Philosophers and scientists have long puzzled over where human imagination comes from - in other words, what makes humans able to create art, invent tools, think scientifically and perform other…

Atmospheric levels of carbon monoxide (CO) in the 1950s were actually slightly higher than what we have today, according to  a first-ever study of air trapped in the deep snowpack of Greenland -…

The brain's structure may predict whether a person will suffer chronic lower back pain, according to researchers who used brain scans and say the results support the growing idea that the brain plays…

A new citizen science project allows you to explore the open ocean from the comfort of your home. You can 'dive' hundreds of feet deep, and observe the unperturbed ocean and the myriad animals that…

Young women with breast cancer often overestimate the odds that cancer will occur in their other, healthy breast, and decide to have the healthy breast surgically removed - a procedure known as a…

A small pilot study has found that changes in diet, exercise and stress management may result in longer telomeres, the parts of chromosomes that affect aging - the first controlled trial to show that…

What's the difference between Rye and Bourbon? Is it the grains? (Rye vs corn). According to chemist Thomas Collins at the University of California at Davis the answer is no.  The answer is in…

A new paper has found that vaccinating cattle against the E. coli O157 bacterium could cut the number of human cases of the disease by 85%. The bacteria, which cause severe gastrointestinal illness…

Three weeks ago I gave a plenary talk at the 2nd International Conference on New Frontiers in Physics, which was held in Kolymbari, in the greek island of Crete. The talk focused on some of the most…

Researchers at Université Pierre et Marie Curie in France have unveiled a new technique that allows microscope users to manipulate samples using a technology known as haptic optical tweezers. The new…

An environmentally-friendly electronic alloy consisting of 50 aluminum atoms bound to 50 atoms of antimony may be promising for building next-generation "phase-change" memory devices, which…

It often takes several weeks to feel the effect of newly prescribed antidepressants - a lingering mystery and a frustration to both patients and physicians. CREB, and CREM to some degree, has been…

A new study has found that not only does fish skin resemble the gut morphologically, but key components of skin immune responses are also akin to those of the gut.  Fish skin is unique in that…

Rhett Allain, Associate Professor of Physics at Southeastern Louisiana University, was fascinated by this bit in Nautilus... If two statisticians were to lose each other in an infinite forest, the…

Rhett Allain, Associate Professor of Physics at Southeastern Louisiana University, was fascinated by this bit in Nautilus... If two statisticians were to lose each other in an infinite forest, the…

New thinking about the evolutionary nature of biological aging will profoundly affect medical research on age-related diseases – here’s why. Before Darwin nobody thought that the origin of lifespan…

The cyclic wobble of the Earth on its axis, axial precession, controls the production of  "fixed" nitrogen, a nutrient essential to the health of the ocean, according to a new study. The…

Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg and lots of other technology entrepreneurs share one thing in common, despite their generational differences; they discovered that their college education wasn't needed…

Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg and lots of other technology entrepreneurs share one thing in common, despite their generational differences; they discovered that their college education wasn't needed…

Before there was life on Earth, there was a primordial soup of molecules, and at some point a specialized molecules began replicating. This self-replication kick-started a biochemical process that…