What is dark matter? No one can say because it can't be detected or measured, but in science inference can help and we know that something is making gravity not work properly at the large scale. What…

Parasitic lamprey are a challenge to study but an important one - they are an invasive pest in the Great Lakes but difficult to study under controlled conditions because they live up to 10 years and…

Last decade, science faced an ecological puzzle: under hotter, drier conditions of global warming, forests should have been penalized but instead the rainforests thrived. It isn't the first time -…

Wine, with its thousands of chemical combinations, can be hard to judge. As numerous studies have shown, getting experts to distinguish between a $4 bottle of wine and a $40 one is in the luck…

One way to know there will be no science at a nutrition conference is to find a yogic flying instructor on the panel roster. Yoga has a variety of mental and physical health benefits, just like…

Richard III, in better days. Credit: Lex Photographic, CC BY-NC By Sarah Hainsworth, University of Leicester The discovery of Richard III’s skeletal remains under a car park in Leicester revealed the…

Credit: Image of map courtesy of the USGS and composite image by Patricia Waldron By: Patricia Waldron, Inside Science (Inside Science) -- People living in Afghanistan have mined precious gems from…

Being at CERN for a couple of weeks, I could not refrain from following yesterday's talks in the Main Auditorium, which celebrated the 90th birthday of Herwig Schopper, who directed CERN in the…

I'm not a big fan of conspiracy theories.  Yes, sometimes there are conspiracies, but the Internet seems to magnify discordant cynicism on an unbelievable scale.  I begin with this…

The current Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa has claimed more than 2000 lives and has spurred calls for a deeper understanding of the molecular biology of the virus that could be critical in the…

Magnetic stimulation of a brain area, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), involved in "executive function" affects cravings for and consumption of calorie-dense snack foods, reports a paper…

The Department of Psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, Madison, WI, recently published a review discussing drug abuse in athletes. Drug abuse…

A new paper indicates that people with psychopathic traits have a preference for non-romantic sexual fantasies with anonymous and uncommitted partners. The authors did two studies to examine…

A recent study of the global carbon cycle offers a new perspective of Earth's climate records through time. One of the current methods for interpreting ancient changes in the concentration of carbon…

Using twisted light to send data at almost unimaginable speeds is not new but researchers have developed a similar technique using radio waves - high speeds without the hassles that go with optical…

We live in a battery world - just visit any airport and see people huddled around a wall outlet to witness our battery culture. Yet batteries haven't made any real improvements in decades and that…

Fires, mudslides and earthquakes are part of California life but residents might be wishing for a few more mudslides right about now. The temperature is nothing special but the worst drought in…

Wearable electronic activity monitors are a popular fad. They constantly monitor activities and bodily responses and the information is organized into computer programs and mobile apps.  Given…

66 million years ago, a 10 km diameter meteorite hit the Yucatan peninsula with the force of 100 teratons of TNT. It left a crater more than 150 km across and the resulting mega tsunami,…

We inherit certain traits that are predetermined but the field of epigenetics postulates that we might be able to change genes play by taking certain drugs or changing diets.   Epigenetics…