A new CU-Boulder study indicates subalpine forests in the West will soak up less carbon dioxide as the climate warms and the growing seasons lengthen. Contrary to conventional belief, as the climate warms and growing seasons lengthen subalpine forests are likely to soak up less carbon dioxide, according to a new University of Colorado at Boulder study. As a result, Read more »

US space agency NASA has chosen three space projects as final candidates for the agency’s next space venture to another celestial body in our solar system. The projects either aims to probe Venus, an asteroid or the Moon. The projects are part of the New Frontiers Program, designed to carry out frequent, low-cost scientific missions to enhance understanding of the Read more »

A rare primitive theropod, or a bipedal, primarily carnivorous dinosaur, is bringing clarity to the early evolution of the group that includes more recent relatives like T. rex and birds. Tawa hallae, uncovered in New Mexican sediments from the Upper Triassic, has evidence of an air sack system surrounding the neck and braincase found in birds today, making this characteristic Read more »

Researchers at Rice University and Baylor College of Medicine have found an unexpected weakness in deadly H1N1 influenza virus. This is a good news for H1N1 researchers, as the weakness may exploited to defeat the Swine Flu causing virus as well as other flu viruses.
Comparing genetic sequences of H1N1, going all the way back to it’s first known appearance Read more »

In a recent study, University of Missouri researchers found that Internet users are better able to understand, remember and emotionally respond to material found through ’searching’ compared to content found while ’surfing’. The study, ‘The Effect of Searching Versus Surfing on Cognitive and Emotional Responses to Online News,” which was published in the Journal of Media Psychology, is expected to Read more »

A team of researchers from the United States, Korea, and France has sequenced and analyzed the genomes of two important laboratory strains of E. coli bacteria, one used to study evolution and the other to produce proteins for basic research or practical applications.
E. coli has been associated with recent outbreaks of food-borne illnesses, but the two most important laboratory types, Read more »

Although the human genome sequence lists every single DNA base of the roughly 3 billion bases that make up a human genome, it doesn’t tell biologists much about how its function is regulated. Now, for the first time researchers at the Salk Institute have released the first detailed map of the human epigenome, the layer of genetic control beyond the Read more »

A team of international molecular scientists has discovered a new, fast mechanism by which cells communicate change – for example their location during spreading of a cancer in the human body – to adjacent cells. The discovery, published online today in the open-access journal PLoS Biology,  sheds new light on cell behavior and could lead to the development on new Read more »