Though life is a complicated brew, some of its ingredients can be plucked from Earth’s backyard instead of being imported from more distant interstellar fields. In a new study, scientists suggest that complex organic molecules — such as the amino acids that build proteins and the ringed bases that form nucleic acids — grow on…
In a closely watched case, the Supreme Court threw out a lower court ruling allowing human genes to be patented, a topic of enormous interest to cancer researchers, patients and drug makers. The Court overturned patents belonging to Myriad Genetics on genes linked to increased risk of breast and ovarian cancer. Scientists say genes carrying…
British children are losing contact with nature at a “dramatic” rate, and their health and education are suffering, a National Trust report says. Traffic, the lure of video screens and parental anxieties are conspiring to keep children indoors, it says, resulting in a “nature deficit disorder”. Evidence suggests the problem is worse in the U.K….
Neanderthals in Western Europe started disappearing long before Homo sapiens showed up, suggesting that cold weather, and not cold-hearted humans, might have been responsible for the species’ ultimate demise. The findings, published in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution, suggest that at least one population of Neanderthals was vulnerable to climate change. The researchers found…
The human brain has been described as “the most complex object in the known universe”, comprising tens of billions of connecting nerve fibres seemingly tangled like a huge bowl of spaghetti. But if a team led by Van Wedeen of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston is correct, this staggering complexity arises from a seductively simple…
Biologists and engineers are working on a tiny robot that functions like a living creature and could be safely used within the human body to diagnose disease. Called ‘Cyberplasm’, it’s based loosely on the sea lamprey, and will have an electronic nervous system, ‘eye’ and ‘nose’ sensors derived from mammalian cells, and artificial muscles that…
A controversial type of pesticide linked to declining global bee populations appears to scramble bees’ sense of direction, making it hard for them to find home. Starved of foragers and the pollen they carry, colonies produce fewer queens, and eventually collapse. The phenomenon is described in two new studies published in Science. While they don’t…
The Dalai Lama has won the Templeton Prize for exceptional contributions to affirming life’s spiritual dimension by spreading his message of compassion worldwide.
Ignorance will always grow faster than knowledge. Scientists and laypeople alike would agree that for all we have come to know, there is far more we don’t know. More important, everyday there is far more we know we don’t know. One crucial outcome of scientific knowledge is to generate new and better ways of being…
Traditional measures showing strong economic growth in Brazil and India over nearly two decades fail to take account of the depletion of their natural resources, scientists and economists at the “Planet Under Pressure” conference in London said. Scientists and environment groups have been pressuring governments to include the value of their countries’ natural resources –…