Planting and protecting trees—which trap and absorb carbon dioxide as they grow—can help to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But a new study suggests that, as a way to fight global warming…

The aphid Acyrthosiphon pisum depends on a bacterial symbiont, Buchnera aphidicola, for amino acids it can't get from plants. The aphid, in turn, provides the bacterium with energy and carbon as…

Female stem cells derived from muscle have a greater ability to regenerate skeletal muscle tissue than male cells, according to a study at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC. The study, which…

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory and collaborators at Stony Brook University have received U.S. Patent Number 7,179,448 for developing chimeric, or…

Does orange juice taste sweeter if it's a brighter orange? A new study in the March issue of the Journal of Consumer Research finds that the color of a drink can influence how we think it tastes. In…

The nonnative invasive grass Microstegium vimineum may hinder the regeneration of woody species in southern forests. Chris and Sonja Oswalt (Forest Service Southern Research Station) and Wayne…

A Florida State University anthropologist has new evidence that ancient farmers in Mexico were cultivating an early form of maize, the forerunner of modern corn, about 7,300 years ago - 1,200 years…

For the first time, scientists from the University of Washington School of Medicine, Indiana University Bloomington and the University of Cambridge have determined how a plant hormone -- auxin --…

Flavonoids. You’ve heard of them -- the good-for-your-health compounds found in plants that we enjoy in red wine, dark chocolate, green tea and citrus fruits. Mother Nature is an ace at making them,…

There is broad consensus today that personality traits are best described by the "Big Five": Extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness to experience. Each of…

Common practice in the treatment of adolescent eating disorder patients has been to exclude the parents. Many experts consider parents part of the problem and thus keep them away during therapy. Two…

The Scientist printed an article on the blogging of scientific data, with a focus on Reed Cartwright's inclusion as a co-author on a paper because of ideas that he shared on his blog. This is an…

Texas wheat offers high quality when it comes to baking and milling characteristics, said Texas Agricultural Experiment Station's state wheat breeder. Dr. Jackie Rudd, Experiment Station wheat…

Most basic science is performed using animal models on the assumption that we can learn something about humans by studying how other animals work. Obviously, the ethical issues surrounding human…

I was thinking about how us humans have 25,000 or so genes, and I know nothing about 99.9% of them. And I call myself a molecular geneticist! Wouldn't it be nice to know a little more about the…

The first fax machine had no value. It couldn't send a fax to anyone. It was, from a value perspective, useless. The second fax machine added value to the first because it now had something which…

  Peak oil is loosely defined at the point in time when half of all the oil reserves in the earth have been extracted and burned.  This means that we are half way through the oil…

Show Notes for Episode 9 This episode is a discussion of The Future of the Brain: The Promise and Perils of Tomorrow's Neuroscience by British neuroscientist, Steven Rose. Unlike most episodes of…

Oceanographers have completed an important step in constructing the first deep-sea observatory off the continental United States. Workers in the multi-institution effort laid 32 miles (52 kilometers…

Using a laser-cooling technique that could one day allow scientists to observe quantum behavior in large objects, MIT researchers have cooled a coin-sized object to within one degree of absolute…