One way to alleviate the pain of banging your shin while on a hike is to encounter a grizzly bear—a well-known phenomenon called stress-induced analgesia. Now, researchers have elucidated a key…

"The conflict between maternal and fetus genes is one of the weirdest ideas in the modern theory of evolution."* According to evolutionary logic, the fetus "wants" to milk the mother for all it can…

Children learn by imitating adults—so much so that they will rethink how an object works if they observe an adult taking unnecessary steps when using that object, according to a Yale study today in…

A missing brain protein may be one of the culprits behind autism and other brain disorders, researchers at MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory report in the Dec. 6 issue of Neuron. Li…

A dwarf star with a surprisingly magnetic personality and a huge hot spot covering half its surface area is showing astronomers that life as a cool dwarf is not necessarily as simple and quiet as…

The evolutionary Tree of Life for flowering plants has been revealed using the largest collection of genomic data of these plants to date, report scientists from The University of Texas at Austin and…

Franziska Michor Is the Isaac Newton of Biology. Hype? Maybe. But Tom Junod could endorse Hitler and vampire babies and I would probably agree. Plus, why don't we have any evolutionary biologists…

The Herkules supercomputer is not only powerful, but also kind to the environment. It consumes considerably less electricity than similar supercomputers. In terms of energy efficiency, it occupies a…

Most of us take it for granted that plants respond to light by growing, flowering and straining towards the light, and we never wonder just how plants manage to do so. But the ordinary, everyday…

The belief among some archaeologists that Europeans introduced alcohol to the Indians of the American Southwest may be faulty. Ancient and modern pot sherds collected by New Mexico state archeologist…

Taking oral contraceptives can lower a young women’s bone density according to research by LMU Professor of Natural Science Hawley Almstedt and Oregon State University Professor of Natural Science…

People with high blood pressure may find relief from Transcendental Meditation, a controversial alternative to medicine promoted by the Maharishi University of Management in Iowa, where some of the…

A new study from the Journal of Consumer Research suggests that the presence of other people may enhance our movie-watching experiences. Over the course of the film, movie-watchers influence one…

Prominent claims from observational studies of the cardiovascular benefits of vitamin E often continue to be supported in medical literature despite strong contradictory evidence from randomized…

The journal Experimental Mathematics, started in 1992, publishes “formal results inspired by experimentation, conjectures suggested by experiments, descriptions of algorithms and software for…

Elite athletes - often perceived as the epitome of health and fitness – may be more susceptible to common illness and are therefore proving useful in helping scientists understand more about the…

An international European research collaboration led by scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology reports evidence for a rapid developmental pattern in a 100,000 year old…

The White House has claimed that Bush's firm stance against embryonic stem cell research helped to stimulate the recent breakthroughs in creating pluripotent cells without destroying embryos. In an…

University of British Columbia astronomer Harvey Richer and UBC graduate student Saul Davis have discovered that white dwarf stars are born with a natal kick, explaining why these smoldering embers…

The long-held idea that only vertebrates have sophisticated adaptive immune systems that can protect them for life against many pathogens after being infected by them just once has been revised in…