Science News

Couch potatoes beware: Exercising in middle age may be linked with a healthier brain later on, a new study finds.

The wave that made history snuck up on them. David Shoemaker will never forget the date--September 14, 2015--when he woke up to a message alerting him that an underground detector had spotted a 1.3-billion-year-old rippl...

"This is the first direct detection of gravitational waves and the first observation of a binary black hole merger." This final line of a paper published this morning in Physical Review Letters by the Laser Interferomete...

Researchers have adapted a retractable protein polymer -- found naturally in certain bacteria -- to mechanically rupture cell membranes, which could lead to new drug delivery methods and other applications in biotechnolo...

Follow up emails from a primary care doctor can be a critical way to keep patients involved in their own health care, an new study examining the program called OpenNotes has found.

From paper towels to cups to plastic bottles, products made from recycled materials permeate our lives. One notable exception is building materials. Why can't we recycle concrete from our deteriorating infrastructure for...

The case was the first announced recording of space-time oscillations -- gravitational waves, reaching the Earth after a catastrophe that happened far in the Universe. That confirms a significant prediction made in the s...

The nanowires, with diameters as small as 200 nanometers (billionths of a meter) and a blend of materials that has also proven effective in next-generation solar cell designs, were shown to produce very bright, stable la...

A new sound file captures the unforgettable sound of gravitational waves emerging from a cosmic collision between two black holes.

A new image shows how an unobtrusive blip in a light signal from a detector showed a cosmic smashup between two black holes.

Pediatric oncologists have investigated techniques to improve and broaden a novel personalized cell therapy to treat children with cancer. The researchers say a patient's outcome may be improved if clinicians select spec...

The chemical signal dopamine plays an unexpected role in social interactions, new research shows. In mice, nerve cells in the brain that release dopamine became particularly active in animals kept on their own for a shor...

A male adult film star in California who underwent regular HIV testing still ended up contracting the virus and infecting two other men before the disease was detected.

Scientists from the Monell Center have further characterized the identity and functionality of salt-responding taste cells on the tongue. The knowledge may lead to novel approaches to develop salt replacers or enhancers ...

The specific combination of the drugs dasatinib and demcizumab impairs the growth of KRAS-driven lung tumors, the most aggressive sub-type and with the lowest survival rates. The research was conducted on mouse models an...

After the age of nine months, the development of the infant gut microbiota is driven by the transition to family foods, not maternal obesity, according to results from a new study. The gut microbiota is a complex communi...

The first real-time system has been developed to watch directly through the microscope as Ebola-like virus particles fuse with human cells to infect them. Their findings reveal key host cell and viral proteins that direc...

Although more than $500 million in federally funded research on Persian Gulf War veterans between 1994 and 2014 has produced many findings, there has been little substantial progress in the overall understanding of the h...

New research leverages a combination of computational protein design, in vitro synthesis and in vivo testing to establish a first-of-its-kind strategy for identifying custom-tailored biosensors.

A daily dose of beetroot juice significantly improved exercise endurance and blood pressure in elderly patients with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction, a new study has concluded.

A discovery in a transparent roundworm has brought scientists one step closer to understanding nerve degeneration. Researchers have discovered the worm contains two proteins that play a role in the degeneration of axons ...

Ancient trysts between Neanderthals and modern humans may have influenced modern risks for depression, heart attacks, nicotine addiction, obesity and other health problems, researchers said.