Scientists Have Identified the Mechanism That Decides Between Cell Death and Genome Repair

The DNA double helix’s sequence is programmed with the genetic information of every cell. When a double DNA strand breaks, it poses a threat to the cells and, if the break is not correctly repaired, it can lead to cancer. Double strand breaks can be caused by exposure to radiation. When a cell is damaged in this way, it has to decide whether the break can be fixed, or whether it should be removed before it causes cancer. If the decision is made for removal, the cell is killed off by a cellular suicide program called “apoptosis”.

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Can Plant Blindness Be Cured?

In a new review study, researchers examine why people, including conservationists, tend to be biased against plants, and if this bias can be challenged. By Shreya Dasgupta.

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How Yoga Turns You Superhuman or Just Less Freaked Out About Life

It trains the body, mind, and everything in between.

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WATCH: Rosetta Crashes Into Comet, Bringing Historic Mission To End

The Rosetta spacecraft has been orbiting the 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko comet for two years. Now it has lost contact with Earth forever.

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14,000-year-old campsite in Argentina adds to an archaeological mystery

A glimpse of the last people on Earth to colonize a continent without humans.

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Life on Europa? | Space Time | PBS Digital Studios

Published on Sep 29, 2016 The Hubble Telescope found vast plumes of water bursting through the icy surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa. What does this tell us about the potential for life on Europa?

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Ancient Roman coins found buried under ruins of Japanese castle

Archaeologists were left baffled by the "strange" discovery of ancient Roman coins buried in the ruins of a castle in Japan. The four copper coins were retrieved from soil beneath Katsuren Castle on Okinawa Island, and were originally thought to be a hoax before their true provenance was revealed. 

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Why Doesn't Time Flow Backwards?

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Should we bring extinct species back from the dead?

Earth is in the midst of its sixth mass extinction: Somewhere between 30 and 159 species disappear every day, thanks largely to humans, and more than 300 types of mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians have vanished since 1500. These rates do not bode well for the future of life on our planet, but what if extinction wasn’t permanent? What if we could resurrect some of the species we’ve lost?

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War Studies Suggest A Concussion Leaves The Brain Vulnerable To PTSD

Troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are far more likely to develop post-traumatic stress disorder if they have suffered a concussion. The reason may be a change in the brain's fear circuits.

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Soaring levels of antibiotic resistance found in supermarket chickens

The UK’s most common type of food poisoning bug is showing drastically increased resistance to antibiotics, testing has revealed, which could mean the infection becomes harder and harder to treat. The Food Standards Agency (FSA) tested campylobacter bacteria found in chickens sold in supermarkets across the country, and discovered that resistance to certain antibiotics had more than doubled.

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The fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous?

So the brain is happily deriving energy from ketones – sure, but why would this be protective against such a variety of brain diseases?

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How being alone may be the key to rest

How much rest do we think we need, who is getting the most, and what are the most restful activities? The results of the world's largest survey on rest indicate that to feel truly rested, a lot of us want to be alone, reports Claudia Hammond.

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US emissions set to miss 2025 target in Paris climate change deal, research finds

Even if US implements emissions-cutting proposals it could still overshoot target by nearly 1bn tonnes of greenhouse gases, according to scientific study

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Why Australia is home to one of the largest language families in the world

Researchers put linguistics and genomics together to explore how ancient Aborigines expanded across Australia and began to speak different languages.

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Single clothes wash may release 700,000 microplastic fibres, study finds

Each cycle of a washing machine could release more than 700,000 microscopic plastic fibres into the environment, according to a study. A team at Plymouth University in the UK spent 12 months analysing what happened when a number of synthetic materials were washed at different temperatures in domestic washing machines, using different combinations of detergents, to quantify the microfibres shed. They found that acrylic was the worst offender, releasing nearly 730,000 tiny synthetic particles per wash...

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Experts May Have Finally Found The Cause Of Crohn's Disease

Great news for those with the notoriously hard to treat condition. The problem may be a fungus.

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Marijuana Grow Ops Could Soon Rival Data Center Energy Use

Data centers may be more ubiquitous than indoor grow operations for marijuana, but the latter are as energy-intensive as the former, according to a new report by EQ Research. Indoor grows can have an energy intensity of about 2,000 watts per meter, according to the report, A Chronic Problem. A 2012 study from Berkeley Lab found that indoor marijuana production could account for as much as 1 percent of U.S. electricity use, about half the energy consumed by data centers.

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SpaceX Interplanetary Transport System

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Proteins from 'deep time' found in ostrich eggshell

Scientists have found preserved proteins in 3.8-million-year-old ostrich eggshells from Africa. The researchers say these biological building blocks - bound into the eggshell - could provide genetic information up to 50 times older than any DNA. These proteins, the team said, had been protected because they had been "entrapped" in surface minerals.

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Elon Musk’s Mars Colonization Announcement: Start time, Live Blog, and Streaming

Today, Elon Musk will finally tell the world how he wants to colonize Mars — an ambition of his that has served as the foundation for essentially all of his commercial spaceflight endeavors. Musk will specify his plans for making humans a multi-planetary species during a one-hour speech at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico.

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Scientists Demonstrate Long Distance Quantum Communication

NEWS ANALYSIS: Experiments have shown how the quantum entanglement of particles can be used for unhackable communications and encryption.

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How social media can distort and misinform when communicating science

Social media is a great way to spread science information, fast. But the online echo chamber isn't always good at separating what's valid from what's not, and being prolific doesn't make you right.

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Typhoon Megi Landfalls in Taiwan; Over 120 MPH Winds, 30+ Inches of Rain Measured

On the heels of typhoons Meranti and Malakas, Megi has hammered Taiwan.

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This Roller Coaster Helps People Pass Kidney Stones

Doctors may have found an unconventional way to get rid of painful kidney stones — but it will cost you a trip to Disney World. Researchers found that riding the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad roller coaster at Disney World could help ease the passage of small kidney stones, according to the new study.

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First 'three person baby' born using new method

The world's first baby has been born using a new "three person" fertility technique, New Scientist reveals. The five-month-old boy has the usual DNA from his mum and dad, plus a tiny bit of genetic code from a donor. US doctors took the unprecedented step to ensure the baby boy would be free of a genetic condition that his Jordanian mother carries in her genes. Experts say the move heralds a new era in medicine and could help other families with rare genetic conditions.

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Magic mushrooms could help treat severe depression

Psilocybin, the psychedelic component of magic mushrooms, improved the symptoms of depression in a small-scale trial. The trial, which was conducted on 12 people and has been published in The Lancet, found that the compound even worked on so called "treatment-resistant" depression. The research could provide the basis for radical new treatment for depression. "It is important that academic research groups try to develop possible new treatments for depression as the pharmaceutical industry is pulling out of this field," said David Nutt, senior author of the research. "Our study has shown psilocybin is safe and fast acting so may...

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Privatising the International Space Station is the start of the first city in space

The clock is ticking on NASA’s time aboard the International Space Station (ISS). The agency has set its sights on targets deeper into space, and the station itself, at least on NASA’s side, is unlikely to last beyond a decade without a significant overhaul. But that doesn’t mean it’s the end for the ISS. Back in August, Bill Hill, NASA deputy associate administrator for exploration systems development, suggested that the ISS’ future lay with the private sector.

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Brain-eating amoebas hunt brain chemical before they kill you

A deadly amoeba that can infect swimmers seems to be attracted to a common brain chemical – a discovery that could lead to new treatments.

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India's space agency launches 8 satellites into 2 orbits

In a major milestone, the Indian Space Organisation (ISRO) today successfully launched a total of eight satellites into two orbits. This is the first time ISRO has launched payload satellites in two orbits, a rare feat for any space agency.

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Walking Fends Off Disability, And It's Not Too Late To Start

People who have reached their later years may think it's primarily a time to relax, not to increase their physical activity. Not so. Previous research has suggested that exercise can improve memory and reverse muscle loss in older adults, among other benefits. And a study out Monday finds that a regular program of physical activity reduces the time spent with mobility-limiting disability.

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Study warns that science as we know it is evolving into something shoddy and unreliable

There's no shortage of warnings from the scientific community that science as we know it is being drastically affected by the commercial and institutional pressure to publish papers in high-profile journals – and now a new simulation shows that...

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Invest 97L Likely to Become 'Matthew' Later This Week in the Caribbean Sea

A sprawling area of low pressure east of the Windward Islands will be the one to watch well into next week.

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Nunavut Shipwreck Confirmed as Sir John Franklin's HMS Terror

A shipwreck found off the shores of Nunavut's King William Island is indeed HMS Terror, lost in Sir John Franklin's doomed 1845 Franklin Expedition, Parks Canada confirms.

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'Five-dimensional' glass discs can store data for up to 13.8 billion years

Photographs fade, books rot, and even hard drives eventually fester. When you take the long view, preserving humanity's collective culture isn't a marathon, it's a relay — with successive generations passing on information from one slowly-failing storage medium to the next. However, this could change. Scientists from the University of Southampton in the UK have created a new data format that encodes information in tiny nanostructures in glass. A standard-sized disc can store around 360 terabytes of data...

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Landmark study finds that men with early prostate cancer can safely opt out of treatment

Men diagnosed with early prostate cancer can safely choose active monitoring rather than surgery or radiation without cutting their lives short.

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Hubble spots possible water plumes erupting on Jupiter's moon Europa

Astronomers have imaged what may be water vapor plumes erupting off the surface of Jupiter's moon Europa. This finding bolsters other Hubble observations suggesting the icy moon erupts with high altitude water vapor plumes.

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Mysterious Ocean Blobs Aren’t So Mysterious

The internet is awash with viral videos of bizarre, floating things that “baffle scientists. Not these scientists.

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Solar power cost down 25% in five months – “There’s no reason why the cost of solar will ever increase again”

On August 11 a bid of US$0.46/W was put forward to build 500MW of solar power in China (a roughly calculated levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) at $0.019/kWh). This past week we saw a bid of $0.023/kWh to build 1.2GW of solar power in Abu Dhabi. This price of $0.023/kWh is almost 25% lower than the $0.0299/kWh was bid in late April for a series of projects also in Abu Dhabi. These extremely aggressive price falls are partially driven by unique situations – a Chinese solar panel production glut and historically low costs of money. But also because of technology as Frank Wouters, the former director of Masdar Clean Energy...

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Skeleton find could rewrite Roman history

Two skeletons have been discovered in a London graveyard which could change our view of the history of Europe and Asia. Analysis of the bones, found in a Roman burial place in Southwark, discovered that they dated to between the 2nd and 4th Century AD and were probably ethnically Chinese. Dr Rebecca Redfern, curator of human osteology at the Museum of London, told BBC Radio 4's The World at One the find was...

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Sounding Rocket Solves One Cosmic Mystery, Reveals Another

The sources of X-rays observed in space have been contended for decades. The DXL sounding rocket provided insight into the source of some -- but this small mission also found an entire group of X-rays that don’t come from any known source.

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Dunkin' Donuts is still serving coffee in Styrofoam cups 6 years after saying it would stop

For years, Dunkin' Donuts has said it would replace its iconic plastic foam cups with cups that are more environmentally friendly. In a 2010 report, the coffee chain said it considered its use of foam to be "the most prominent sustainability issue we must deal with."

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Taiwan Braces for Landfall of Typhoon Megi

Typhoon Megi will continue to strengthen before threatening lives and property across Taiwan and eastern China this week.

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Preventing overpopulation could curb climate change

Each day, an estimated 350,000 babies are born worldwide, outnumbering the number deaths, and adding to a growing population. And while it may not be an obvious link, this overpopulation could be increasing the pace of climate change. Dr Travis Rieder, a moral philosophy professor and bioethicist at Johns Hopkins University, explains why the key to stopping climate change is reducing the number of babies born each year.

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Unusual Geometric Cake Designs by Dinara Kasko

When looking at a case of pastries in a bakery it's usually possible to intuit what something might taste like because of its familiar shape or color. Such is not the case with these radically unusual cake designs by Ukrainian pastry chef Dinara Kasko whose experimental techniques result in edible objects unlike anything we’ve ever seen.

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6 Math Concepts Explained by Knitting and Crochet

Using yarn and two pointy needles (knitting) or one narrow hook (crochet), pretty much anyone can stitch up a piece of fabric. Or, you can take the whole yarncraft thing light-years further to illustrate a slew of mathematical principles.

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Earth's atmosphere is slowly leaking oxygen, and scientists aren't sure why

Don't panic, but researchers have discovered that oxygen is (very) slowly draining out of Earth's atmosphere, and right now, they're not sure why. By analysing air bubbles trapped inside ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica, a team from Princeton University has found oxygen levels have dropped by 0.7 percent in the last 800,000 years, and figuring out why could be crucial to predicting our planet's future.

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As Our Jobs Are Automated, Some Say We'll Need A Guaranteed Basic Income

Much of the anger and anxiety in the 2016 election is fueled by the sense that economic opportunity is slipping away for many Americans. This week, as part of NPR's collaborative project with member stations, A Nation Engaged, we're asking the question: What can be done to create economic opportunity for more Americans?

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Paris is banning traffic from half the city. Why can’t London have a car-free day?

The streets of Paris will be transformed this Sunday, with thousands of people on foot and on bikes expected to take advantage of a ban on cars that covers almost half of the city centre. Mayor Anne Hidalgo promoted the first Journée Sans Voiture a year ago, in response to a rise in air pollution that briefly made the French capital the most polluted city in the world.

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Devil Frog Vomits Up a New Ant Species

Sometimes scientists make discoveries in the strangest of places. Like the belly of a poison frog.

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