Down under in Australia, down underground, scientists have found 850 previously unknown species living in subterranean water, caves and micro-caverns.
These insects, crustaceans, spiders and worms are likely only about one-fifth of the number of u

Scientists are one step closer to knowing what you've seen by reading your mind. Having modeled how images are represented in the brain, the researchers translated recorded patterns of neural activity into pictures of what test subjects had seen.

When surgeons need to deliver a payload directly to a patient's brain, it usually involves a rather invasive procedure that opens the skull and leaves the delicate grey matter inside inflamed. But researchers at the University of Minnesota have disco

Marijuana is not the ‘soft drug’ people like to think it is,” says neuro­pharmacologist Veronica Campbell of Trinity College in Dublin, whose latest study uncovered the harmful effects of THC on young neurons.
When Campbell and her co-workers treate

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Even as mega-banks topple, Juan Enriquez says the big reboot is yet to come. But don't look for it on your ballot -- or in the stock exchange. It'll come from science labs, and it promises keener bodies and minds. Our kids are goin

The reason that odd, egg-laying mammals still exist today may be because their ancestors took to the water, scientists now suggest.
The egg-laying mammals — the monotremes, including the platypus and spiny anteaters — are eccentric relatives to th

Earth’s ocean depths are often referred to as the planet’s last great unexplored frontier. Blacker than the darkest night, crushed by unimaginable pressure and for the most part untouched by the hand of Man, the benthic world is bursting with life –

Tyrannosaurus rex -- the most fearsome predator ever to have trod the Earth -- had a pint-sized precursor, remarkably similar in appearance but no heavier than a human being, according to a new report from a team of scientists. The creature was what

When people arrive for their shots, they will get an ID bracelet with a barcode. Next, basic information - name, age, gender, address - will be entered into the patient tracking database. There will be electronic records, too, of who gave the vaccine

In an case of real life imitating Hollywood, the US scientific community is increasingly concerned that two nonnative python breeds currently slithering free in south Florida could morph into a giant man-eating swamp coil.

Researchers have figured out a way to plug into the power generated by trees.
Scientists have known for some time that plants can conduct electricity. In fact, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that plants can pack up to

M Simon at iecfusiontech reports that IEC (inertial electrostatic) fusion has gotten $8 million in funding. IEC Fusion is one of the most promising routes to commercial nuclear fusion and a possible solution to all of our energy problems. If it works

In slapstick comedy, the fall guy gets the pie in the face when the clown in front of him ducks. It’s funny because most of us instinctively duck when we see something coming. But two recent experimental studies are revealing new automated capabil

Scientists have created the final predicted form of stable ice,
called ice XV, in the lab. But don’t worry — Kurt Vonnegut had nothing
to do with it, and the exotic new form of ice can’t destroy
civilization.

Types
of ice are classified by how close the water molecules pack together
and the structure the molecules arrange themselves in. With the new
discovery, researchers have identified 16 forms of ice (including two
types of ice I) named in order of discovery. Most of the ice on Earth
is type Ih (h for hexagonal, hence the six-sided symmetry of all
snowflakes). Researchers had long predicted the existence of ice XV,
but had never seen it before.

“We have removed the question mark from the phase diagram of water,”
says Christoph Salzmann of the University of Oxford in England,
coauthor of a paper published online September 2 in Physical Review Letters. A phase diagram maps how molecules will behave at certain pressures and temperatures.

Forget about 20/20. “Perfect” vision could be redefined by gadgets that give you the eyes of a cyborg.

The tech industry calls the digital enrichment of the physical world “augmented reality.” Such technology is already appearing in smartphones and toys, and enthusiasts dream of a pair of glasses we could don to enhance our everyday perception. But why stop there?

Scientists, eye surgeons, professors and students at the University of Washington have been developing a contact lens containing one built-in LED, powered wirelessly with radio frequency waves.

Eventually, more advanced versions of the lens could be used to
provide a wealth of information, such as virtual captions scrolling
beneath every person or object you see. Significantly, it could also be
used to monitor your own vital signs, such as body temperature and
blood glucose level.

Why a contact lens? The surface of the eye contains enough data
about the body to perform personal health

A large international research team has decoded the genome of the
notorious organism that triggered the Irish potato famine in the
mid-19th century and now threatens this season's tomato and potato
crops across much of the US.

Published in the September 9 online issue of the journal Nature,
the study reveals that the organism boasts an unusually large genome
size more than twice that of closely related species and an
extraordinary genome structure, which together appear to enable the
rapid evolution of genes, particularly those involved in plant
infection. These data expose an unusual mechanism that enables the
pathogen to outsmart its plant hosts and may help researchers unlock
new ways to control it.

Jones and
her colleagues tested the limits of mixotrophs by subjecting them to six months
of low light or complete darkness. The mixotrophs not only thrived, but also
surprised researchers by helping sunlight-dependent organisms also survive
pitch black conditions.

Israeli archaeologists have uncovered one of the earliest depictions of
a menorah, the seven-branched candelabra that has come to symbolize
Judaism, the
Israel Antiquities Authority said.
The menorah was engraved in stone around 2,000 years ago and found in a synagogue recently discovered by the Sea of Galilee.

Other researchers have made live frogs and grasshoppers float in mid-air
before, but such research with mice, being closer biologically to
humans, could help in studies to counteract bone loss due to reduced
gravity over long spans of time, as might be expected in deep space
missions or on the surfaces of other planets.

As part of a greater effort to someday build computing elements at
an atomic scale, IBM scientists in Zurich have taken the
highest-resolution image ever of an individual molecule using
non-contact atomic force microscopy. Performed in an ultrahigh vacuum
at 5 degrees Kelvin, scientists were able to "to look through the
electron cloud and see the atomic backbone of an individual molecule
for the first time," a feat necessary for the further development of
atomic scale electronic building blocks.

Atomic force microscopy employs a cantilever so small that its tip
tapers to a nanoscale point. As the microscope scans, the cantilever
bounces up and down in response to the miniscule forces between the tip
and the sample, generating a picture of the sample’s surface. The
pentacene molecule sampled consists of 22 carbon atoms and 14 hydrogen
atoms and measures 1.4 nanometers in length, with the space between
carbon atoms registering at 0.14 nanometers, or ha

The Japanese government is prepared to spend some 2 trillion yen on a one-gigawatt orbiting solar power station—and
this week Mitsubishi and other Japanese companies have signed on to
boost the effort. Boasting some four kilometers of solar panels—maybe
of the superefficient Spectrolab variety but more likely domestically sourced from Mitsubishi or Sharp—the space solar power station would orbit some 36,000 kilometers above Earth and transmit power via microwave or laser beam.