News
Ancient Tweaking
Twenty years ago, scientists knew nothing of the scraps of RNA that are now known to influence just about every process in our bodies. Back then, the textbooks were simpler: genes code for proteins via the intermediate of RNA, and proteins called transcription factors regulate other proteins. This recipe was so entrenched in the basic [...]
Shaping up HIV
In the 1960s, a Danish company, seeking to improve on the traditional football made from the bladder and stomach of animals, invented the modern football. The designers realised that to form a perfect ball they needed to combine 20 leather hexagons with 12 pentagons, and in so doing demonstrated one of the basic laws of [...]
Cue factors
Our genes were once thought to be responsible for shaping who we are. But now scientists are having a rethink. Thanks to a glut of data from new sequencing projects, researchers are beginning to recognise that the regions of the human genome that encode proteins are unlikely to be behind the millions of differences between [...]
Surviving drought
We’ve all felt it: a quickening of the heart and a slight shortness of breath as you walk into an exam room. Most of us recognise that the hormone adrenaline is responsible for this reaction, but we’re not unique in responding to stress with a release of hormones.
Plants do this too – but unlike you [...]
Aberrant appendages
Having a second pair of hands might seem like an advantage but animals born with extra limbs, because of changes in their DNA, generally do not fair well. For more than 25 years, scientists have known about the existence of a mutation in a fruit fly gene that causes just such aberrant appendages, yet the [...]
Pinning the tail on the histone
Nearly 60 years ago, Pamela Lewis, a geneticist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, noticed that some of the flies she was experimenting on had tiny comb-like structures on their second and third pairs of legs, and not
just the first pair as is usual.
Lewis called these structures ‘sex-combs‘ because males use them [...]
Waxing cutaneous
When we’re in the bath, our skin prevents both water from moving into our bodies and essential nutrients from leaching into the tub. But because most of us don’t spend our entire lives submerged underwater, our skin’s chief role is to control how much water evaporates from our bodies. In fact, the skin’s role as [...]
Decloaking the germ
The bacterium Listeria infects humans through contaminated food. Once in the gut, this pathogen can be life-threatening if contracted during pregnancy or by newborns and those with weakened immune systems.
But for most people, an encounter with Listeria causes nothing more than vomiting and diarrhoea because our immune system recognises the
long, propeller-like projections on the bacterial [...]
A nervous switch
In 1863 a Heidelberg doctor described a devastating neurodegenerative condition that causes children to forget how to walk and talk before their teens.
The symptoms begin with muscle weakness, poor balance and a slurring of speech, and develop into a gradual breakdown in all motor control.
:: Read more here ::
Early rocks to reveal their ages
A new technique has been helping scientists piece together how the Earth’s continents were arranged 2.5 billion years ago. The novel method allows scientists to recover rare minerals from rocks.
By analysing the composition of these minerals, researchers can precisely date ancient volcanic rocks for the first time. By aligning rocks that have a [...]
Space storm’s ‘epicentre’ found
The precise spot at which a space storm struck the Earth’s outer atmosphere has been pinpointed for the first time. These storms are caused by the bending and stretching of the Earth’s magnetic field by material from the Sun.
Observations like this may one day lead to better forecasting of these events, a meeting of [...]
Space rock yields carbon bounty
Formic acid, a molecule implicated in the origins of life, has been found at record levels on a meteorite that fell into a Canadian lake in 2000. Cold temperatures on Tagish Lake prevented the volatile chemical from dissipating quickly.
An analysis showed four times more formic acid in the fragments than has been recorded on [...]
Morning sickness may be sign of a bright baby
SICK of morning sickness? Take heart: it may be a sign that your child is developing a high IQ.
Irena Nulman and colleagues at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Canada, contacted 120 women who years earlier had called a morning sickness hotline. Thirty did not have morning sickness, but the researchers asked the rest [...]
Canadian dig yields tiny dinosaur
The smallest meat-eating dinosaur yet to be found in North America has been identified from six tiny pelvic bones. Hesperonychus was the size of a small chicken, and used its rows of serrated teeth to feed on insects, experts say.
The bird-like creature is closely related to Microraptor – a tiny feathered dinosaur discovered in [...]
Say is [short] and say it loud
The first morning I sat down at my new desk, a pile of researcher papers sitting ready to be devoured, the task ahead: to turn the dense, jargoned language of a scientific research paper into something simpler and more accessible to the public. Starting this job, as a science writer for the BBC, [...]
Beatles’ tunes aid memory recall
The world’s largest catalogue of Beatles-related recollections will be unveiled in Liverpool this week. The 3,000 memories, from 69 nations, could help scientists better understand how music can help humans tap into the long forgotten events of their lives.
A link between positive feelings and music could explain why tunes trigger memories, suggests the UK-based [...]
Magic ‘boosts pupils’ confidence’
Children taught how to do magic tricks instead of attending standard personal and social education lessons perform better socially, a psychologist says. Magic requires self-discipline and an ability to empathise with your audience, Prof Richard Wiseman told the British Association Science Festival.
His team thinks it could help with bullying and aggressive behaviour. He [...]
Bees join hunt for serial killers
The way bumblebees search for food could help detectives hunt down serial killers, scientists believe. Just as bees forage some distance away from their hives, so murderers avoid killing near their homes, says the University of London team.
This “geographic profiling” works so well in bees, the scientists say future experiments on the animals could [...]
Stroking reveals pleasure nerve
A new touch-sensitive nerve fibre responsible for the sense of pleasure experienced during stroking has been described at a UK conference today. The nerves tap into a human’s reward pathways, and could help explain why we enjoy grooming and a good hug, a neuroscientist has explained.
His team used a stroking machine to reveal the [...]
Fusion power seeks super steels
Scientists say an understanding of how the Twin Towers collapsed will help them develop the materials needed to build fusion reactors. New research shows how steel will fail at high temperatures because of the magnetic properties of the metal.
The New York buildings fell when their steel backbones lost strength in the fires that followed [...]
