Smaller fish on the menu as oceans warm
Warmer and less-oxygenated waters could see many fish species reduce in size by up to 20 percent over the next…
Novel rabies-like virus behind hemorrhagic fever outbreak
A 2009 outbreak of acute hemorrhagic fever in the Democratic Republic of Congo was likely caused by a novel virus…
Ancient Buddhist statue, filched by Nazis, was carved from meteorite
A 1,000 year-old Buddhist statue discovered by a Nazi expedition to Tibet in 1938 has been analyzed by scientists and…
Hubble images provide farthest-ever montage of early Universe
Using multiple images from the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have assembled a new, improved portrait of our deepest-ever view of…
Antibiotic oomph: the eyes have it
Berkeley scientists have found that small fragments of a keratin protein in the eye are exceptionally efficient at killing off…
Forests set to return to Canada’s extreme north
University of Montreal scientists studying the fossilized remains of an ancient forest inside the Arctic circle think that our warming…
Psychopaths revealed via smell test
Psychopathic tendencies appear to be associated with an impaired sense of smell, say Australian scientists who believe inefficient processing in…
Gene mutation behind African migration also responsible for modern health woes
The brain-boosting genetic mutation that allowed primitive man to migrate across the African continent is over-represented in modern-day African Americans…
Soundscape ecologists recreate lost world
Rising before daylight and perched on a bench at his Sauk County shack in Depression-era Wisconsin, pioneering wildlife ecologist Aldo…
Climatologists estimate extreme rainfall events in tropics
Thunderstorm complexes, flood-inducing monsoonsand wide-sweeping cyclones will all become more likely in the tropics; suggest MIT projections that show 10…
Cheap USB ultrasound ready for developing world
A USB ultrasound device about the size of a computer mouse that can be manufactured for as little as $50…
Bolivian park most biodiverse area on planet
The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) says Madidi National Park in northwest Bolivia may be the most biologically diverse place on…
Sexual arousal neutralizes disgust response
Dutch researchers have found that natural responses to disgusting stimuli were lessened significantly when female subjects were sexually aroused. The…
Semen protein acts as “master regulator” in females
Working with fruit-flies (Drosophila melanogaster), University of East Anglia scientists have observed “remarkable” changes in female gene expression after exposure…
Joke boffins analyze tragedy humor
“Too soon!” complained the audience when comedian Jeffrey Ross did a skit about the recent shootings in Colorado, but psychologists…
Fungi make modern violin sound like a Stradivarius
Researcher Francis W. M. R. Schwarze, from the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, has used fungi to…
New uncertainty over uncertainty principle
One of the fundamental tenets of quantum mechanics, Werner Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, is being challenged by University of Toronto researchers…
South American glacial thinning sharply accelerates
Thinning of the largest icefields in the southern hemisphere (excluding Antarctica) has accelerated sharply, with a new study showing Patagonian…
Double whammy dinosaur extinction theory
Widely credited to have wiped out the dinosaurs, the giant asteroid that smashed into the Yucatán Peninsula 65 million years…
Women better with colors
A study examining visual processing in the brain found that men have greater sensitivity to detail and rapidly moving stimuli,…
Biodiversity backflip on warming climate
The notion that the planet’s warming climate will result in widespread extinctions has been challenged by a new study that…
Alcohol rewires brain for PTSD
Heavy drinking appears to impair the brain’s ability to recover from trauma and may put people at greater risk for…
Booze intake influenced by glass shape
Research subjects drank beer from a curved glass almost twice as fast as from a straight sided glass, but the…
Nicotine receptor gets blame for Internet addiction
Internet addiction has a physiological basis, according to German researchers who say a variant of the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor makes…
Sugar molecules observed in distant planet formation
For the first time, astronomers have identified molecules of glycolaldehyde – a simple form of sugar – in the gas…
Binary star has multiple orbiting planets
Astronomers have found the first multi-planet solar system orbiting a binary star (artist’s impression appears right). Importantly, the discovery shows…
Infant formula found to compromise immune system
Duke University scientists have discovered how breast milk, but not infant formula, fosters colonies of microbiotic flora in a newborn’s…
Tackling obesity by manipulating gut flora
Antibiotics could one day be the standard treatment for regulating weight, suggests a new study inNature Immunology that examines the…
Flat lens focuses without distortion
Physicists at Harvard have created an ultrathin, flat lens that focuses light without imparting the distortions that occur with conventional…
Cause of global throat cancer epidemic a mystery
The “astounding” increase in cases of esophageal cancer around the world seems to have begun in the UK in the…