Maybe you have an 85-year-old grandfather who still whips through the newspaper crossword puzzle every morning or a 94-year-old aunt who never forgets a name or a face. They don't seem to suffer the…

The name has been around for four decades, but only now is a recognizable photonics community emerging in Europe. A European study has documented a fast-growing sector of more than 2100 companies and…

Should we worry about a future with no humans? This question and many more will be answered in a public lecture at Keele University looking at new advances in science and technology – and their…

Asma Elsony led the tuberculosis programme in Sudan at the same time as she took her doctoral degree under the supervision of Professor Gunnar Bjune of the Department of General Practice and…

Marine microorganisms have been found in amber dating from the middle of the Cretaceous period. The fossils were collected in Charente, in France. This completely unexpected discovery will deepen our…

A scientific team from the John Innes Centre and University of St Andrews has identified a key gene that was transferred from a Sicilian plant into a close relative in Britain, showing how genetic…

Psychological stress and anxiety have been shown to produce an activation of coagulation and fibrinolysis. Resulting hypercoagulability is a risk factor for cardiovascular diseases, and could…

In the November 15th issue of Genes&Development, Dr. Kenneth Dorshkind and colleagues at the David Geffen School of Medicine (UCLA) have identified two genes – p16(Ink4a) and Arf – that sensitize…

How rational are our fears?   In late 2007 a study discovered the word that evoked the greatest fear.  The study included the words spider, snake death, rape, murder and incest.  …

Those mortifying accidents. Stephen J. Dubner unleashed a pent-up flood of guilt and shame from readers of his New York Times column. Ever written an email, then sent it in haste … to the wrong…

Bluntly speaking, we are more likely to cooperate in a group when those who don’t get punished. “Darwin had a blind spot. It wasn’t that he didn’t see the role of cooperation in evolution. He just…

That irritating co-worker you’re stuck sitting by (again!) sees a decidedly different side of you than your best friend does. That’s because you have many people inside of you (no they’re not…

You, too, may laugh in amusement at these Candid Camera style “experiments.” Yet, ruefully, I acknowledge that I might conform within minutes… well seconds? Also, see this other well-known (among…

We instinctively experience situations as individuals or as part of a group.  As David Brooks suggests today, the world is divided into those with an individualist or a collectivist mentality.…

Neuroscientist Tania Singer and her team recruited volunteers to play a game. Some were asked to play by the rules. Others were instructed to ignore them. To not play fair. After all participants…

The new discovery of a 2 million year old female pelvis is changing theories about how smart our ancestors really were. The analysis of the Homo erectus pelvis structure (found in Gona, Ethiopia)…

A doctoral thesis carried out at the University of Granada has proved that patients with serious anxiety disorders (panic disorder with and without agoraphobia, social anxiety disorder or generalized…

A new study by sociologists at the University of Maryland concludes that unhappy people watch more TV, while people who describe themselves as very happy spend more time reading and socializing. The…

A University of Michigan professor has created 3-D portraits of the president-elect that are smaller than a grain of salt. He calls them "nanobamas." John Hart, an assistant professor in the…

Scientists in Madagascar, at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and the Vienna Natural History Museum and at the University of Massachusetts Amherst now have a nearly complete…