Science News

Popular Science magazine's decision to kill online commenting should be the start of a wider discussion, says Dietram A. Scheufele     

Researchers have estimated that the effects of climate change will touch every inch in the world's oceans, and will influence the lives of between 1.4 billion and 2 billion people who live and rely on coastal ecosystems.

A trotting baby elephant gave Greg du Toit the shot that has bagged him pride of place in London's Natural History Museum     

Recent advances in 3D printing are driving the concept closer to reality.

Laser pulses in optical fibres have been made to accelerate themselves, possibly opening a door to faster electronics and more reliable communication     

Nobel Prize-winning scientist Peter Higgs says he is hoping to fully retire next year at the age of 85--and that he once turned down a knighthood.

Imagine giving a presentation to a roomful of important customers when suddenly the projector fails. You whip out your smartphone, beam your PowerPoint presentation onto the conference room screen, and are back in busine...

British physicist Peter Higgs, co-winner of the recently announced 2013 Nobel Prize in physics, plans to retire next year, after he turns 85, according to news reports.

The staff at a Southern California educational facility stumbled onto a surprise when an 18-foot-long (5.5 meters) sea creature washed near the shore.

The liver and brain both need a compound called PPARalpha, a new study finds. If the liver uses too much PPARalpha in order to breakdown belly fat, there may not be enough left for the brain's hippocampus region to funct...

A new study by Tomohisa Toda and colleagues, published today in Developmental Cell, has contributed novel insights into how the process of birth can regulate specific aspects of brain development.

Due to launch in about a month, the Gaia probe will unfold a huge sunshield so its ultra-sensitive camera can chart a billion stars in our galaxy     

What do smoke rings, tornadoes and the Great Red Spot of Jupiter have in common? They are all examples of vortices, regions within a fluid (liquid, gas or plasma) where the flow spins around an imaginary straight or curv...

A recent study led by researchers of the ICFO (Institute of Photonic Sciences) demonstrates that a single nano-diamond can be operated as an ultrafast single-emitter optical switch operating at room temperature. The scie...

In a paper appearing in Nature's Scientific Reports, Dr. Ramesh Mani, professor of physics and astronomy at Georgia State University, reports that a giant magnetoresistance effect depends on the physical size of the devi...

Brain cells that burst into life when people talk about numbers or numerical concepts are revealed in a real-world study that eavesdrops on the brain     

One in 2,000 people in the United Kingdom carry a variant of a protein linked with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the human form of mad cow disease, a new study finds. Although the disease itself is rare, infection could be ...

Millions of people in Japan are bracing for the approach of Typhoon Wipha and the expected destructive winds and life-threatening flooding.

The first randomised placebo-controlled trial of a ketamine-like drug finds it may work in treating depression, without ketamine's tough side effects     

The astronauts caught sight of an eerie view outside of the International Space Station last week.

A genetic switch that may help embryos remove toxins from their cells is reactivated in some cancers, where it helps the cells flush out anti-cancer drugs     

A panel has discussed plans to keep the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor on track to generate 500 MW of power from an input of 50 MW by 2028.