A drug that activates only your father’s version of a gene may treat neural disorder
Anyone who's passed basic biology knows that we get one copy of a gene from our mother, a second from our father. But few people realize that not all of these genes end up being...
Remains of gas giants, swallowed by red giant star, now orbit as small planets
There may come a day when exoplanet discoveries start to bore me, but we're not there yet. A day after the Kepler team announced the identification of Earth-sized planets orbiting a distant star, they're...
Cluster of >8.0-magnitude earthquakes doesn’t indicate Earth is more active
The past few years have seen an unusual number of epically large earthquakes, with several—in Sumatra, Chile, and Japan—reaching magnitudes of roughly 9.0. This has led a number of people to wonder whether larg......
Weather fronts of the world unite: tornadoes demand the weekend off
One of the classic sci-fi doomsday machines is the weather manipulator. What better way to bend the world to your will than taking control of the weather? It seems, however, that labor regulations may have...
Kepler-20′s oddball planet assortment challenges models of planet formation
NASA's press conference on the newly discovered Earth-sized planets has just concluded, and most of the time was spent reiterating what was in our earlier report. Most of the value of listening in came...
Kepler team spots Earth-sized planets orbiting sun-like star
Just two weeks after the confirmation of a planet that's within the habitable zone of a distant star, the Kepler team is back with the discovery of two Earth-sized planets orbiting in what is now...
MIT launching certificate program based on OpenCourseWare, open source platform
A decade after MIT began to put its teaching materials and lectures online via the OpenCourseWare platform, the university has announced that it will leverage these materials to provide an online certification program, curr...
Supernova research challenges cosmic "dark flow" mystery
New research contradicts the finding that everything in the visible universe is moving in the same direction.
Many scientists were baffled in 2008, when a team of researchers presented evidence suggesting that all gal...
Naked mole rats feel no pain due to acid
African naked mole rats never cease to amaze. Not only are they exceedingly ugly, but they are the longest living rodents. Moreover, none have ever been observed to get cancer. And they are...
In group decision-making, ignorance promotes democracy
How do groups of animals make collective decisions? Last week, we learned that bees reach consensus by headbutting those with opposing views. But in many other species, the decision-making process is a bit...
Physicists use lasers to entangle diamonds
Quantum entanglement is probably the most confusing and confused concept in quantum mechanics. Normally, two particles can be described using separate mathematical descriptions. But, under certain circumstances, they ...
