NASA's Dawn spacecraft is approaching its historic orbit insertion at Ceres, which will happen on Friday, March 6th. Ceres is named for the Roman goddess of agriculture and harvests. Ceres is…

A partial human skull found in northern Israel  excited paleontologists because it seemed to hold clues about when and where humans and Neanderthals might have interbred. The Manot Cave is…

A new paper believes that a record drought in Syria from 2006-2010 and the 2011 Syrian uprising is not a coincidence. The rebellion was stoked by ongoing man-made climate change, they write. The…

Deep in the heart of synthetic biology are the proteins that make it tick and that is why protein engineering is crucial to the new discipline: Scientists grow, harvest, and reprogram proteins to…

In America, teachers with tenure can't be fired and so it is more important than ever that the best people get the jobs in the first place.  Accountability is not going away in the American…

After they die, people are happy to donate their hearts, their eyes, even whole skeletons, without knowing anything at all about what will happen to them. What about genetic information?  Under…

A 10-year-old boy suffered seizures after over-indulging in licorice sweets and that has led to calls for manufacturers to put a warning on the labels of licorice.  After suffering a 2 minute…

Amyloid, an abnormal protein whose accumulation in the brain is a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease, starts accumulating inside neurons of people as young as 20, a much younger age than scientists ever…

Emulsifiers are one key group of food ingredients that is broadly used in formulation of packaged food products. Scientists have shown that it may cause disruption of the mucosal layer in our…

During the first afternoon session of the XVI Neutrino Telescopes conference (here is the conference blog, which contains a report of most of the lectures and posters as they are presented) Francis…