An artist's impression of a galactic protocluster forming in the early universe. Credit: European Southern Observatory, CC BY By Nick Seymour, Curtin University Clusters of galaxies have back-stories…

Do you like to keep your fingernails and toenails aesthetically pleasing? You could be putting yourself at risk of serious nail conditions, say researchers at the University of Nottingham who have…

Won't get fooled again. Credit: Tinfoil hat by Suzanne Tucker/Shutterstock By Rebecca Slack, University of Sheffield How do you decide if you can trust someone? Is it based on their handshake, the…

A study of Samoan volcano hotspots has found evidence of the planet's early formation still trapped inside the Earth. Volcanic island chains such as Samoa can contain ancient primordial…

On April 23rd, 2014, NASA's Swift satellite detected the strongest, hottest, and longest-lasting sequence of stellar flares ever seen from a red dwarf star - 10,000 times more powerful than the…

It sounds a little trampy to humans but in nature, it's not unusual for a female to copulate with several males in quick succession. Chimpanzees are a well-known example.   When that happens,…

Children are particularly susceptible to the toxic effects of lead because their brains and bodies are still developing. credit: Viacheslav Nikolaenko/Shutterstock By Mark Patrick Taylor; Louise…

A paper in the International Journal of Web-Based Communities suggests that the familiar interfaces of online social networking sites might be adapted to allow us to interact more efficiently with…

80 years ago, America was going through The Dust Bowl and farmers got a lot of the blame. They didn't let land lay fallow, or used monocultures. Now we know it was the worst drought of the last 1,000…

Myths about the brain are common among teachers worldwide and are hampering teaching, according to new research which presented teachers in the UK, Holland, Turkey, Greece and China with seven…

There's just no substitute for a dead body. Computer teaching is all the rage and simulation can do many things, but when it comes to anatomy, students learn much better through the traditional…

Science Left Behind, a book I co-authored in 2012 with Dr. Alex Berezow, covered the ways that anti-science beliefs had become mainstream among political progressives in the United States.  It…

Intuitive processes may underlie decisions of those who help others while risking their own lives. Credit: AAresTT/Shutterstock By Penny Orbell, The Conversation If you noticed a person in grave…

Human bathroom walls contain messages that are wonderfully informative about our modern condition - they can tell you who to call if you have an evolutionary mandate to procreate or even notify you…

Dr. Francis Collins, Director of the National Institutes of Health, has a $29 billion per year budget, which dwarfs the National Science Foundation and NASA - combined. You'd think for all that money…

In modern culture, boys are often slighted; girls get billions devoted to their welfare while boys are the default excuse for whatever is wrong. Almost every television show that has a tough woman…

Time is in our hands, more than we realize. Credit: Spanish Flea/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND By Kristin Alford and Neil Houghton, Monash University We are curious about time. It holds us in a state of wonder…

In America, the cost of health care is not high just because the medicine is the best in the world, it is also because of lawsuits. Due to judgments in court cases that have earned tens of millions…

The Hubble Space Telescope has uncovered three Kuiper Belt objects that the New Horizons spacecraft could potentially visit after doing a fly-by of Pluto in July 2015. The Kuiper Belt is a vast rim…

Not every human can be a great leader but not everyone is made to follow either. This has been shown to apply to elsewhere in the animal kingdom as well: insect larvae follow a leader to forage for…