The Omega_b particle is a quite peculiar baryon, made up by three heavy quarks: a b-quark, and two s-quarks. Because of this composition, where only down-type quarks appear, the phenomenology of the…

This is a video from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences 200th anniversary celebration. You'll need to start at minute 17 unless you are strong in northern European languages and want a musical…

The moribund western economy has not doomed global health care just yet. Donations to health projects in developing countries are holding steady, according to a new paper from the Institute for…

Ever since Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger simultaneously killed and did not kill his unfortunate cat, fellow scientists have been using quantum theory to explain and understand the nature of…

Up to six percent of red dwarf stars have habitable, Earth-sized planets. Red dwarfs are the most common stars in our galaxy, so that means the closest Earth-like planet could be just 13 light-years…

Bt corn, which is engineered to produce the bacterial toxin, Bt, that organic farmers spray on foods all of the time, is better than a pesticide because is naturally resists attack by the corn…

Celiac disease is not controversial, some people have always had it. But belief that it is on the rise - some claims are that the disease is four times more common today - rather than being diagnosed…

In a new paper,  researchers assess the complete landscape of a cancer's kinome expression and determine which kinases are acting up in a particular tumor.  Since the proteins are…

Puh! Another big one. Earthquakes of magnitude 8.0 are big to put it mildly. Luckily it happened deeper in the crust than first anticipated and thus the resulting tsunami wasn't as devastating as it…

Two Asian charities have joined forces with the U.S. National Funeral Directors' Association (NFDA) to get people to start thinking about deathcare rather than healthcare. No, deathcare is not…

You would think after thirty years of numerous critics exposing the shortcomings of the selfish gene hypothesis, that its proponents would have become a little more circumspect, a little more…

Messier 106 looks like lots of other galaxies yet it hides a number of secrets. But now, it has slightly fewer than before, thanks to citizen science astronomers. The first mystery people always…

Scientists have created single layers of a naturally occurring rare mineral called tungstenite, or WS2, and the resulting sheet of stacked sulfur and tungsten atoms forms a honeycomb pattern of…

You don't see many really old, obese people whereas you see a lot of old thin people. It is reasonable to assume, exceptions aside, that obesity kills.  Unless you reach a certain age, it has…

Most mammals, including humans, see in stereo and hear in stereo but the idea that mammals can also smell in stereo has been suspect. A new study has found that the common mole (Scalopus aquaticus)…

How, when and where a pathogen is transmitted between two individuals in a population is crucial in understanding and predicting how a disease will spread and a new model seeks to lay the foundation…

Bacteria resistant to antibiotics may be the subjects of sci-fi Hollywood horror, but it is also the reality at hospitals across the country. There are ongoing complaints that feeding animal…

Like blood vessels that supply oxygen and nutrients to normal tissue, tumor blood vessels were originally thought to do likewise to fuel tumor growth. As scientists developed strategies to kill…

Myeloma treatments require a heavy artillery of novel myeloma drugs to reduce the number of cancer cells (ex: Revlimid, Velcade, or Thalomid), followed by high-dose chemotherapy to wipe out the…

Medical research is both derided and essential.  The public complains that a new experimental drug is not available due to the FDA being too conservative while also complaining that drugs have…