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Neurons (shown above) are progressively degraded in Alzheimer’s Disease. [Image: neurons/Mike Seyfang under CC-BY licence] Recent findings from Duke University have implicated overactive immune cells as a potential cause of Alzheimer’s disease…

by Joseph Timpona We often think of viruses as foreign invaders– microscopic agents intent on making us sick before spreading to the next victim.  However, some viruses become enduring guests by hitchhiking a permanent ride in our genomes. In fact,…

by Grigori Guitchounts figures by Brian Chow For decades, we have known that specialized neurons in the hippocampus of rodents called place cells reflect the animals’ location in space. Meanwhile, studies have also implicated the hippocampus in…

Invasive micropapillary carcinoma of the breast, courtesy of Ed Uthman, Wikimedia CommonsA study shows that when a certain protein called Timp is lacking, there is an increase in the number of stem cells of the mammary gland (an organ in the breast),…

Scanning electron micrograph of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (brown) surrounded by cellular debris.Credit: Credit: NIAID/NIH (NIAID Flickr’s photostream) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons A 1000-year-old Anglo-Saxon recipe for…

A 5000x magnification view of diatoms, a type of tiny algae. (Credit: from Jim Mikulak (The English Wikipedia) via Wikimedia Commons.) Scientists at Zhejiang University have recently published an improved method for removing arsenic from drinking water,…

Steven Brust’s advice on dragons – “always speak politely to an enraged dragon” – may find it’s way out of fantasy novels and into the real world if a group of Australian and British researchers is to be believed. The group recently published a paper in…

Reports this week have touted headlines such as “Ebola is not mutating as fast as scientists feared” and “Ebola virus in latest outbreak does not show unusual mutations.” These headlines are based on a report published in the journal Science last week…

In February, the journal Nature and its sister publications announced a new policy for their peer review process (the evaluation of submitted articles by experts in the field). The journal normally operates on the basis of single-blind peer…

Watch out, honey fans – populations of the honey bee, Apis mellifera, may be in decline, and we don’t really know why. Honey bees play a vital role in natural ecosystems as pollinators; it is estimated that a single bee can visit 2000 flowers in a day…