How has domestication humbled house cats? Moyan Brenn/Flickr, CC BY-ND By Bryonie Scott, The Conversation House cats are a great source of companionship for many people – 3 million cats are kept as…

We may talk about a battle of the sexes when it comes to our species, but in the rest of the primate world, it really is a battle. We have the luxury of cultural hand-wringing about the shirt a…

Low standards breed poor results. I have been waiting for the biological revolution for quite a while now, and it always seems to be just around the corner.  Synthetic biology, genomics, protein…

Wired magazine devotes a special issue each November to a "What's Next?" for the upcoming year - and that means it is time to think about what will happen in the world of science in 2015. Wired…

Frightening experiences stick with us but a new study finds that the bonding hormone oxytocin inhibits the fear center in the brain and allows fear stimuli to subside more easily.  Significant…

Whether playing video games has negative effects is something that has been debated for 30 years, in much the same way that rock and roll, television, and even the novel faced much the same…

Instead of dying out, Anti-Semitic myths have withstood the test of time. By Asa Simon Mittman, California State University, Chico 800 years ago, a monk named Thomas of Monmouth wrote a bogus account…

With over one billion people worldwide using social media, including 80 percent of employees using private sharing sites at work, members have been scrambling to insist that not only does it not…

 Everyone inherits two copies of most genes, one copy from each parent. In a recent study, researchers found in a rare mutation, people with one inactive copy of the gene NPC1L1 appeared to be…

Uranus is generally boring but it recently got interesting. It has become so stormy, with enormous cloud systems so bright, that for the first time ever amateur astronomers are able to see details in…

This one is definitely too juicy to ignore - I need to join the crowd of bystanders-in-awe. As you may have heard, ESA's ROSETTA spacecraft successfully landed yesterday on the solid nucleus of…

An analysis of two African tribes has led anthropologists to suggest that men evolved better navigation ability than women because men with better spatial skills - the ability to mentally manipulate…

Driving to work is routine, you might even forget you are doing it, but how aware would you be if you had to doit in reverse? We're used to seeing objects pass behind us as we go forward. Moving…

Relativistic quantum field theory does not apply to everyday life.  It doesn't apply to one beam circling the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).  When two beams traveling in opposite directions…

On the eve of establishing its own space agency, Poland is showing off its rebirthed ambitions to explore the final frontier. The new European Space Agency (ESA) member state will host a space…

Supplement marketers have been aggressively claiming that vitamin B12 and folic acid reduce the risk of memory loss, but a large study on long-term use of supplements found no benefits.   …

When is a cat not a cat? Biodiversity Heritage Library (adapted), CC BY By Ben Holt, Imperial College London and Knud Andreas Jønsson, Imperial College London A cat is, of course, a cat. Lions are…

The yellow fever mosquito sustains its taste for human blood thanks to a genetic tweak that makes it more sensitive to human odor, according to a paper in Nature. They have a version of an odor-…

Different people behave in different ways behind the wheel of a car. Flickr/Nuno Sousa, CC BY-NC-ND By Vanessa Beanland, Australian National University and Martin Sellbom, Australian National…

In the fight against HIV, microbicides, which are chemical compounds applied topically to the female genital tract to protect against sexually transmitted infections, are touted as an alternative to…