Scrapie is a neurodegenerative disease that has been known for centuries and which affects sheep and goats. Similar to Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) or mad cow disease, scrapie is caused by a transmissible pathogen protein called prion.

A new study finds that the pathogens responsible for scrapie in small ruminants (prions) have the potential to convert the human prion protein from a healthy state to a pathological state. In mice models reproducing the human species barrier, this prion induces a disease similar to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

The 2011 east coast earthquake felt by people from Georgia to Canada likely originated from a fault “junction” just outside of Mineral, Virginia, according to new U.S. Geological Survey research published in the Geological Society of America’s Special Papers.

A young boy sits on the carpet, his feet disappearing into a giant pair of sweatpants he put on over his own clothes before loosely tying his ankles together.

He has taken the sweatpants off and is now trying to put them back on inside out without removing the ankle cuffs.

Yes, it can be done.



Holly Bernstein, who earned a PhD in mathematics at Washington University in St. Louis in 1999, watches him struggle for a bit and then says, “Remember the pants have more than one hole. You don’t necessarily have to put them back on the way you put them on in the first place.”

Lost memories can be restored, which offers some hope for patients in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease.

The belief has been that memories are stored at the synapses -- the connections between brain cells, or neurons -- which are destroyed by Alzheimer's disease. The new study provides evidence contradicting the idea that long-term memory is stored at synapses.

The evolutionary adaptations of ancient lobe-finned fish transformed pectoral fins used underwater into strong, bony structures that enabled emerging tetrapods, animals with limbs, to allow them crawl in shallow water or on land. 

The disconnect between paleontology and evolutionary biology has been why the modern structure called the autopod, comprising wrists and fingers or ankles and toes, has no obvious morphological counterpart in the fins of living fishes. 

The oldest recorded stone tool found to-date has been unearthed in Turkey.

The chance find of a humanly-worked quartzite flake, in ancient deposits of the river Gediz in western Turkey, show that humans passed through the gateway from Asia to Europe much earlier than previously thought, approximately 1.2 million years ago and provides new insight into when and how early humans dispersed out of Africa and Asia.

The international team used high-precision equipment to date the deposits of the ancient river meander, giving the first accurate time-frame for when humans occupied the area.