules may hold the answers to research questions in a number of fields including chemistry, biology, and physics,…

I recently reported on a new collaborator who agreed to work with us in the open on modelling subcellular drug transport. I am very pleased to report that Gus Rosania has now created an entire wiki…

Sometimes people think that, because I write this column for peanuts, I am somehow available for free science consulting services. Obviously this is not the case but I don't mind the occasional…

If you need some science for your Christmas tree, here are a few articles. There are more but how much Christmas science can you read in one day? The Great Debate: Real vs. Artificial Christmas…

Researchers in New Jersey report development of a new type of non-stick material whose ability to shed liquids like water from a duck’s back can be turned on or off simply by flipping an electrical…

In a finding that defies conventional culinary wisdom, researchers in Italy report that cooking vegetables can preserve or even boost their nutritional value in comparison to their raw counterparts,…

Scientists have genetically engineered a mosquito to release a sea-cucumber protein into its gut which impairs the development of malaria parasites, according to research in PLoS Pathogens.…

A brain chemical that makes us sleepy also appears to play a central role in the success of deep brain stimulation to ease symptoms in patients with Parkinson’s disease and other brain disorders. The…

Archaeological evidence shows that bone skates (skates made of animal bones) are the oldest human powered means of transport, dating back to 3000 BC. Why people started skating on ice and where is…

In this latest installment of our on-going series of interviews with some of the leading thinkers and scientists on the subject of energy, we interview Dr. Thomas Valone. Facing and solving the…