A young boy sits on the carpet, his feet disappearing into a giant pair of sweatpants he put on over his own clothes before loosely tying his ankles together. He has taken the sweatpants off and is…

Lost memories can be restored, which offers some hope for patients in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease. The belief has been that memories are stored at the synapses -- the connections between…

World War One Christmas Truce Commemoration match – but it's debated whether the original ever happened. Mike Egerton/PA Wire By William Keylor, Boston University The Christmas Truce is no stranger…

On Dec. 10th, ESA announced the latest important discovery regarding comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. Rosetta spacecraft orbiting the comet has found the water vapor from its target to be…

After a year in which further details of national intelligence agencies' shadowy surveillance networks were laid bare, a fresh leak of documents reveals the obsessive surveillance that extends as far…

The advent of open access (OA) publishing has lead to a proliferation of journals which offer a peer reviewed publication venue for a nominal charge.  Some of these journals are associated with…

Smile, though your heart is aching. Morgan, CC BY By Annie Austin, University of Manchester The idea that data on happiness and well-being can be used to guide government policy has steadily gained…

The evolutionary adaptations of ancient lobe-finned fish transformed pectoral fins used underwater into strong, bony structures that enabled emerging tetrapods, animals with limbs, to allow them…

The oldest recorded stone tool found to-date has been unearthed in Turkey. The chance find of a humanly-worked quartzite flake, in ancient deposits of the river Gediz in western Turkey, show that…

Francesco Botticini's The Assumption of the Virgin shows the heavenly hierarchies at play. By Martin Parker, University of Leicester One of the oldest assumptions about organizing comes directly from…

Our Milky Way is part of a cluster of more than 50 galaxies that make up the ‘Local Group’, a collection that includes the famous Andromeda galaxy and many other far smaller objects. And now one…

In the first James Bond novel, Casino Royale (1953), British MI6 agent James Bond designed his own martini, comprising three measures of Gordon's gin, one of vodka and half a measure of Kine Lillet (…

We might think that Christmas is more commercial now than in the past - and the season certainly starts earlier - but when it comes to one key barometer the 1950s were pretty bad. Though the 1950s…

Windows with transparent photovoltaic modules or façades in which microalgae are being bred to provide the house with its own biofuel are just some of the aspects buildings of the future could…

Metamaterials have long held promise for extraordinary properties when it comes to diverting and controlling waves, especially sound and light: for instance, at the right optical frequency, they can…

Examples of poisonings due to people mistakenly picking and consuming poisonous botanicals in the wild made it clear that, contrary to claims by an alarming number of nutritionists and supplement…

For some Medicare patients, the prognosis was better when cardiologists were away from the hospital attending national cardiology meetings. Anupam B. Jena, M.D., Ph.D., of Harvard Medical School…

Not So Smart Money In modern English the term 'smart money'  is most commonly used in reference to money invested in the course of business or gambling by people presumed to be knowledgeable…

The grape escape. Shutterstock By Mohit Kumar Jolly, Rice University If you’re a teetotaler, your friends have likely tried to convince you to taste red wine by swearing on its multiple health…

Launched in 1959, named after the inventor’s daughter Barbara, and owned by 99% of 3-10 year old girls in the USA, Barbie has been a popular request on young girls’ Christmas wish lists for 55 years…