Demand from rich Chinese for Indian tiger pelts and parts used in traditional medicine fuels poaching and may lead to the extinction of the species in the wild, conservationists have warned. Trade of…

The first public revelation of the earliest continuous Semitic text ever deciphered has taken place at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Spell from the Egyptian pyramid text states in a Semitic…

If you bend a knee or an elbow, the nerves in your limbs stretch but do not break. A University of Utah study suggests why: A gene produces a springy protein that keeps nerve cells flexible. When…

Why are males larger than females in some animal species (such as most mammals), females larger than males in others (such as most insects), and why are the sexes alike in yet other species (such as…

Smooth as silk. Warm as wool; ______ as wheat gluten. Marketing specialists may be challenged to fill in that blank in the future, now that scientists in Nebraska report the first successful…

While robots have moved from the realm of science fiction to a myriad of real-life uses, the potential of the "hard-bodied" robots of the 21st century remains limited by their stiff construction and…

Bioengineering researchers at UC San Diego have painstakingly assembled a virtual human metabolic network that will give researchers a new way to hunt for better treatments for hundreds of human…

British physicists have shared computer time with biologists around the world in an effort to combat malaria, which kills one million people annually. Using an international computing grid spanning…

Is morally-motivated choice different from other kinds of decision making? Previous research has implied that the answer is yes, suggesting that certain sacred or protected values are resistant to…

The human brain underwent explosive growth after we split from our chimp cousins, but the pace of evolutionary change among the thousands of genes expressed in brain tissue has since slowed, says a…

On Saturday, Hubble's main camera, the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), stopped working. Until a solution, at least in part, can be found, Hubble will be returned to work with the remaining…

The "spine" of the James Webb Space Telescope, called the backplane, is in great health for space, according to scientists and engineers. Recent tests show that the backplane, which supports the big…

Excavations supported by National Geographic at Durrington Walls in the Stonehenge World Heritage site have revealed an enormous ancient settlement that once housed hundreds of people. Archaeologists…

For the first time physicists have shown that well structured chaos can be initiated in a photonic integrated circuit. Furthermore, this represents the first time scientists have been able to study…

After the skeletal remains of an 18,000-year-old, Hobbit-sized human were discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2003, some scientists thought that the specimen must have been a pygmy or a…

A research team at Swarthmore College discovered a previously unknown companion to the bright star, beta Crucis, in the Southern Cross. As a prominent member of the well-known constellation Crux, or…

Shipborne activists hunting a Japanese whaling fleet in a potentially violent high-seas game of hide-and-seek offered a 25,000-dollar reward Monday for help in tracking the whalers down. Sea Shepherd…

A single protein in brain cells may act as a linchpin in the body's weight-regulating system, playing a key role in the flurry of signals that govern fat storage, sugar use, energy balance and weight…

In one of the biggest advancements in fundamental transistor design, Intel Corporation revealed that it is using two dramatically new materials to build the insulating walls and switching gates of…

By LIDIA WASOWICZ SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 29 (UPI) -- Brain researchers searching for clues to autism have zeroed in on regions associated with recognizing and reading faces. As early as 1947, scientific…