Researchers announce today that they have completed the genome sequence for the gorilla - the last genus of the living great apes to have its genome decoded. While confirming that our closest relative is the chimpanzee, the team show that much of the human genome more closely resembles the gorilla t...
Maternal obesity may contribute to cognitive impairment in extremely premature babies, according to a new study by researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. "Although in the past decade medical advances have improved the survival rate of babies born at less than seven months, they are stil...
Using a new ultrafast camera, researchers have recorded the first real-time image of two atoms vibrating in a molecule. Key to the experiment, which appears in this week's issue of the journal Nature, is the researchers' use of the energy of a molecule's own electron as a kind of "flash bulb" to ...
Researchers in applied physics have cleared an important hurdle in the development of advanced materials, called metamaterials, that bend light in unusual ways. Working at a scale applicable to infrared light, the Harvard team has used extremely short and powerful laser pulses to create three-dim...
A proposed new time-keeping system tied to the orbiting of a neutron around an atomic nucleus could have such unprecedented accuracy that it neither gains nor loses 1/20th of a second in 14 billion years - the age of the Universe.
The tiny island of St Helena, 1,000 miles off the coast of south-west Africa, acted as the landing place for many of the slaves, captured by the Royal Navy during the suppression of the slave trade between 1840 and 1872. During this period a total of around 26,000 freed slaves were brought to the is...
An Indiana University geophysical experiment detected unusual seismic signals associated with tornadoes that struck regions across the Midwest last week -- information that may have value for meteorologists studying the atmospheric activity that precedes tornado disasters. The experiment by IU re...
University of Southampton researchers are investigating innovative methods of testing drugs that will reduce the need for involving animals. Drugs based on biological proteins can cause adverse immune reactions in humans.
The Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment, a multinational collaboration operating in the south of China, today reported the first results of its search for the last, most elusive piece of a long-standing puzzle: how is it that neutrinos can appear to vanish as they travel? The surprising answer open...
Researchers at the University of Copenhagen have documented a previously unknown biological mechanism in the brain's most important line of defence: the blood-brain barrier. Scientists now know that the barrier helps maintain a delicate balance of glutamate, a vital signal compound in the brain. The...
An international particle physics collaboration today announced its first results toward answering a longstanding question – how the elusive particles called neutrinos can appear to vanish as they travel through space. The result from the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment [link: http://...
Ships churning across the Pacific Ocean left this cluster of bright cloud trails lingering in the atmosphere late last month. The narrow clouds, known as ship tracks, form when water vapor condenses around tiny particles of pollution that ships either emit directly as exhaust or that form as a resul...
