New analysis pokes holes in biodiversity’s supposed link to human disease
The vast majority of new, emerging or re-emerging human diseases are caused by pathogens from animals, according to the World…
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…
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,…
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,…
Natural selection reducing road kill
Urban environments can be evolutionary hotspots, suggests a study in the journal Current Biology that explored why road kill surveys…
Overheard cellphone conversations “uniquely intrusive”
Confirming what many of us have long suspected, a new study in the journal PLOS ONE has found that a…
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…
Stroke diagnosed via txt messaging
The inability to write a coherent text message may become an important tool in diagnosing a type of crippling stroke…
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, but…
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…
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…
Peptide discovery could lead to happiness pill
The neurochemical changes that underlie human emotions are still largely unknown, but UCLA scientists have for the first time identified…
Sports brain injury may actually be an autoimmune phenomenon
U.S. medicos have proposed a radical new way of thinking about concussions and sub-concussive hits to the head that are…
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…
Can nicotine transmit disease through multiple generations?
Nicotine creates heritable epigenetic marks on the genome, say Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute scientists who contend that a grandparent’s…
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…
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…
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…
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…
First discovery of extraterrestrial 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…
Nano-rod solar cell generates hydrogen
A new type of solar collector that uses gold nano-rods could convert sunlight into energy without many of the problems…
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…
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…
Medicos mull possible link between obesity and ADHD
A new University of Illinois study has established a possible link between high-fat diets and childhood cognitive conditions such as…
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…
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, say researchers at…
Flushed pharmaceuticals fueling fearless fish
Widely prescribed anxiety-moderating drugs such as Serepax are persisting through wastewater treatment plants after being excreted and modifying fish behaviors,…
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…
Republicans’ brains wired for fight-or-flight
Measuring the brain activity of Republicans and Democrats while they played a game has revealed striking differences in each group’s…
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,…