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A new study conducted at the University of Bristol and published online today in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology sheds light on how the brain and inner ear developed in dinosaurs.

Researchers have pinpointed a catalytic trigger for the onset of Alzheimer's disease – when the fundamental structure of a protein molecule changes to cause a chain reaction that leads to the death of neurons in the brain.
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Parasitic wasps switch off the immune systems of fruit flies by draining calcium from the flies' blood cells, a finding that offers new insight into how pathogens break through a host's defenses.

A new study of both computer-created and natural proteins suggests that the number of unique pockets – sites where small molecule pharmaceutical compounds can bind to proteins – is surprisingly small, meaning drug side effects may be impossible to avoid. The study also found that the fundamental biochemical processes needed for life could have been enabled by the simple physics of protein folding.

Salamanders' immune systems are key to their remarkable ability to regrow limbs, and could also underpin their ability to regenerate spinal cords, brain tissue and even parts of their hearts, scientists have found.

Older prostate cancer patients with other underlying health conditions should think twice before committing to surgery or radiation therapy for their cancer, according to a multicenter study led by researchers in the UCLA Department of Urology.

Future teams of subterranean search and rescue robots may owe their success to the lowly fire ant, a much-despised insect whose painful bites and extensive networks of underground tunnels are all-too-familiar to people living in the southern United States.

In a new study described in the journal Oncogene, researchers reveal how a key player in cell growth, immunity and the inflammatory response can be transformed into a primary contributor to tumor growth.

A new measure of the heterogeneity – the variety of genetic mutations – of cells within a tumor appears to predict treatment outcomes of patients with the most common type of head and neck cancer. In the May 20 issue of the journal Cancer, investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary describe how their measure was a better predictor of survi

Whole-cell pertussis vaccines were more effective at protecting against pertussis than acellular pertussis vaccines during a large recent outbreak, according to a new Kaiser Permanente study published in Pediatrics.

One of the basic principles of nanotechnology is that when you make things extremely small—one nanometer is about five atoms wide, 100,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair—they are going to become more perfect.
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Corn and soybean farmers not only survived last year's epic drought — thanks to crop insurance, they made bigger profits than they would have in a normal year, a new analysis finds. And a big chunk of those profits were provided through taxpayer subsidies.
Linguists used to think the human brain had a specific region devoted to understanding language. But brain scans now indicate that regions controlling vision, movement, taste, smell and touch are all called into action when we think of a word, too.
Pachyderms' metabolism offers clues to dinosaur behavior
Fourteen-year-old "Jane" was likely eaten by starving colonists after she died
A breathtaking new video captures a crisp evening descending into a star-strewn night in Death Valley National Park last month. This new production from Sunchaser Pictures -- the team that brought you Death Valley DreamLapse -- features two desert enigmas: ...
A deep dive into the nature and complications of alt fuels like fracked natural gas, methane hydrate, and tar sands oil
A new bill moving through Congress would give the authorities unprecedented access to citizens' information.
A vast geologic formation in three northern Plains states contains twice as much oil and three times as much natural gas as the federal government previously estimated, according to a reassessment of the area released by the Interior Department Tuesday.
A material called boron nitride - originally touted as useful for next-generation electronics - turns out to be a high-performance pollutant "sponge".
A plastic smartphone screen cover patterned with tiny lenses could help mobile 3-D take off.Last week, a company in Singapore began shipping $35 plastic screen protectors for the iPhone 5. These are no ordinary screen protectors, though—each has half a million tiny lenses precisely patterned on its surface, which can turn an ordinary phone into a device capable of displaying 3-D images and video, no glasses required.
At conference starting Wednesday, huge trove of research papers point to enormous possibilities, but privacy issues remain.Cell phones generate tremendous amounts of human mobility and other data that can be particularly useful in the developing world to redesign transportation networks (see “African Bus Routes Redrawn Using Cell-Phone Data”) and provide a boon to epidemiology (see “Big Data from Cheap Phones”).
The golf-cart-sized space explorer put itself in standby mode after sensing a problem on April 22 after routine maintenance
NASA is paying $424 million more to get U.S. astronauts into space, and agency is blaming Congress for extra expense
NASA scientists say a massive storm on Saturn's North Pole looks just like a hurricane on earth, spinning counter-clockwise. Its eye is 20 times bigger than the ones we see on Earth.
SpaceX calls it the "Grasshopper" — it's a rocket that doesn't fall back to Earth haphazardly after launch. It carefully returns itself to the launchpad standing up, right where it started.
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