When nicotine binds to a neuron, how does the cell know to send the signal that announces a smoker’s high? As with other questions involving good sensations, the answer appears to be sugar. A…

The driving forces behind major shifts in recent human evolution and adaptation have been the subject of intense debate for more than 100 years. A group of researchers believe using records from the…

Should adolescents with depression be prescribed antidepressants, and if so, should they be given only with a psychological therapy, as advocated by the National Institute for Health and Clinical…

Simple nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), are single variations affecting only one nucleotide or base of the genomic sequence. Despite humans sharing 99.9% of the genome sequence, there are still 3…

Experiments using pigs genetically engineered for compatibility with the human immune system have raised hopes that cross-species transplantation could soon become an option for patients with…

A new substance analyzer has been developed by the All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Technical Physics and Automation in Moscow. Its functionality is to automatically determine the…

In the search for better ways of treating children with brain cancer the study, a twelve-year research effort carried out by the Children’s Cancer and Leukaemia Group at The University of Nottingham…

In what advocates hailed as a major advance for scientific communication, the U.S. House of Representatives yesterday approved a measure directing the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to provide…

Removing invasive predators from island breeding colonies could save more seabirds for less cost than reductions in fishing, a study of Australia’s Eastern Tuna and Billfish Fishery (ETBF) has found.…

Faster growth, darker leaves, a different way of branching - wild varieties of the plant Arabidopsis thaliana are often substantially different from the laboratory strain of this small mustard plant,…

People with bipolar disorder – or manic depression – suffer from an accelerated shrinking of their brain, researchers at the University of Edinburgh have found. The study shows for the first time…

At very young ages, children’s defiant behavior toward their mothers may not be a bad thing. This defiance may in fact reflect children’s emerging autonomy and a confidence that they can control…

Two NASA robots are surveying a rocky, isolated polar desert within a crater in the Arctic Circle. The study will help scientists learn how robots could evaluate potential outposts on the moon or…

Even in the Animal Kingdom, there are some common sense rules. The more likely to get a big return, for example, the more work will be invested. That goes for male-female relationships as well. A…

You don't need a big brain, or a high IQ, to have a comfortable life and a good family. Witness the case of this French civil servant, written about by Dr. Lionel Fuillet in The Lancet. At age six…

Scientists have discovered two species of groundwater amphipods that are found solely in Iceland. These finding can only be explained by these animals surviving glaciations in some kind of refugium…

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine are the first to observe and measure the internal motion inside proteins, or its “dark energy.” This research, appearing in the…

A typical human mouth teems with as many as 700 different species of microbes. A handful of these have been specifically implicated in promoting gum disease, dental cavities, and bad breath, but for…

Ice loss from glaciers and ice caps is expected to cause more global sea rise during this century than the massive Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, according to a new University of Colorado at…

The genetic makeup of any species is more like customized open source code than something that is fixed and can be easily documented. The parts of our 'code' that have withstood the test of time and…