Research from ancient sediment cores indicates that a warming climate could make the world’s arctic tundra far more susceptible to fires than previously thought. The findings are important given the…

Butterflies and moths are well known for their striking metamorphosis from crawling caterpillars to winged adults. In light of this radical change, not just in body form, but also in lifestyle, diet…

Just picture the scene: you’re at a cocktail party, talking to someone you would like to get to know better but the background noise is making it hard to concentrate. Luckily, humans are very gifted…

There's a class war brewing and it involves DNA. Only the wealthy can afford what is, now, around $350,000 for the kind of sequencing that can tell you if you have a disease-risk gene that can be…

Girolamo Fracastoro (also known as Hieronymus Fracastorius), was born in 1478 in Verona, at that time still part of the Republic of Venice, to a noble family. He studied at Padua University, where he…

Many children with autism have elevated blood levels of serotonin – a chemical with strong links to mood and anxiety. But what relevance this “hyperserotonemia” has for autism has remained a mystery.…

Are smart people drawn to the arts or does arts training make people smarter? Or neither? According to research led by Dr. Michael S. Gazzaniga of the University of California at Santa Barbara,…

Mutations in genes governing an important cell-signaling pathway influence human longevity, scientists at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have found. The report is the…

Bacteria are ubiquitous on Earth. They've been found from the upper reaches of the atmosphere to miles below the ocean floor. Because of their ubiquity, scientists have long believed bacteria to be…

Curing cancer with 'natural' products used to be dismissed as shaman quackery but many chemotherapies that fight cancer in modern medicine are natural products or were developed on the basis of…

Computers are commonly used as tools to design and manipulate three-dimensional objects but soon they may provide people with a way to sense the texture of those objects or feel how they fit together…

Happiness in life is as much down to having the right genetic mix as it is to personal circumstances according to a recent study. Psychologists at the University of Edinburgh working with researchers…

My observations: 1. The first task I used to measure my mental function at frequent intervals (e.g., every 30 minutes) resembled an typical cognitive psych task. It wasn’t fun and I had to push…

The exchange of genetic material between two closely related strains of the influenza A virus may have caused the 1947 and 1951 human flu epidemics, according to biologists. The findings could help…

Biologists at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University have examined the complete genomes of viruses that infect the bacteria E. coli, P. aeruginosa and L. lactis and have found that…

A dietary supplement called NutraStem, also known as NT-020, is a proprietary formulation of blueberry, green tea, vitamin D3 and carnosine extracts - a combination of nutritional ingredients thought…

I like to keep tracking of interesting ways people find us and I saw a Google link for us with the keywords The world's greatest scientist. And what does it link to? Yep, yours truly. That Google…

Penn engineers have developed a model that shows while metals tend to be stronger at nanoscale volumes, their strengths saturate at around 10-50 nanometers diameter, at which point they also become…

Researchers at MIT Lincoln Laboratory have developed a powerful sensor that can detect airborne pathogens such as anthrax and smallpox in less than three minutes. The new device, called PANTHER (for…

In the west, we call valuable ceramic place settings 'china' because high-quality ceramic wares were imported from the east. They were the best and had the highest value. Not really so, at least in…