Scientists achieve most detailed picture ever of key part of hepatitis C virus

Scientists have determined the most detailed picture yet of a crucial part of the hepatitis C virus, which the virus uses to infect liver cells. The new data reveal unexpected structural features of this protein.

Read more

Brain Cells 'Geotag' Memories To Cache What Happened — And Where

Scientists have identified special cells in the brain's hippocampus that mimic a trick of some digital cameras. These cells automatically 'tag' the memory of each event in our lives with information about where that event took place — the better to recall, perhaps, where we left our lost keys.

Read more

Fate Of Comet ISON Unclear Hours After Its Encounter With Sun

Most of ISON, a huge comet formed at the birth of the solar system, apparently did not survive Thursday's encounter with the sun, NASA said. Scientists detected the comet last year and had hoped to continue studying it for information to be mined from its "primordial ices."

Read more

These 6 birds are simply amazing

Scientists study birds for many reasons—to build better robots or to learn how to live longer. What they often discover is that most birds are quite amazing. Here are six birds we think are pretty cool,
Read more

Did you know - the heart has a brain of its own?

Dr. J. Andrew Armour introduced the term, "heart brain," in 1991. Armour showed that the heart’s complex nervous system qualified it as a "little brain

Researchers at the Institute of HeartMath and other organizations have shown that the human heart, in addition to its other functions, actually possesses the equivalent of its own brain, called the heart brain, which interacts and communicates with the head brain.

Read more
See also Heartmath

Scientists Warn of Significant Harm From Ocean Acidification

The oceans of the Pale Blue Dot are going to be a lot less hospitable to coral reefs and other marine life by the end of the century. That’s one of the worrying conclusions from a new expert report that summarizes problems from increasing acidity
Read More

Humans’ music and genes may have evolved together

Music may be a tool scientists can use to trace human migrations. Researchers analyzed traditional folk songs and the mitochondrial DNA among nine indigenous populations of Taiwan and found an association between the diversity of the groups’ music and the variation in the groups’ genetic material.
Read More

Fire may smolder under Antarctic ice

Quivers in the remote West Antarctic have all the hallmarks of volcanoes and magma under the ice, according to a study appearing November 17 in Nature Geoscience

Read more

Thin, active invisibility cloak demonstrated for first time

Invisibility cloaking is no longer the stuff of science fiction: two researchers in The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering have demonstrated an effective invisibility cloak that is thin, scalable and adaptive to different types and sizes of objects.
Read more 

New paradigm for solar cell construction demonstrated

Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University have experimentally demonstrated a new paradigm for solar cell construction which may ultimately make them less expensive, easier to manufacture and more efficient at harvesting energy from the sun.
Read full article

Climate change is real, ignore the denialists

Opinion: It’s time to get angry with so-called ‘sceptics’ – before it’s too late 

The conclusions of the fifth assessment report of the Intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC) – the world’s foremost authority on climate-change – delivered late last month were seering and stark: “Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, sea level has risen, and the concentrations of greenhouse gases have increased.”

Read full article in the Irish Times

Pesticides Linked to Endometriosis Risk

Why some women and not others get endometriosis — the growth of uterine tissue outside the uterus that can cause pain and infertility — is not known, but researchers have come up with one possible contributing factor: pesticide poisoning.
Scientists studied 248 women with surgically confirmed endometriosis and 538 healthy controls. They measured blood levels of two pesticides, mirex and beta HCH, which persist in some fish and dairy products even though their use in the United States has been banned for decades. The study appears online in Environmental Health Perspectives.

Read full article