News Articles

Bananas in their natural state have up to a hundred seeds but all commercial varieties that you see in stores are seedless.   Making seedless varieties made bananas wildly popular, which was good for the people who grow them and good for the people who eat them.     That is a science win.Researchers have now discovered a way to make "the most delicious fruit known to man", as Mark Twain called it, more popular with the public also.   The cherimoya, or custard apple, has lots of big, awkward seeds but a group of researchers studied the seedless variety of sugar apple, a relative of the cherimoya, and noted that the ovules, which would normally form seeds, lacked an outer coat.

Low temperatures in the Arctic 'ozone layer' have recently initiated massive ozone depletion, which means the Arctic could experience a record loss of this trace gas that protects the Earth's surface against ultraviolet radiation from the sun. The result has been found by a measurement network of over 30 ozone sounding stations spread all over the Arctic and Subarctic.In the long term the ozone layer will recover thanks to extensive environmental policy measures enacted decades ago for its protection. This winter's likely record-breaking ozone loss does not alter this expectation.

Earthquakes are big news due to the devastating 8.9 magnitude earthquake that struck Japan on Friday.   As a result, some are curious about the worst earthquakes and resulting tsunamis we know about.   Prior to the 20th century, methods for measuring were unreliable.Researchers say a new tool may more about earthquakes of the ancient past and even help predict earthquakes of the future. Prof. Shmuel Marco of Tel Aviv University's Department of Geophysics and Planetary Sciences in the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Faculty of Exact Sciences and his colleagues have created a new tool which they have described as a "fossil seismograph," to help geophysicists and other researchers understand patterns of seismic activity in the past.

How did we ever last this long?  As the occurrence of allergies. asthma and immune diseases rises, but just in wealthy countries, the idea that we are trying to keep kids too clean - the hygiene hypothesis - has gotten public attention.Now a study claims if your child plays in instrument in music classes and does not have the instrument sterilized, they could be at risk.   This will not do a lot for music class funding since schools would rather cut those programs that incur lawsuits if a child gets sick and a study shows the instrument may have done it.

More and more, policy decisions and what medications doctors prescribe for their patients are being driven by large 'studies of studies' called meta-analyses, which statistically combine results from many individual drug trials.There's a problem, though.   A group analyzing meta-analyses writes in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) that important declarations of financial conflicts-of-interest in individual drug trials disappeared when those studies were combined in meta-analyses. In other words, the information was right there, it wasn't hidden in the studies themselves.

If you have a chance to win a basketball game but need to make a shot from 10 feet away on the right side of the court, do you try a direct shot or use the backboard to bank home the winning basket?New research by engineers at North Carolina State University, done by simulating one million shots with a computer, has them declaring you have a better chance of scoring that particular game-winning bucket with a bank shot than with a direct shot.

A new composite image  from NASA shows the central region of the spiral galaxy NGC 4151...and, well...if you have seen the film versions of "The Lord of the Rings" you know what it looks like.So do astronomers and, so, "Eye of Sauron" it is.

Despite the culture war on smokers, the idea that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer or lung disease is largely a myth.   Anti-smoking groups are a multi-billion dollar industry on their own and continued marketing is a key part of maintaining the revenue stream but only 10% of smokers get lung cancer and 50% of lung cancer victims never smoked.However, cigarette smoking is obviously not good for you so you shouldn't do it, and work continues to determine how smoking impacts risk factors for diseases.

Despite what you may guess by mass media coverage, the priorities of Americans are not global warming or wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but are instead just what they were in 1990; health care and a good education for their children.

The body's ability to break down medicines may be closely related to exposure to sunlight, according to a study from the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet.   This could mean drug metabolism is influenced by seasons and might explain individual differences in the effects of drugs, and how the surroundings can influence the body's ability to deal with toxins.

The deadly Russian heat wave of 2010 was due to a natural atmospheric phenomenon often associated with weather extremes, according to a new study accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters. 

A new study in Proceedings of the Royal Society B says it is the first to demonstrate that birds possess empathy - and they say they have verified it using both behavioral and physiological methods to measure these traits.Using non-invasive physiological monitoring, the researchers say domestic hens show a clear physiological and behavioral response to their chicks' distress.   During one of the controlled experiments, when the baby chicks were exposed to a puff of air, the hens' heart rate increased and eye temperature decreased. The hens also changed their behavior and reacted with increased alertness, decreased preening and increased vocalizations directed to their chicks.