With over one billion people worldwide using social media, including 80 percent of employees using private sharing sites at work, members have been scrambling to insist that not only does it not…

 Everyone inherits two copies of most genes, one copy from each parent. In a recent study, researchers found in a rare mutation, people with one inactive copy of the gene NPC1L1 appeared to be…

Uranus is generally boring but it recently got interesting. It has become so stormy, with enormous cloud systems so bright, that for the first time ever amateur astronomers are able to see details in…

This one is definitely too juicy to ignore - I need to join the crowd of bystanders-in-awe. As you may have heard, ESA's ROSETTA spacecraft successfully landed yesterday on the solid nucleus of…

An analysis of two African tribes has led anthropologists to suggest that men evolved better navigation ability than women because men with better spatial skills - the ability to mentally manipulate…

Driving to work is routine, you might even forget you are doing it, but how aware would you be if you had to doit in reverse? We're used to seeing objects pass behind us as we go forward. Moving…

Relativistic quantum field theory does not apply to everyday life.  It doesn't apply to one beam circling the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).  When two beams traveling in opposite directions…

On the eve of establishing its own space agency, Poland is showing off its rebirthed ambitions to explore the final frontier. The new European Space Agency (ESA) member state will host a space…

Supplement marketers have been aggressively claiming that vitamin B12 and folic acid reduce the risk of memory loss, but a large study on long-term use of supplements found no benefits.   …

When is a cat not a cat? Biodiversity Heritage Library (adapted), CC BY By Ben Holt, Imperial College London and Knud Andreas Jønsson, Imperial College London A cat is, of course, a cat. Lions are…

The yellow fever mosquito sustains its taste for human blood thanks to a genetic tweak that makes it more sensitive to human odor, according to a paper in Nature. They have a version of an odor…

Different people behave in different ways behind the wheel of a car. Flickr/Nuno Sousa, CC BY-NC-ND By Vanessa Beanland, Australian National University and Martin Sellbom, Australian National…

In the fight against HIV, microbicides, which are chemical compounds applied topically to the female genital tract to protect against sexually transmitted infections, are touted as an alternative to…

17 genomes of supercentenarians, people living beyond 110 years of age, haven't led us any closer to discovering protein-altering variants significantly associated with extreme longevity, according…

If surveys are accurate, up to 20 percent of students have taken Modafinil (Provigil), a psychostimulant embraced by "lifehackers" in the naturalistic crowd, to boost their ability to study and…

In hydraulic fracturing - fracking - a mixture of sand, water and chemicals is injected into deep wells to release fossil fuels. This has led to environmental corporation claims that the reduced…

Can homeopathy actually work if someone knows it is a placebo? What if, for example, a skeptical Science 2.0 group was told they got a placebo and that nutritionists were getting medicine? Would we…

In the last 30 years, the United States has grown more food using less land and with less environmental strain than ever believed possible. Fertilizers are better, pesticides are better and genetic…

Hey, does anyone want this comet? For the first time, mankind has successfully landed on a comet - a journey over 10 years in the making. After a seven-hour final descent, Rosetta’s Philae probe…

The Six Billion Dollar Man is getting a little bit closer, not just to movie theaters, but in real life.  A new development toward a prosthetic retina could help counter conditions that result…