E. coli outbreak leads to massive flour recall
Yesterday, General Mills expanded its flour recall due to four more reported illnesses from eating raw dough or batter produced…
First human CRISPR trial passes safety and ethics review
Last week, a proposal representing the first use of CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) in humans passed a…
Scientists detect gravitational waves for the second time
About a hundred years ago, in his theory of general relativity Albert Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves, “ripples”…
A new way to fight climate change: Trap carbon dioxide in volcanic rocks
Climate change refers to the fluctuation of the climate system caused by the energy entering and leaving Earth. The greenhouse…
Your microbes might decide how much you weigh
Microbes—usually bacteria, fungi, or protists—made a big splash of news when the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy…
Green light reduces migraine headaches
Migraine headaches, or migraines, are defined as an intense throbbing or a pulsing sensation in one area of the head,…
SpaceX’s Leaning Rocket Arrives at Cape Canaveral
The first-stage booster pictured above pushed the limits during SpaceX’s 4th successful landing last Friday with a speed that was…
Common yeast infection linked to mental illness
In a study published in online journal npj Schizophrenia, Johns Hopkins researchers found that a history of Candida yeast infections…
Tylenol and other paracetamol painkillers may hinder the brain’s error-correction mechanisms
It’s been known for more than a century that acetaminophen (also known as paracetamol and marketed as Tylenol and Panadol)…
Urgent rethink required on Earth’s carbon-sinks, suggests study
In a new study that expands our understanding of how humans contribute to global warming, scientists have discovered that human…
Generalized constructal law shows that evolution doesn’t apply only to biological things
A law of physics that explains why larger animals live longer and travel further can be extended to the simplest…
Stimulants’ ADHD calming mechanism revealed
When Dr. Charles Bradley administered Benzedrine to a group of children with hyperactivity in 1937 a new era of psychopharmacology…
Gaian bottleneck means alien life never persists, say Oz astrobiologists
Life on other planets would likely be brief and become extinct very quickly, according to a new paper by astrobiologists…
Could suicide be a variant of an evolutionarily adaptive set of behaviors?
Snapping shrimp, naked mole rats, ants, honeybees, and humans – what do they all have in common? They all share…
fMRI data trove yields new insights into consciousness and abstract thought
Using 20 years of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data from tens of thousands of brain imaging experiments, neuroscientists at…
Brain inflammation linked to compromised reward circuits in depression
Around one third of people with depression have high levels of inflammation markers in their blood. Now, new research appearing…
Sunscreen killing coral reefs
Oxybenzone, a UV-filtering compound used in sunscreens, has been found in high concentrations in the waters around popular coral reefs…
Placebo response growing over time – but only in America
A new study finds that rising placebo responses may play a part in the increasingly high failure rate for clinical…
Electronic implant bypasses brain damage by re-encoding memories
Designed to help individuals suffering from memory loss, a new prosthesis which includes a small array of electrodes implanted into…
Study identifies recipe for Goldilocks quantum phase transitions
University of Miami researchers have found that crossing a quantum phase transition at just-the-right speed generates the richest, most complex…
“Molecules” made of light may be possible, say physicists
A team including theoretical physicists from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has taken a step toward building…
Zoloft appears to alter brain structures, say U.S. researchers
Experiments with monkeys showed that the antidepressant sertraline (marketed as Zoloft) significantly increased the volume of one brain region in…
Magnetic wormhole connecting two regions of space created by Spanish physicists
Physicists at the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona have designed and created in the laboratory the first experimental wormhole that can…
“Intraterrestrial” life found in rocks below the seafloor.
The discovery that ancient rocks harbored microbial life deep below the seafloor confirms a long-standing hypothesis that interactions between mantle…
How climate change created the modern dog
Appearing in Nature Communications, a new study of dog fossils suggests that the evolutionary path of whole groups of predators…
Marine organisms evolving in response to ocean acidification
Researchers at Plymouth University have found that polychaete worms living in acidified waters exhibit a tendency to nurture their offspring…
Bonobo communication similar to that of human infants, suggests new study
Researchers from the University of Birmingham (UK) and the University of Neuchatel (Switzerland) have found that wild bonobos, our closest…
New technique for thought-controlled data input almost as accurate as one-fingered typing
When we type or perform other precise tasks, our brains and muscles usually work together effortlessly. But when a neurological…
New definition of chaos proposed
The idea that the flapping of a butterfly’s wings might trigger a hurricane beautifully encapsulates the concept of chaos, where…
NASA discover Earth’s twin 1,400 light-years away
The Kepler mission has found the first near-Earth-size planet – called Kepler-452b – in the “habitable zone” around a G2…