Extra virgin olive oil is believed to have heart health benefits but a new paper takes that one better and shows why it has been identified for its rapid destruction of cancer cells.  While…

The Z machine generates electric currents of up to 20 million amps, to shoot aluminium projectiles at iron targets, replicating the impacts of early asteroids. CC BY New experiments show that the…

Known for years as the “career woman’s disease” based on the idea that women without children develop disease in their reproductive organs, endometriosis is a painful condition thought to affect one…

NASA's Dawn spacecraft is approaching its historic orbit insertion at Ceres, which will happen on Friday, March 6th. Ceres is named for the Roman goddess of agriculture and harvests. Ceres is…

A partial human skull found in northern Israel  excited paleontologists because it seemed to hold clues about when and where humans and Neanderthals might have interbred. The Manot Cave is…

A new paper believes that a record drought in Syria from 2006-2010 and the 2011 Syrian uprising is not a coincidence. The rebellion was stoked by ongoing man-made climate change, they write. The…

Deep in the heart of synthetic biology are the proteins that make it tick and that is why protein engineering is crucial to the new discipline: Scientists grow, harvest, and reprogram proteins to…

In America, teachers with tenure can't be fired and so it is more important than ever that the best people get the jobs in the first place.  Accountability is not going away in the American…

After they die, people are happy to donate their hearts, their eyes, even whole skeletons, without knowing anything at all about what will happen to them. What about genetic information?  Under…

A 10-year-old boy suffered seizures after over-indulging in licorice sweets and that has led to calls for manufacturers to put a warning on the labels of licorice.  After suffering a 2 minute…

Amyloid, an abnormal protein whose accumulation in the brain is a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease, starts accumulating inside neurons of people as young as 20, a much younger age than scientists ever…

Emulsifiers are one key group of food ingredients that is broadly used in formulation of packaged food products. Scientists have shown that it may cause disruption of the mucosal layer in our…

During the first afternoon session of the XVI Neutrino Telescopes conference (here is the conference blog, which contains a report of most of the lectures and posters as they are presented) Francis…

Synthetic cannabinoids ("synthetic marijuana"), with names like Spice, K2, Scooby Doo and hundreds of others, are often sold as a safe, "legal" alternative to marijuana but that is just marketing by…

Low birth weight is indicative of various problems and fortunately modern science has made it possible for more low-birth weight babies than ever to thrive, survival is over 94 percent for…

Quantum mechanics tells us that light can behave simultaneously as a particle or a wave, but researchers haven't been able to capture both natures of light at the same time; the closest we have come…

Antipsychotic medications for pediatric patients climbed 62 percent for children on Medicaid between 2002 and 2007, reaching 2.4 percent of those youth. Unless we really believe that poor kids…

In 2008, President Obama suggested vaccines might be causing autism. In 2009, during the H1N1 swine flu pandemic, there was quickly a vaccine shortage, because the government refused to allow…

Researchers have found that by changing the selectivity of an enzyme, a small molecule could potentially be used to decrease the likelihood of alcohol-related cancers in an at-risk population.…

Thorium has its advantages over uranium nuclear power, but is it right for Australia? Credit: dymidziuk.janusz, CC BY-NC-SA Australia has developed something of an allergic reaction to any mention of…