Science News

A research team has identified a defective gene that affects vascular smooth-muscle cells in people who suffer from hereditary thoracic aortic disease, which can kill victims with little warning in the prime of their lives.

“This discovery shows an architectural and iconographic tradition different from what has been known until now”

Carbon dating tests and excavation of a colorful pre-Incan temple indicate that it was built thousands of years ago by an advanced civilization, a prominent archaeologist said in comments published Sunday by a Peruvian newspaper.

Unearthed in Peru's archeologically rich northern coastal desert, the temple has a staircase leading to an altar that was used for worshipping fire and making offerings to deities, Walter Alva, who headed the three-month excavation, told El Comercio.

Some of the walls of the 27,000-square-foot site _ almost half the size of a football field _ were painted, and a white and red mural depicts a deer being hunted with a net. Read more

New research into childhood prejudice suggests that loyalty and disloyalty play a more important role than previously thought in how children treat members of their own and other groups.

A UN eport says a ban on human reproductive cloning, coupled with restricted therapeutic research, is the global compromise on this ethical dilemma most likely to succeed.

A new paper says that peanut husks, one of the biggest food industry waste products, could be used to extract environmentally damaging copper ions from waste water.

The new analyses revealed today from the STEP HIV vaccine clinical trial are both disappointing and puzzling. At this time, the data offer no clear explanations as to why the vaccine showed no measurable efficacy or why among individuals with background immunity to the adenovirus vector, there were more HIV infections in the vaccinees as compared to those in the placebo group.

People who have a mother with Alzheimer’s disease appear to be at higher risk for getting the disease than those individuals whose fathers are afflicted, according to a new study by NYU School of Medicine researchers.

Social critics fear the DNA revolution may also be giving long-discredited racial prejudices a new potency. The notion that race is more than skin deep, they fear, could undermine principles of equal treatment and opportunity that have relied on the presumption that we are all fundamentally equal.

A 4,000-year-old temple filled with murals has been unearthed on the northern coast of Peru, making it one of the oldest finds in the Americas, a leading archaeologist said on Saturday.

Despite thousands of years of practical knowledge gained in the field of agriculture, despite mountains of published research generated in the lab, the very scientific community that accepts that animal sub-populations can be significantly distinct from one another is reflexively resistant to the possibility that that such differences may exist between sub-populations of humans.

Scientists have revealed the contents of an ancient shipwreck dating back to the era of the Roman Republic and Athenian empire using genetic analysis.

The big world of classical physics mostly seems sensible: waves are waves and particles are particles, and the moon rises whether anyone watches or not. The tiny quantum world is different ...

Using the tools and techniques of soft condensed matter physics, a research team in Switzerland has demonstrated that a finely tuned balance of attractions between proteins keeps the lens of the eye ...

Overweight children and adults have low levels in their blood of a protein known as SHGB, which transports sex steroids and regulates their entry into tissues. Low levels of SHGB are a marker of the metabolic syndrome, a combination of medical disorders that increase an individual’s risk of developing type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

Researchers at Harvard University and Pennsylvania State University have invented a technology, inspired by nature, to reduce the accumulation of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) caused by human emissions.

Scientists from P&G Beauty announced that they successfully sequenced the complete genome for Malassezia globosa (M. globosa), a naturally occurring fungus responsible for the onset of dandruff and other skin conditions in humans.

For the past four years, Gabor Forgacs, Professor of Physics at University of Missouri-Columbia, has been working to refine the process of 'printing' tissue structures of complex shape with the aim of eventually building human organs.

Taking a page from nature, a team of researchers have developed a method to enhance removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and place it in the Earth's oceans for storage.

Canadian scientists have discovered evidence that genetic factors play a major role in determining whether a man is homosexual or heterosexual.

Babies driving robots. It sounds silly but it is actually the focus of innovative research being conducted at the University of Delaware to help infants with special needs.