Several times a week, astronomers detect the violent death cry of a massive star -- an extraordinarily energetic release of gamma rays that takes place in just a matter of seconds to minutes, called…

Like a piece of chalk dissolving in vinegar, marine life with hard shells is in danger of being dissolved by increasing acidity in the oceans. Ocean acidity is rising as sea water absorbs more…

Acrux announced positive results from its Phase 1 clinical studies using two unique contraceptive skin sprays, each containing a progestin and an estrogen. The first study was a Phase I,…

Could you survive a day like Jack Bauer has on the Fox television show "24?" Maybe not, and it might not be just because you lack counter-terrorism training. People are known to differ markedly in…

Let’s say a college student enters a classroom to take a test. She probably already has an idea how she will do—knowledge available before she actually takes out a pencil. But do animals possess the…

University College London researchers have found the first physiological evidence that invisible subliminal images do attract the brain's attention on a subconscious level. The wider implication for…

A protein known as the "master watchman of the genome" for its ability to guard against cancer-causing DNA damage has been found to provide an entirely different level of cancer protection: By…

Patients admitted to hospitals for ischemic stroke on weekends had a higher risk of dying than patients admitted during the week, in a Canadian study published in Stroke: Journal of the American…

Two new studies by University of California, Berkeley, scientists highlight the amazing promiscuity of genes, which appear to shuttle frequently between organisms, especially more primitive…

A new understanding of how plants manage their internal calcium levels could potentially lead to genetically engineering plants to avoid damage from acid rain, which robs soil of much of its calcium…

If yours is a mind philosophically bent on pondering the future of humanity, especially the future that awaits us in the next 30 or so years, then you may have come across the thought in your own…

For those of you who have been following my entries, I have been focusing primarily on the big question of consciousness. What is it? What causes it? I beleive the answers are coming soon, so I…

  A few years ago I started the process of buying a second home in a warm part of the United States.  Living in Chicago, I wanted to find a place that, through the years would be where I…

My mouse farm! Today,after endless finessing, I finally got word that I will be getting my own mice. My own lab mice. To observe. At home. That's a big deal in itself. It is easy to get pet mice--but…

How do female chimps make sure they only get the best mates? By never wanting to reproduce at the same time, insuring that none of them have to settle for less. Female chimpanzees may have found a…

Something about normal, run-of-the-mill plants limits their reach upward. There's been no way to create that magical beanstalk in the fairy tales but no one knows why. For more than a century,…

New findings by a Queen's University research team dispel the popular notion that eating so-called "natural" foods will protect against cancer. In fact, certain types of common foods and alcoholic…

A team of European astronomers offer new evidence that high-mass stars could form in a similar way to low-mass stars, that is, from accretion of gas and dust through a disk surrounding the forming…

A new report, the first to take a comprehensive look at market competition between wild and farmed salmon, sheds new light on the contentious and complex issues surrounding farmed and wild salmon.…

Humans acquired pubic lice from gorillas several million years ago, but this seemingly seedy connection does not mean that monkey business went on with the great apes, a new University of Florida…