News Articles

Man or woman? Male or female?
Modern sociological woo about gender aside, in humans and other mammals, the difference between the sexes depends on one single element of the genome: the Y chromosome. It is present only in males, where the two sexual chromosomes are X and Y, whereas women have two X chromosomes. Thus, the Y is ultimately responsible for all the morphological and physiological differences between males and females.

Shark data collected by citizen scientists may be as reliable as data collected using automated tools, according to results published April 23, 2014, in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Gabriel Vianna from The University of Western Australia and colleagues.

While creating new springs to support a cephalopod-inspired imaging project, a group of Harvard researchers stumbled upon a surprising discovery: the hemihelix, a shape rarely seen in nature.

Big brains do not explain why only humans use sophisticated language, according to researchers who have discovered that even a species of pond life communicates by similar methods.
Dr Thom Scott-Phillips of Durham University led research into Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a type of bacteria common in water and soil, which showed that they communicated in a way that was previously thought to be unique to humans and perhaps some other primates.

The humble aspirin may have just added another beneficial effect beyond its ability to ameliorate headaches and reduce the risk of heart attacks: lowering colon cancer risk among people with high levels of a specific type of gene.
The extraordinary finding comes from a multi-institutional team that analyzed data and other material from two long-term studies involving nearly 128,000 participants. The researchers found that individuals whose colons have high levels of a specific gene product — 15-hydroxyprostaglandin dehydrogenase (15-PGDH) RNA — dramatically reduce their chances of developing colorectal cancer by taking aspirin. In contrast, the analgesic provides no benefit to individuals whose colons show low levels of 15-PGDH.

A new study from the Indiana University School of Public Health-Bloomington has bolstered the link between red meat consumption and heart disease by finding a strong association between heme iron, found only in meat, and potentially deadly coronary heart disease.
The study found that heme iron consumption increased the risk for coronary heart disease by 57 percent, while no association was found between nonheme iron, which is in plant and other non-meat sources, and coronary heart disease.

Researchers have transplanted human neural stem cells (hNSCs) into the brains of nonhuman primates and assessed cell survival and differentiation.
The results: After 22 and 24 months the neural stem cells had differentiated into neurons and did not cause tumors.

There has been a unique rhythmic sound emanating for decades from the Southern Ocean.
It was first described and named by submarine personnel in the 1960s who thought it sounded like a duck, and since then sailors and scientists alike have called it the "bio-duck."  It's source has been a mystery.

Quantum mechanics is able to effectively explain three of the four fundamental forces of the Universe - electromagnetism, weak interaction and strong interaction - but it does not explain gravity, which is currently only accounted for by general relativity, which is classical physics.
Identifying a plausible model of quantum gravity - a description of gravity within a quantum physics framework - is one of the major challenges physics is facing today. Despite many, many, many hypothetical models proposed to date, none has proved satisfactory or, more importantly, amenable to empirical investigation. 

Feral camels in the Australian outback are reviled as pests. Yet they thrive, totaling some one million strong.
How did they go from historic helper to overbearing invader? As usual, numbers make the difference. 
The deserts of the Australian outback are a notoriously inhospitable environment where few species can survive - but camels can. The dromedary camel (Camelus dromedarius) prospers where others perish, eating 80% of native plant species and obtaining much of their water through ingesting this vegetation.

Modern Western parents spend a lot of time trying to figure out new ways for kids not to be kids and to force their behavior into narrow ranges. Then modern Western spend a lot of time filling out surveys saying they want their kids to be intelligent, creative and independent. 
If you are a parent who wants to mollify the animalistic eating behavior of your child, don't give them a chicken drumstick, cut their food into little pieces for them. Yes, whole foods are causing bad behavior, according to a new paper.

Basketball is a popular high school sport in the United States with 1 million participants annually. A recently published study by researchers in the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children's Hospital is the first to compare and describe the occurrence and distribution patterns of basketball-related injuries treated in emergency departments and the high school athletic training setting among adolescents and teens.