Science News

The SETI community is rethinking how reports of extraterrestrial life should be shared with the public.

A gorgeous new way of visualizing connections in the mouse brain could help scientists answer fundamental questions about the way the brain works.

Once the preferred weapon of B-movie madmen and space-fiction heroes alike, the laser--a device that generates an intense beam of coherent electromagnetic radiation by stimulating the emission of photons from excited ato...

Low and very high levels of HDL, or "good cholesterol" are associated with a higher risk of dying from heart disease, cancer and other causes, according to a study. The findings from the first of its kind study suggest t...

If you're building a quantum computer with the intention of making calculations not even imaginable with today's conventional technology, you're in for an arduous effort. Case in point: You're delving into new problems a...

Researchers at the University of Houston have reported a new method for inducing superconductivity in non-superconducting materials, demonstrating a concept proposed decades ago but never proven.

Scientists have shown that a mutation in a gene called Arid1b can cause liver cancer. The gene normally protects against cancer by limiting cell growth, but when mutated it allows cells to grow uncontrollably. The resear...

A new approach has been developed to combat diseases caused by herpesvirus infections, including everything from cold sores to cancer.

Sepsis can kill a person in two days. Normal methods of detecting sepsis take at least that long. But researchers have found a new way to significantly reduce that detection time, giving medical professionals more time t...

A possible mechanism behind the fibrosis that occurs in scleroderma has now been identified, a mechanism, researchers say, that may one day lead to a treatment for the disease.

Regular electroacupunture treatment can lower hypertension by increasing the release of a kind of opioid in the brainstem region that controls blood pressure, investigators have found.

A first-in-human study of a new polymer-free drug-filled stent, which provides controlled drug elution from an internal lumen, indicated non-inferior in-stent late lumen loss at nine-months compared with historical zotar...

A new study examines the use of social media platforms to inform young physicians about proper use of antimicrobial agents such as antibiotics. Currently, as much as 50 percent of all antibiotic use is inappropriate, lea...

It's a paradox that has long vexed researchers in the field of optics.

An international team of physicists has developed a pioneering approach to using Ultrahigh Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECRs)--the highest energy particles in nature since the Big Bang--to study particle interactions far beyond...

Convertible video displays that offer both 2D and 3D imaging without the need of any eyewear offer greater convenience to users who would otherwise have to keep track of yet another accessory. Such autostereoscopic displ...

Spinach plants with added nanotubes can detect explosive molecules in the soil around them and raise the alarm

For several years Manu Prakash, an assistant professor of bioengineering, has gone to field sites to test new, low-cost microscopes as a tool for diagnosing the parasitic disease schistosomiasis. The devices showed promi...

Fashion is changing in the avant-garde world of next-generation computer component materials. Traditional semiconductors like silicon are releasing their last new lines. Exotic materials called topological insulators (TI...

Here are some of the creepiest, crawliest, most terrifying places on the planet.

The overall incidence of hospitalizations for prescription opioid poisonings in children and adolescents has more than doubled from 1997 to 2012, with increasing incidence of poisonings attributed to suicide or self-infl...

For scores of years after the first medical school opened in China in 1886, the country progressed in building a medical education system for its fast-growing population. Then 50 years ago, it not only came to a screechi...