A team of Belgian biologists led by researchers at KU Leuven has provided the first genetic evidence that rapid evolution can help non-native plant species spread in new environments. Using samples…

A brain imaging study shows that patients with chronic fatigue syndrome may have reduced responses, compared with healthy controls, in a region of the brain connected with fatigue. The findings…

A new chemotherapy drug being investigated for its potency against two types of cancer was found by scientists at Houston Methodist and seven other institutions to be effective in about one-third of…

University of Adelaide research has for the first time confirmed that women who eat a poor diet before they become pregnant are around 50% more likely to have a preterm birth than those on a healthy…

Research from North Carolina State University finds that a lack of plant diversity is a key contributor to the widespread defoliation caused by cankerworms in cities, and highlights the role that…

Word-of-mouth marketing is recognized as a powerful route from long-tail sales to blockbuster and in the age of social media and online networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook, spreading the…

Bright yellow fields of oilseed rape are a common sight at this time of year but what lies beneath is a lot more exciting. Straw from crops such as wheat, barley, oats and oilseed rape is seen as a…

Tecnalia has collaborated in a study for the European Parliament's Science and Technology Options Assessment Panel (STOA) on the future use of methanol, produced from carbon dioxide, in motorised…

Wildfires and flooding affect many more people in the USA than earthquakes and landslide and yet the dread, the perceived risk, of the latter two is much greater than for those hazards that are more…

SETI scientist Gerry Harp writes of a "secret" experiment involving Kepler 186-f.   The senior scientist look only for a tuning fork like signal.  The least likely signal ET would send…

I am spending the week in the pleasant resort of La Biodola, in the Elba island. Elba is a beautiful island just off the coast of Tuscany. Here Napoleon was exiled after his abdication in 1814 (he…

Wind energy is getting a lot of attention and a lot of money - it just isn't generating a lot of electricity yet, no matter what gets claimed in rosy projections. In the real world, they do quite…

Children who receive cochlear implants (CI) to help alleviate severe to profound hearing loss are at greater risk of having deficiencies in executive functioning (EF), which are the skills to…

Blocking a pain receptor in mice not only extends their lifespan, it also gives them a more youthful metabolism, including an improved insulin response that allows them to deal better with high blood…

Duke University researchers have found an antibody that simultaneously blocks the sensations of pain and itching in studies with mice. The new antibody works by targeting the voltage-sensitive…

Scientists from the Magma and Volcanoes Laboratory (CNRS/IRD/Université Blaise Pascal) and the European Synchrotron, the ESRF, have recreated the extreme conditions 600 to 2900 km below the Earth's…

Sorry Australia, you can no longer lay claim to the origins of the iconic New Zealand kiwi - the kiwi's closest relative is not the emu.  Instead, the diminutive kiwi is most closely related to…

It's easy to complain about child obesity but one way to help solve it is to have kids do more exercise in ways that don't feel like exercise; like walking or biking to school. Yet parents, the…

If we care about saving lives, we'd be better off funding more mental health services than we are taxing and penalizing cigarettes companies in order to subsidize the industry that has been built to…

It's no longer a certainty that American mothers will get custody over their children during a divorce. In fact, if Wisconsin Court Records of the past 20 years are anything to go by, joint custody…