16 May 2013
Marijuana users have smaller waists, better blood sugar control
Pot smokers have 16 percent lower fasting insulin levels compared to non-users, say researchers examining the relationship between marijuana use and fasting insulin, glucose, and insulin resistance...

15 May 2013
Stunning new species of palm-pitviper discovered
Herpetologists have identified a striking new species of highly dangerous green palm-pitviper that lives within a cloud forest reserve in northern Honduras...

13 May 2013
New technique for finding distant planets makes its first discovery
For the first time, astrophysicists from Tel Aviv University and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have discovered an exoplanet using a new technique that relies on Einstein's special theory of relativity...

12 May 2013
Liquid hydrogen fueled drone shatters endurance record
Researchers at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory have set a new continuous flight record with an electric drone powered by a fuel cell running from liquid hydrogen in cryogenic storage...

9 May 2013
Hubble identifies Earth-like debris in white dwarfs' atmospheres
The Hubble Space Telescope has found the building blocks of Earth-like planets - silicon and carbon - in an unlikely place: the atmospheres of a pair of burnt-out white dwarf stars...

9 May 2013
Pear-shaped atoms may hold clues to unsolved physics
Physicists have found the first direct evidence of exotic pear shaped nuclei in atoms, a discovery that could advance the search for a new fundamental force in nature and explain why the Big Bang created more matter than antimatter...

7 May 2013
Climate change, not humans, wiped out megafauna, claim Aussie scientists
New research challenges the notion that humans were responsible for the demise of the gigantic animals that once roamed Australia, pointing the finger instead at climate change...

7 May 2013
Nocebo effect behind electrosmog illnesses, say European researchers
An investigation into the purported health risks associated with electromagnetic fields has shown that media reports alone may cause suggestible people to develop symptoms of a disease...

5 May 2013
Madagascar's dwarf lemurs shed light on tropical climate hibernation
By comparing the hibernation habits of eastern dwarf lemurs and their western counterparts, researchers hope to better understand what sends animals into hibernation mode...

2 May 2013
Tiny robotic insect makes first controlled flight
Inspired by the biology of a fly, with submillimeter-scale anatomy and two wafer-thin wings that flap 120 times per second, this tiny robotic insect that's half the size of a paperclip represents the cutting edge of micro-manufacturing...

1 May 2013
Scientists merge electronics with bio-printed ear
Using off-the-shelf 3D printing tools, Princeton scientists have built a functional cell-cultured ear that can "hear" radio frequencies...

30 April 2013
Study reveals "staggering" over-diagnosis and over-treatment of depression
Researchers assessing adults with clinician-identified depression found that when evaluated for major depressive episodes using a structured interview, only 38 percent of the subjects met the actual criteria for depression...

29 April 2013
Giant vortex at Saturn's north pole finally revealed
The Cassini spacecraft has provided scientists with the first close-up views of a massive hurricane-like vortex swirling around Saturn's north pole. The vortex - about 20 times larger than the average hurricane on Earth - spins inside a large, mysterious, six-sided weather pattern which astronomers call "the hexagon"...

28 April 2013
Computer scientists mull origins of evolvability
Over time, organisms appear to become increasingly capable of evolving in response to changes in the environment, but computer boffins say the traditional explanation - competition to survive in nature - may not actually be necessary for evolvability to increase...

25 April 2013
Evolution making women taller, thinner
As well as living longer and having fewer children, women are becoming taller and slimmer, but researchers aren't sure why selection has shifted from shorter and stouter women to taller and thinner ones...

24 April 2013
Ecotourism wildcard in African disease cocktail
Somewhat counter-intuitively, protected areas of Africa where numbers of humans are limited appear to also be hotspots for the exchange of fecal matter between animals and humans. The researchers behind the discovery say it could have important implications for antibiotic resistance and the emergence of new diseases...

23 April 2013
Hubble snaps pic of faraway comet ISON
Hubble has given astronomers their clearest view yet of ISON, a newly-discovered sun-grazer comet that could light up the sky later this year...

22 April 2013
Genetic circuit balances individual freedom and collective good
An intriguing investigation of bacterial genetic circuitry indicates that even the simplest creatures can make difficult choices that strike a balance between selflessness and selfishness...

21 April 2013
Rising CO₂ giving fish super-hearing
Ocean acidification is known to negatively impact a wide variety of marine animals, but new research indicates that a huge increase in hearing sensitivity for fish could also be one of the effects...

18 April 2013
Ultracheap tactile sensor for robots unveiled
Giving robots a sense of touch has traditionally been an expensive and complex exercise with results that were often less than useful. Now, however, a newly developed tactile sensor using off-the-shelf cell phone components could dramatically change how robots interact with the world around them...

17 April 2013
"Nanosponge" removes toxins from bloodstream
Nanoengineers say they have created a "nanosponge" that is capable of safely removing a broad class of dangerous substances from the bloodstream - including toxins produced by MRSA, E. coli, venomous snakes, and bees...

16 April 2013
Dramatic changes in bacteria following male circumcision could explain HIV protective effect
Removing the foreskin causes significant changes in the bacterial community of the penis, according to a study that also suggests how these changes offer protection from HIV infection...

15 April 2013
Sexual happiness means keeping up with the Joneses
A new analysis of national data suggests that sex is like income: people are generally happy when they keep pace with the Joneses and they're even happier if they get a bit more...

14 April 2013
Successful transplant of bioengineered rat kidney
Bioengineered rat kidneys have successfully produced urine both in a laboratory apparatus and after being transplanted into living animals. The scientists behind the breakthrough believe that with further work, bioengineered kidneys could someday replace donor kidneys...

11 April 2013
This is your brain on iTunes
Researchers have been using an MRI scanner to work out what happens in our brain when we decide to purchase a piece of music after we hear it for the first time. The study pinpoints the specific brain activity that makes new music rewarding and predicts the decision to purchase music...

10 April 2013
Radiation exposure from "dark lightning" quantified
Physicists have developed a new model of how thunderstorms manage to produce high-energy gamma-ray radiation and what the likely risk is for air travelers who happen to be near the lightning strike...

9 April 2013
Rapid evolution tied to environmental change
Environmental change can drive hard-wired evolutionary changes in animal species in a matter of generations, report ecologists from Umeå University and the University of Leeds. The new findings, which overturn the common assumption that evolution occurs slowly, could shed light in areas such as the management of fisheries, where human actions can result in major changes to an entire population’s environment...

8 April 2013
Couch potatoes born that way
Research from the University of Missouri indicates certain genetic traits may predispose people to being more or less motivated to exercise and remain active...

7 April 2013
Nose loses monopoly on sense of smell
In a discovery suggesting that odors may have a far more important role in life than previously supposed, scientists have found that heart, blood, lung, and other areas of the body have the same olfactory receptors for sensing odors that exist in the nose...

4 April 2013
Quantum tricks turbocharge magnetic storage
Researchers have found a new way to switch magnetism that is at least 1,000 times faster than current methods used in magnetic memory technologies...

3 April 2013
Ionic thrusters challenge jet engines for efficiency
Largely regarded as a scientific curiosity confined to the realm of hobbyists, a new investigation into electrohydrodynamic thrust has found that "ionic wind" may actually be more efficient than jet propulsion...

2 April 2013
Metallic flowers behind bee decline?
Researchers are investigating evidence that pesticides may be killing off bumblebees, but research at the University of Pittsburgh points toward another potential cause: flowers contaminated with metallic pollution...

2 April 2013
Age-related height loss linked to cognitive health
In the first study of its kind, University of Southern California researchers have identified a number of surprising factors linked to how much we shrink as we grow older...

31 March 2013
Greening of Arctic will be dramatic, say scientists
New computer models based on observations of plant growth in the Arctic suggest that rising temperatures will lead to a massive increase in plant and tree cover over the next few decades...

28 March 2013
Future criminal behavior predicted with brain scan
Researchers say neuroimaging data can predict the likelihood of whether a criminal will reoffend following release from prison...

28 March 2013
Ancient asteroid caused global firestorm on Earth
A new analysis of charcoal sedimentation has revealed that the dino-destroying asteroid that impacted Mexico dumped enough heat in the atmosphere to trigger an infrared "heat pulse" around the entire planet...

26 March 2013
Biofuels could be made directly from excess CO₂ in the atmosphere, say scientists
Biotechnologists have modified a microorganism that normally lives in the super-heated ocean waters near geothermal vents so that it can feed on carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and in the process create a range of industrial chemicals...

25 March 2013
Two-headed bull shark discovered
Marine researchers have confirmed that the first-ever, two-headed bull shark to be discovered is a single shark with two heads, rather than conjoined twins...

24 March 2013
New analysis pokes holes in biodiversity's supposed link to human disease
One of the most important ideas in disease ecology - that biodiversity abundance is linked to a reduced disease risk for humans - is likely wrong, according to a new Stanford study...

21 March 2013
Emotional content of books diverging by country, say language sleuths
A computer analysis of more than five million digitized books has revealed a distinct stylistic divergence since the 1960s, with American books becoming decidedly more "emotional"...

20 March 2013
Brain wave trajectories challenge area-specific notion of brain activity
Our understanding of brain activity has traditionally been linked to specific brain areas - an area associated with speech, vision, etc. - but Belgian scientists say this view may be overly rigid. Their experiments reveal waves of activity across the entire cerebral cortex when a given task is initiated...

19 March 2013
Knowledge of sport no advantage in sports gambling
Sports gamblers frequently see themselves as cleverer than other gamblers, believing that their intimate knowledge of player statistics, coaching styles, and other details will give them an edge. But new research shows that neither betting experience nor knowledge of the details of the game is connected to successful sports betting outcomes...

18 March 2013
Natural selection reducing road kill
Urban environments can be evolutionary hotspots, suggests a study that explored why road kill surveys have shown a sharp decline in bird mortality over the last 30 years...

17 March 2013
Overheard cellphone conversations "uniquely intrusive"
Confirming what many of us have long suspected, a new study has found that a one-sided cellphone conversation in the background is much more distracting than overhearing a conversation between two people...

14 March 2013
Stroke diagnosed via txt messaging
Dystextia, the inability to write a coherent text message, may become an important tool in diagnosing a type of crippling stroke that does not affect the patient's speaking ability...

14 March 2013
Self-control makes cockatoos sophisticated traders
The ability to anticipate a delayed gain is considered cognitively challenging since it requires not only the capacity to control a direct impulse, but also to assess the gain’s beneficial value relative to the costs associated with having to wait. Until now, such abilities were believed to be restricted to a few large brained animals...

13 March 2013
Pesticides may be source of norovirus in food
Outbreaks of norovirus (also known as the winter vomiting bug) are frequently linked to the consumption of fresh food and a new study indicates that contaminated water used to dilute pesticides may be how the virus enters the food chain...

12 March 2013
Facebook Likes reveal surprisingly accurate intimate personal information
Surprisingly accurate estimates of users' race, age, IQ, sexuality, personality type, substance use and political views can be inferred from automated analysis of only their Facebook Likes - information that is publicly available by default...

10 March 2013
Scientists propose test run for nuking asteroid
After five years of work, a team of scientists from Iowa State University are proposing a $500 million test launch of an asteroid interception system...

7 March 2013
Peptide discovery could lead to happiness pill
The neurochemical changes that underlie human emotions are still largely unknown, but scientists have for the first time identified a specific peptide that is released in large quantities when subjects are happy...

6 March 2013
Sports brain injury may actually be an autoimmune phenomenon
U.S. medicos have proposed a radical new way of thinking about concussions: that the brain degeneration observed among professional football players could result from an out-of-control immune response, similar to that which multiple sclerosis patients experience. If so, they suggest that vaccines or drug therapies could be used to prevent the resultant cognitive degeneration...

5 March 2013
New evidence that comets may have seeded life on Earth
A new experiment simulating conditions in deep space has shown that linked pairs of amino acids - essential building blocks shared by all living things - could have been created on icy interplanetary dust and then carried to Earth...

4 March 2013
Can nicotine transmit disease through multiple generations?
Nicotine creates heritable epigenetic marks on the genome, say U.S. scientists who contend that a grandparent's smoking habits may be responsible for asthma and other respiratory conditions in grandchildren...

3 March 2013
Volcanoes keeping a lid on global warming
Climatologists in the U.S. say that dozens of active volcanoes spewing sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere have been offsetting about a quarter of the greenhouse warming on Earth over the last decade...

28 February 2013
Conjoined rat brains demonstrate thought transference over the Internet
Duke University researchers have electronically linked the brains of pairs of rats for the first time, enabling the rodents to communicate directly and solve simple behavioral puzzles while the two animals were thousands of miles apart...

27 February 2013
Supermassive black hole spins super-fast
Imagine a sphere more than 2 million miles across spinning so fast that its surface is traveling at nearly the speed of light. Such an object exists: the supermassive black hole at the center of the spiral galaxy NGC 1365...

26 February 2013
Stretchy battery can bend and twist
A team of scientists from Northwestern University and the University of Illinois are the first to demonstrate a stretchable lithium-ion battery - a flexible, wirelessly charged device that could power a range of innovative, stretchable electronic devices...

25 February 2013
First discovery of ET life will likely be around a white dwarf star, say astrophysicists
Detecting extraterrestrial life from tell-tale atmospheric signatures is much easier to do when the planet under observation is orbiting a dying star, say Harvard Smithsonian scientists who believe that white dwarf systems are the best candidates for catching our first glimpse of life outside our solar system...

24 February 2013
Nano-rod solar cell generates hydrogen
A new type of solar collector that uses nano-rods could convert sunlight into energy without many of the problems associated with traditional photovoltaic solar cells...

21 February 2013
Tweet this: human language may have evolved from birdsong
Charles Darwin speculated that language might have had its origins in singing and now linguists from MIT are taking that theory a step further by proposing that human language could be a grafting of two communication forms found in the animal kingdom...

20 February 2013
New imaging device is flexible, flat, transparent, and disposable
An Austrian research team has developed an entirely new way of capturing images based on a flat, flexible, transparent, and potentially disposable polymer sheet...

19 February 2013
Medicos mull possible link between obesity and ADHD
A new U.S. study has established a possible link between high-fat diets and childhood cognitive conditions such as ADHD and memory-dependent learning disabilities...

18 February 2013
Appreciation of musical harmony is nurture, not nature, say Aussie scientists
Our love of music and appreciation of musical harmony is learnt and not based on natural ability, according to Australian researchers at the University of Melbourne...

18 February 2013
Russian scientists locate meteorite fragments
Russia's Ria Novosti news agency has reported that Russian scientists have located fragments from the meteor that broke up dramatically over the Urals region on Friday...

14 February 2013
Flushed pharma fueling fearless fish
Widely prescribed anxiety-moderating drugs such as Serepax are persisting through wastewater treatment plants after being excreted and modifying fish behaviors, making them bolder and avoid other fish...

13 January 2013
Republicans' brains wired for fight-or-flight
Measuring the brain activity of Republicans and Democrats while they played a simple gambling game has revealed striking differences in each group's cognitive functioning...

13 February 2013
Massive depletion of Middle East freshwater reserves
Already strained by water scarcity and political tensions, the arid Middle East along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers is losing critical water reserves at a rapid pace, from Turkey upstream to Syria, Iran and Iraq below...

11 February 2013
Bio-computer combines DNA memory and cellular logic gates
MIT scientists have created genetic circuits in bacterial cells that not only perform logic functions, but also remember the results, which are encoded in the cell's DNA and passed on for dozens of generations...

8 February 2013
Gay animals an inconvenient truth for BBC, claims study
A new study criticizes television wildlife documentaries produced by the BBC for ignoring widespread alternative aspects of animal activity such as homosexuality and same-sex parenting...

7 February 2013
Rare strobe-like binary protostar found
The Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes have teamed up to uncover a mysterious infant star that behaves like a strobe light, a phenomenon that astronomers think is caused by periodic interactions between two newly formed stars that are gravitationally bound to each other...

6 February 2013
Earth-like planets may be closer than previously thought
A new analysis of data from NASA's Kepler space telescope indicates that many red dwarf stars have habitable, Earth-sized planets, raising the prospect that the closest Earth-like planet could be just 13 light-years away...

5 February 2013
Significant bacterial populations found in upper atmosphere
Using a DC-8 aircraft to scoop-up air samples from the troposphere, scientists have identified significant numbers of living microorganisms - mostly bacteria - six miles above the Earth's surface...

4 February 2013
TV watching a predictor of sperm count
Healthy young men who watch television for more than 20 hours a week have around half the sperm count of men who watch very little TV, say Harvard researchers...

3 February 2013
Oxycontin overdoses at epidemic levels
While heroin overdoses have declined, overdoses from prescription opioids such as Oxycontin increased seven-fold in New York City over a 16-year period. The researchers behind a new study analyzing this prescription opioid epidemic say it is especially prevalent among higher-income white residents...

31 January 2013
Mystery of extreme head-rotation in owls explained
Anatomical artists and neurological experts have finally unravelled how night-hunting owls can almost fully rotate their heads without damaging the delicate blood vessels in their necks and heads, and without cutting off blood supply to their brains...

30 January 2013
Modified gut flora could end malnutrition
A new study conducted in sub-Saharan Africa found that bacteria living in the intestine are an underlying cause of childhood malnutrition, leading researchers to suggest that many infant deaths in the developing world could be prevented by simply altering microbial communities in the gut...

29 January 2013
Simulation reveals evolutionary origins of modularity
Robotics researchers say they now understand why humans, bacteria and other organisms evolved in a modular fashion, a finding they believe will lead to a deeper understanding of the evolution of complexity...

29 January 2013
Penicillin - not The Pill - drove the sexual revolution, suggests new analysis
The rise in casual sex that marked the swinging '60s actually began a decade earlier, according to a new analysis of the period when penicillin was introduced to treat syphilis...

27 January 2013
Synesthesia traced to childhood toy
Experiencing a color when viewing particular letters or numbers - known as color-grapheme synesthesia - may partly be a learned behavior, say researchers who uncovered startlingly similar color-letter pairings amongst a number of color grapheme synesthetes who played with the same childhood toy...

24 January 2013
Dung beetles' galactic navigation
A beetle with a tiny brain appears to use the Milky Way galaxy for navigation, a feat that has never before been seen in an insect before say the scientists behind the discovery...

23 January 2013
Multitasking: you're bad at it
Most people believe they can multitask effectively, but a new University of Utah study indicates that the people who multitask the most are the people least capable of doing so...

22 January 2013
Car designs may change to protect obese
An analysis of traffic collision fatalities showing that obese drivers are far more likely to die than drivers of normal weight has prompted researchers to suggest that car designs might need to change to better protect obese drivers...

21 January 2013
Aspirin and vision loss: a significant association
In a new study that builds on previous research, regular aspirin use (defined as once or more per week) was shown to be "significantly" associated with a higher risk of macular degeneration...

20 January 2013
Quadruple helix DNA discovered in human cells
Cambridge University researchers have published a paper showing that four-stranded "quadruple helix" DNA structures exist within the human genome and speculate that these structures may provide a target for novel cancer treatments...

17 January 2013
Viagra's surprising weight-loss properties
German scientists investigating why mice given Viagra were resistant to obesity say they have discovered a "quite amazing" anti-obesity effect related to a cell signaling pathway that tells the body how to store fat...

16 January 2013
Parasitic worms could treat obesity disorders
The sugar-based anti-inflammatory molecule that many parasitic worms secrete inside the human body might actually help treat the metabolic disorders associated with obesity...

15 January 2013
Leadership can be an inherited trait, study finds
Using a large twin sample, an international research team found that a quarter of the observed variation in leadership behavior between individuals can be explained by genes passed down from their parents...

14 January 2013
Are close friends on Facebook the enemy?
"Likes" or positive comments from close friends on Facebook appear to inflate users' self-esteem and reduce self-control, resulting in higher body-mass indexes and higher levels of credit-card debt...

13 January 2013
Ancient faces reconstructed
A new DNA system employed to analyze modern forensic samples has also been used to establish facial characteristics from centuries old human remains. A study in the journal Investigative Genetics details how the system was able to reconstruct hair and eye color from teeth up to 800 years old...

10 January 2013
Telling time with matter waves
Berkeley scientists say they have discovered a way to tell time by measuring matter waves, the oscillations of matter whose frequency is 10 billion times higher than that of visible light. Intriguingly, the researchers say the technique can also be reversed, using time to measure mass...

9 January 2013
Asteroid belt spotted around Vega
Astronomers say they have spotted evidence for an asteroid belt encircling Vega, a star 25 lights years from Earth. The discovery hints that Vega could be very similar to our own solar system and may contain Earth-like planets...

8 January 2013
Habitable planets galore, suggests Kepler data-crunching
A detailed analysis of the first three years of data from NASA's Kepler mission, which already has discovered thousands of potential exoplanets, contains good news for those searching for habitable worlds outside our solar system...

7 January 2013
Modern parenting crippling kids' brains, says Notre Dame prof
Social practices and cultural beliefs of modern life are preventing healthy brain and emotional development in children, according to an interdisciplinary body of research presented at a symposium at the University of Notre Dame...

6 January 2013
Fossil analysis indicates dinosaurs used feathers for courtship
Fossilized dinosaur tail bones have provided strong evidence that feathered dinosaurs used tail plumage to attract mates, much like modern-day peacocks...

3 January 2013
Antarctic ice sheet warming much faster than previously thought
Remote monitoring equipment on the western part of the massive West Antarctic Ice Sheet is showing an increase of 4.3 degrees Fahrenheit in average annual temperature since 1958 - around three times faster than the average temperature rise around the globe...

2 January 2013
30ft sea level rise may be unavoidable
Climatologists examining the relationship between sea level and CO₂ concentrations over the last 40 million years have found that present day greenhouse gas concentrations have historically been associated with sea levels at least 30 feet above current levels...

1 January 2013
MRI scans reveal fructose's effects on brain's appetite regulators
Scans of the human brain after ingesting fructose have provided insights into how the substance affects brain chemistry and increases food-seeking behavior and food intake...

27 December 2012
Ancient mega-piranha had mega-bite
Megapiranha paranensis, a prehistoric relative of piranhas weighing about 20 pounds, delivered a bite with a force more powerful than any other creature – even Tyrannosaurus rex...

21 December 2012
Stanford announces peel-and-stick solar panels
Solar cells have traditionally been heavy, fixed panels, but Stanford scientists aim to change that with the development of flexible, decal-like photovoltaic panels that can be peeled off like band-aids and stuck to virtually any surface...

20 December 2012
Human hands evolved for punching, not just dexterity, says prof
A University of Utah study suggests human hands evolved not only for the manual dexterity needed to use tools or play a violin, but also so we could make fists and punch hard...

19 December 2012
Evidence for HIV in humans in distant past
HIV may have affected humans for much longer than is currently believed, according to a scientist who says that the genomes of an isolated West African human population provide important clues about how the disease has evolved...

18 December 2012
New type of cell division discovered
Scientists trying to understand the cellular mechanics of how cancer begins have discovered a new type of cell division which they have named klerokinesis. The researchers believe that klerokinesis could be an evolutionary failsafe mechanism, the function of which is to "rescue" a range of cell functions during embryonic development...

17 December 2012
Steroid use found to damage brain's spatial functioning
Long-term use of anabolic-androgenic steroids appears to severely impact a user's ability to accurately recall the shapes and spatial relationships of objects, say U.S. medicos...

14 December 2012
Three new species of venomous loris identified
University of Missouri researchers recently identified three new species of slow loris that had originally been mistakenly grouped with another species...

13 December 2012
Rethink creation of life in terms of information, argues new theory
Attempts to recreate the emergence of life by mixing and reacting basic chemicals are wrong-headed, argue two US scientists, who instead propose that it is the informational architecture of a system's chemical networks that allows it to gain causal purchase over its components and become alive...

12 December 2012
Epigenetics might explain evolutionary puzzle of homosexuality
Epigenetics - how gene expression is regulated by temporary switches, called epi-marks - appears to be a critical and overlooked factor in the long-standing evolutionary puzzle of why homosexuality occurs...

11 December 2012
Are we living in a computer simulation? Physicists propose test to find out
In 2003, a British philosopher published a probabilistic analysis examining the possibility that we might all be living in a computer simulation. His conclusion - that we quite likely are living in a computer simulation - might soon be put to the test by US physicists...

10 December 2012
The nose knows: Pinocchio effect reveals liars
Applying thermography techniques to the field of psychology, Spanish researchers have observed the "Pinocchio effect," where a person's nose becomes warmer when they are lying...

8 December 2012
Successful clinical trial for ketamine-like antidepressant
Researchers are reporting a successful phase IIa clinical trial of GLYX-13, a first-of-its-kind ketamine-like antidepressant that takes effect within 24 hours and delivers double the antidepressant effect of traditional SSRI treatments...

7 December 2012
Ultrasound used to stimulate tactile sensations in brain
Scientists have provided the first neurophysiological evidence for something that medicos have long suspected: ultrasound applied to parts of the body, such as the fingertips, can stimulate different sensory pathways leading to the brain. The breakthrough could find its way into applications ranging from medicine to consumer electronics...

6 December 2012
Oops. Greenhouse gas levels appear to be significantly underestimated
Measuring greenhouse gas emissions has traditionally relied on estimating emissions from all the activities and processes that might generate the gases, but scientists who instead took actual atmospheric measurements found that levels of nitrous oxide may be up to 3 times greater than previous estimates...

5 December 2012
Radioactive elements may make alien life more likely on exoplanets
An abundance of radioactive elements observed in a number of exoplanetary systems would make the constituent planets much warmer, say scientists at Ohio State University, who contend that this planetary inner-heat could significantly expand the so-called Goldilocks zone around stars where life could evolve...

4 December 2012
Squirrels and birds inspire latest deceptive robots
With funding from the Navy, Georgia Tech researchers are building robots that can deceive each other in a manner similar to the way birds and squirrels confuse and harass predators...

3 December 2012
Tap water implicated in rise of food allergies
Chemicals known as dichlorophenols, which are used in pesticides and to chlorinate water supplies, could be partially to blame for the rocketing number of food allergies affecting developed nations...

30 November 2012
New evidence for water and organics on Mercury
Scientists say data transmitted by the Messenger spacecraft provide compelling support for the notion that Mercury harbors abundant water ice and other frozen volatile materials in its permanently shadowed polar craters...