Even for experienced readers, mirror-image letters like b/d or p/q can be confusing. Why is it difficult for some to differentiate these letters?  When learning to read, our brain must be able…

Are you in the target market to eat insects? The easiest uptake will be by a young male who claims to care more about the environment, believes they are progressive and adventurous about food,…

High resolution photograph of cracks in thin layer of glass atop a silicon wafer. The colors come from optical interference between the thin wafer and the glass above. Image credit: Joël Marthelot (…

Observations made by the Kepler spacecraft have shown that Kepler-413b is a very wobbling exoplanet. The planet's orbit is unusual in that it is tilted 2.5 degrees with respect to the plane of…

Humans transport microbes around their environment. Image: Argonne National Laboratory By Emma Saville, The Conversation and Penny Orbell, The Conversation Microbial communities vary greatly between…

Glass is ideal for applications that require resistance to thermal shock or to chemically harsh environments and manufacturers commonly use additives such as boron oxide to tweak its properties by…

Image: If only neuroscience was that easy. Credit: quixotecr, CC BY-NC-ND By Matt Wall, Imperial College London During World War II, residents on the islands in the southern Pacific Ocean saw heavy…

Bending, stretching, twisting, folding, modern materials that are light, flexible and highly conductive are the future of products like artificial skin or electronic paper.  But these "aerogel…

In a cell's nucleus, chromosomal DNA is tightly bound to structural proteins known as histones, an amalgam biologists call chromatin. Until a few decades ago, histones were regarded as a nuclear "…

Many of us care deeply about the possibility of tigers, lemurs and such like becoming extinct in the wild. I'd like to suggest that we care as much about the possibility of microbes on Mars and…

One evening, during the drearily sodden summer of 1816, Lord Byron and his friends read Fantasmagoriana, a French translation of a German book of ghost stories (they were intellectuals after…

Artistic rendering of Philae on the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Credit: ESA/ATG, CC BY By Ian Wright, The Open University There is much excitement about Rosetta at the moment. The European Space…

The MERS coronavirus has caused disease outbreaks across the Arabian Peninsula and spread to Europe several times, claiming the lives of several hundred people since its discovery in 2012. How…

By Marsha Lewis, Inside Science (Inside Science TV) – Ever wonder why that cold can of beer you opened heats up so fast? Well, there's a scientific answer behind it…literally. Atmospheric scientists…

The pressure's on JJ Abrams and the new Star Wars films.Credit: wiredphotostream, CC BY-NC By Sorcha Ní Fhlainn, Manchester Metropolitan University Much of the excitement of fantastical and science…

Coastal regions under threat from sea-level rise need to tackle the immediate threats of human-led and other non-climatic changes, according to a new analysis. It's an even more pressing concern than…

In 1929 Linus Pauling came up with Pauling's Rules to describe the principles governing the structure of complex ionic crystals. These rules essentially describe how the arrangement of atoms in a…

Many people care deeply about the possibility of tigers, lemurs and such like becoming extinct in the wild. I'd like to suggest we care as much about the possibility of microbes on Mars and elsewhere…

Many people care deeply about the possibility of tigers, lemurs and such like becoming extinct in the wild. I'd like to suggest we care as much about the possibility of microbes on Mars becoming…

Researchers have developed a potential antibody therapy for Sudan ebolavirus (SUDV), one of the two most lethal strains of Ebola.  Sudan ebolavirus was first identified in 1976 and has…