Is your body shape predetermined? Some role for heritage is obvious and there efforts to fix people into an epigenetic destiny as well but it may be that diet and exercise can only do so much. A new…

A protein known as mini-chromosome maintenance (MCM) has been found to change DNA topology and make DNA twist up into a so-called "supercoil". Supercoiling can be thought of as similar to…

Video games can be difficult, even frustrating at the harder levels. That is part of their appeal. It turns out that frustrated people are attracted to video games also. The temptation to steal or…

People with more money may live longer, if not better, than poor people but attempts to link high socioeconomic status to better health and lower mortality have been ineffective because it's unclear…

A new study found that women who take aspirin have a reduced risk of developing melanoma. The longer they take it, the lower the risk, suggesting that aspirin's anti-inflammatory effects may help…

Researchers have developed a cloud-computing platform,  the RoboEarth Cloud Engine, that allows robots connected to the Internet to directly access the powerful computational, storage, and…

Now that the first of the Moriond conferences is over, and just as the second one starts, it is time to have a detached view at the Higgs boson results presented there this far by the CMS and ATLAS…

In the past few centuries, our understanding of bacteria has progressed from mysterious medieval vapours, to the microscopic "animalcules" of van Leeuwenhoek, to the germ theory of disease à la…

Let N be a non-zero natural number composed of n digits. Let us then both prepend and append the number 4 to create two new numbers, 4N and N4, that are both (n+1) digits long. For example, if N is…

The "Circles Stuck in a Triangle" problem I posted last week had a rather surprising solution to it. So much so that I had to rewrite the question so that text and diagrams made sense! So here is a…

I read with interest the recent disclosure that several biologists suggest they have proven Dollo's Law (that biological evolution is irreversible, a 1-way path through genetic change and time) is at…

Patents involving plants are often portrayed as a seriously negative phenomenon.  In fact, they play an important and beneficial role in the development of better and more productive…

Research and Markets has released its "Life Science Research Tools Market Size, Growth and Trends 2006-2016" report.   The report provides an overview of the life sciences research tools…

Viruses and genes interact in a way that may increase the risk of developing schizophrenia significantly - even in a developing fetus, according to an international team which scanned the genomes of…

Scientists met this week in New York to discuss recent scientific evidence regarding abortion as a form of growing violence against women and girls. Indiscriminate practice of abortion is correlated…

Who says you can't go home again?  Not evolutionary biology. Well, sort of. There is a supposition with the proper name of "Dollo's law" which states that evolution is unidirectional and…

If you've shaken your head at MTBE or ethanol, you know we do a poor job of projecting the real effect of energy sector alternatives accurately.  Advocates are happy to make up numbers but that…

In America's modern monolithic science culture, when a desired plan of action is advocated, they call for a 'Manhattan Project of' whatever they are seeking. It's not a great analogy. It reminds…

I recently read an opinion piece that suggests that concerns about human population growth are grossly overstated and that nothing of consequence is going to occur. Consequently, no serious…

In the current U.S. gun ban debate, both sides are claiming they care about hunters - but it is a dwindling population among Americans and that will cause deer populations to grow out of control,…