There is less saline in Nordic Seas but that can't be blamed on more Arctic waters due to global warming. Instead, it is that the Gulf Stream has provided less salt.  The Nordic Seas have…

In a region where modern humans are believed to have originated roughly 200,000 years ago,    DNA from the skeleton of a man who lived 2,330 years ago has a DNA profile that places it…

Epigenetics has been used and abused in many ways - can it tell researchers that an expectant mother had no electricity for a few days? In January of 1998, what came to be called the North American…

We know our bodies don't just change in size, which makes it an effective metric in a world in motion. Psychologists have found that people tend to perceive their dominant hand as staying…

Sense About Science is a non-profit organization that campaigns in favour of more correct diffusion and use of scientific information. It is a great attempt at increasing the quality of the…

This may surprise, but Ludwig Wittgenstein, for many the greatest philosopher, or anyway the most eminent exponent of analytic philosophy according to Roger Scruton, maintained that music (!) was the…

Encouraged by the successful Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) that reached the Red Planet this week, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) scientists dream big of further space exploration, pondering…

Permafrost thaw kills forests in Canada, while drought kills trees in India and Borneo. In the U.S., in Virginia, over-abundant deer eat trees before they reach maturity, while nitrogen pollution has…

Tourette syndrome is a developmental disorder characterized by involuntary, repetitive, and stereotyped movements or utterances. New evidence explains how those with Tourette syndrome in childhood…

Artifacts from a 325,000-year-old site in Armenia finds that human technological innovation occurred intermittently throughout the Old World, rather than spreading from a single point of origin…

Electricity and magnetism rule our digital world but they are really 19th century advancements still being optimized in the 21st. In our current scheme, semiconductors process electrical information…

Scientists have time detected a carbon-bearing molecule with a "branched" structure in interstellar space. The molecule, iso-propyl cyanide (i-C3H7CN), was discovered in the giant gas cloud…

If good things come in small packages, then nanoparticles are going to make engineers very happy. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) recently issued Reference Material (RM)…

It may already be too late to stop Antarctic ice sliding into the ocean. Credit: EPA By Eelco Rohling, University of Southampton Ice sheets respond slowly to changes in climate, because they are so…

Since the dawn of time, man has interacted with the environment. Observation without interaction is and always was a logical impossibility. Questions ensue; answers have not always been forthcoming,…

It's no surprise that water was crucial to the formation of life on Earth. What may surprise you is that water on earth is older than the sun itself. Identifying the original source of Earth's water…

A team of researchers headed by Prof Dr. Nicole Frankenberg-Dinkel at Ruhr-University Bochum have revealed similarities and differences in the assembly of the light-harvesting machinery of the…

Melatonin, a hormone that governs sleep and jet lag in humans, may also drive the mass migration of plankton in the ocean, according to a report by scientists at the European Molecular Biology…

Engineers have developed and successfully demonstrated the value of a simple pulley mechanism to improve hand function after surgery. The device, tested in cadaver hands, is one of the first…

Neurons programmed to fire at specific faces, such as the famously reported "Jennifer Aniston neuron", may be more in line with the conscious recognition of faces than the actual images seen. In an…