Science News

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The peppered moth is one of the most famous animals in evolutionary biology. Victorian collections show how a melanic version of this normally speckled species spread through sooty urban areas because its black wings cam...

AS THE Olympic torch relay nears Rio de Janeiro in the countdown to the games supposed to start there on August 5th, a proposal to postpone or move the event has ignited controversy. An open letter posted online on May 2...

Quantum physics says everything is made of particles, but what does that actually mean? "Is he a dot or is he a speck? When he's underwater, does he get wet? Or does the water get him instead? Nobody knows." --They Might...

The intensity rises in the Large Hadron Collider. More and more protons are circulating pushing up the collision rate in the experiments to record highs.

Researchers have demonstrated the existence of an olfactory receptor in pigment-producing cells in human skin, the so-called melanocytes. They have shown that the violet-like scent Beta-Ionone can activate the receptor.

Each year, influenza causes between 250,000 and half a million deaths around the world. Now a new study has shown that immunizing mothers against flu can decrease by 70 percent the risk of their infants getting flu durin...

Eating walnuts may change gut bacteria in a way that suppresses colon cancer, researchers report. A team of researchers found that mice that ate 7-10.5 percent of their total calories as walnuts developed fewer colon can...

The results of an exploratory clinical trial indicate that a wearable artificial kidney could be developed as a viable, new dialysis technology. Some redesigns would be required to overcome device-related, technical prob...

People once confined to wheelchairs because of stroke showed improvements in movement and speech with the help of stem cells injected into the brain

The expansion of the cerebral cortex sets humans apart from the rest of their fellow primates. Yet scientists have long wondered what mechanisms are responsible for this evolutionary development. New research has pinpoin...

A new cancer treatment called CD40 inhibitor has yielded disappointing results when tested in clinical trials, failing to mobilize patients' immune system against tumors the way it was expected to. But a recent study off...

For a long time dismissed as 'junk DNA,' we now know that also the regions between the genes fulfill vital functions. Scientists have now developed a method to find regulatory DNA regions which are active and controlling...

A new study has found evidence that an enzyme known as NMNAT2 may help protect against the debilitating effects of certain degenerative brain diseases, including Alzheimer's.

A person's genetic makeup plays a role in autoimmune diseases that develop when the body is attacked by its own immune system. But little is known about how immune cells are pushed into overdrive. Now, in new research th...

A group of scientists from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology; the University of California, Santa Barbara; Sandia National Laboratories and Harvard University were able to fabricate tiny lasers directly on s...

A novel design for ultra-thin lenses uses nanostructures to grab light and bend it to its will, and could someday find uses in microscopes and cameras

CRISPR gene editing can now target RNA as well as DNA, which could be a way to treat infectious diseases and cancer and track RNA as it moves around cells

An adversary who steps inside a boxer's sense of rhythm may land a punch the boxer never saw coming.

Now we know how a chicken gets its beard. The same set of genes may also control human hair patterns and how birds of paradise get their showy plumage

The origin of domestic dogs has split experts into two groups, who say it happened in either Europe or Asia. New genetic evidence suggests both may be right

After several secret meetings, scientists have officially announced a $3-billion, 10-year plan to chemically synthesise a human genome