Spores on the conidiophores of the fungus Penicillium notatum. Dr. Fred Hossler/Visuals Unlimited/Corbis We used to recycle patient urine - to get penicillin. Why? Because in 1940, during a World War…

The way we relate to other people shapes our moral life – and that's something that requires imagination. David Galindo/Flickr By Matthew Beard, University of Notre Dame Australia Creativity and…

Noninvasive brain scans, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging, have led to basic science discoveries about the human brain and have also been wildly misused, claiming to correlate everything…

The mythology among the people who really care about what is happening on the left or the right is that the people opposite them are uneducated and being exploited by elites. The opposite is true:…

Biofuels have long been studied and, like many alternative fuels, given corporate subsidies by the government, but they haven't made much progress. And that isn't just because subsidies discourage…

In a new ESO image of LDN 483 and its surroundings, located about 700 light-years away in the constellation of Serpens (The Serpent), some of the stars are missing. But it's not a portent of doom, it…

The face of addiction treatment is changing, and not for the better. Betty Ford and Hazelden have long been beacons of hope in the addiction treatment community, two well-known and respected centers…

A 12-year study of two measles-containing vaccines has found that seven main adverse outcomes were unlikely after either vaccine. The study conducted by the Kaiser Permanente Vaccine Study Center…

Splash form tektites are tiny shards of natural glass created from spinning drops of molten rock flung from the earth during an extra-terrestrial impact, such as when the earth is hit by asteroids or…

Automated cameras make it possible to broadcast sporting events but the choices lack the creativity of a human camera operator or director. The camera just goes back and forth following the ball.…

Ribosomes: squiggly and yummy. crobin, CC BY By Robert Root-Bernstein, Michigan State University and Meredith Root-Bernstein, Aarhus University Since the discovery that DNA encodes genetic…

In the Western world - well, outside Italy - people are told to reduce their anger or suffer its ill effects, such as stress, but new research using surveys from the US and Japan suggests that anger…

Researchers have identified mutations which occur at four specific sites in what is known as the "hTERT promoter" in more than 75 percent of glioblastomas and melanomas.   Telomerase is an…

Since the discovery of how DNA encodes genetic information, evolutionary biology has focused on genes. One popular hypothesis - the "selfish gene" theory - states that cells and organisms exist…

White fat and brown fat have been well documented regarding metabolism but new research has introduced data that may be important this winter and this new year: each type of fat may change into the…

A new study finds that fructose is bad.  Biologists who fed mice sugar in doses proportional to what many people eat found that the ratio of fructose and glucose in high-fructose corn syrup was…

The ice on Greenland formed due to processes in the deep Earth interior of the Arctic, large-scale glaciations that began about 2.7 million years ago. Prior to that, the northern hemisphere was so…

Origami: Paper folding may look like art, but it's all about the math. Mina, CC BY-NC-ND By Thomas Hull, Western New England University Origami is the ancient Japanese art of paper folding. One uncut…

Cholera is characterized by acute watery diarrhea resulting in severe dehydration and occurs  when the bacterium Vibrio cholerae infects the small intestine. How does it happen? …

Artist's impression of an Earth-sized planet in the Kepler 186 system. But what makes one planet more habitable than another? NASA Ames/SETI Institute/JPL-Caltech By Jonti Horner, University of…