St. Jude Children's Research Hospital investigators have found that an electrically powered amplification mechanism in the cochlea of the ear is critical to the acute hearing of humans and other…

Children who speak a second or third language may have an unexpected advantage later in life, a new Tel Aviv University study has found. Knowing and speaking many languages may protect the brain…

Nano-whatever is all the rage. They're a big deal because they can make a blacker version of black and lots of other things but what does that even mean? Richard Compton and his team at Oxford…

In humans, faces are an important source of social information. One property of faces that is rapidly noticed is attractiveness. Research has highlighted symmetry and sexual dimorphism (how masculine…

Think it's tough for humans to find the right mate? Malagasy mouse lemurs are so similar that picking a mate of the right species, especially at night time in a tropical forest, was thought to be…

You've probably heard widely varying estimates for the number of protein-coding genes in the human genome. Back before the genome sequence came out, many scientists guessed that the number was around…

A common weedkiller in the U.S., atrazine, already suspected of causing sexual abnormalities in frogs and fish, has now been found to alter hormonal signaling in human cells, scientists from the…

Health care in the United States is expensive, but its funding is crucial because it also is a major contributor to the economy and can better lives, according to an essay appearing in the June 2008…

Genetic variation in the DNA of mitochondria – the 'power plants' of cells – contributes to a person’s risk of developing age-related macular degeneration (AMD), say investigators in the first study…

Nerdy comics don't get any funnier than xkcd:

A new study by UC Davis researchers provides evidence that methods using human bone marrow-derived stem cells to deliver gene therapy to cure diseases of the blood, bone marrow and certain types of…

Current biochemical detectors are slow and produce an unacceptable number of false readings because they are easily fooled by subtle differences between deadly pathogens and harmless substances.…

Fallow agricultural land and steppe-formation processes are evidently capable of having a much greater effect on global air quality than was previously assumed, according to researchers who examined…

A gut hormone that causes people to eat more does so by making food appear more desirable, suggests a new report in the May issue of Cell Metabolism. In a brain imaging study of individuals, the…

More and more U.S. college students are smoking tobacco using hookahs, a kind of water pipe, and it’s becoming a growing public health issue, according to a new study led by a Virginia Commonwealth…

It has long been known that type 2 diabetes is linked to obesity, particularly fat inside the belly. Now, researchers at the Joslin Diabetes Center have found that fat from other areas of the body…

A new revision of clinical guidelines to help doctors manage patients with depression has challenged the rationale behind the UK government’s policy of rolling out of cognitive behavioural therapy…

Gambling activity is widespread among U.S. adolescents and young adults ages 14 through 21, according to a study conducted by researchers at the University at Buffalo’s Research Institute on…

With over half of U.S. children ages 3-6 in child care centers, growing concern over childhood obesity has led physicians to focus on whether children are getting enough physical activity and a new…

Beads known to geologists as carbon cenospheres were formed from liquefied carbon deep in the earth when an asteroid struck some 65 million years ago, according to a new theory. The carbon…