SCIENCE

With the legalization of marijuana in several states, increased use for both medicinal and recreational purposes has been documented in pregnant and breastfeeding women. Although national organizations like the American Academy of Pediatrics recommend that breastfeeding mothers do not use marijuana, there has been a lack of specific data to ... Read More »

Over the long-run, the race will indeed go to the slower, steadier animal. “The fable of ‘The Tortoise and the Hare’ is a metaphor about life, not a story about a race,” said Adrian Bejan, the J.A. Jones Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Duke University. “We see in animal life ... Read More »

One third of United States Armed Forces Veterans store at least one firearm loaded with ammunition and unlocked, according to a new study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine that reports on the first survey of a nationally representative sample of this group regarding storage practices. Unsafe firearm ... Read More »

We make snap judgments of others based not only on their facial appearance, but also on our pre-existing beliefs about how others’ personalities work, finds a new study by a team of psychology researchers. Its work, reported in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, underscores how we ... Read More »

A new genetic analysis of invasive pythons captured across South Florida finds the big constrictors are closely related to one another. In fact, most of them are genetically related as first or second cousins, according to a study by wildlife genetics experts at the U.S. Geological Survey. The study also ... Read More »

First, according to Rice University engineers, get a nanotube hole. Then insert water. If the nanotube is just the right width, the water molecules will align into a square rod. Rice materials scientist Rouzbeh Shahsavari and his team used molecular models to demonstrate their theory that weak van der Waals ... Read More »

A self-healing membrane that acts as a reverse filter, blocking small particles and letting large ones through, is the “straight out of science fiction” work of a team of Penn State mechanical engineers. “Conventional filters, like those used to make coffee, allow small objects to pass through while keeping larger ... Read More »

A new material developed by University of Colorado Boulder engineers can transform into complex, pre-programmed shapes via light and temperature stimuli, allowing a literal square peg to morph and fit into a round hole before fully reverting to its original form. The controllable shape-shifting material, described today in the journal ... Read More »

Columbia University biomedical researchers have captured close-up views of TRPV3, a skin-cell ion channel that plays important roles in sensing temperature, itch, and pain. In humans, defects in the protein can lead to skin diseases such as atopic dermatitis (a type of eczema), vitiligo (uneven skin coloration), skin cancer, and ... Read More »

A new scientific study concludes there is no safe level of drinking alcohol. The study, published today in the international medical journal The Lancet, shows that in 2016, nearly 3 million deaths globally were attributed to alcohol use, including 12 percent of deaths in males between the ages of 15 ... Read More »

It has long been assumed that the content of dreams can tell us something about the person’s well-being. However, so far dream researchers have mostly studied the dreams of people suffering from various disorders and we know very little about the positive side of well-being: do happier people have happier ... Read More »

A pioneering Oxford University research collaboration into yellow fever virus (YFV) has shed new light on the exceptional recent outbreak in Brazil and how the virus spreads. The findings have implications for monitoring viral transmission and could potentially contribute to a strategy for eliminating YFV worldwide. Published in Science, the ... Read More »

After their recent pioneering experiments to couple light and matter to an extreme degree, Rice University scientists decided to look for a similar effect in matter alone. They didn’t expect to find it so soon. Rice physicist Junichiro Kono, graduate student Xinwei Li and their international colleagues have discovered the ... Read More »

An international team of researchers discovered a new species of dinosaur, Xiyunykus pengi, during an expedition to Xinjiang, China. The discovery is the latest stemming from a partnership between the George Washington University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The findings were published today in Current Biology along with the ... Read More »

Researchers from Virginia Tech and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have developed a novel way to 3D print complex objects of one of the highest-performing materials used in the battery and aerospace industries. Previously, researchers could only print this material, known as graphene, in 2D sheets or basic structures. But Virginia ... Read More »

In a new study, researchers at Uppsala University now demonstrate that one night of sleep loss has a tissue-specific impact on the regulation of gene expression and metabolism in humans. This may explain how shift work and chronic sleep loss impairs our metabolism and adversely affects our body composition. The ... Read More »

By sequencing the genome of the yellow-banded bumblebee, York University researchers have found that inbreeding and disease are likely culprits in their rapid decline in North America. This is believed to be the first time the genome of an at-risk bumblebee has been sequenced and it allows researchers to take ... Read More »

One of the rarest birds in the western hemisphere, the Bahama Nuthatch, has been rediscovered by research teams searching the island of Grand Bahama. The finding is particularly significant because the species had been feared extinct following the catastrophic damage caused by Hurricane Matthew in 2016, and had not been ... Read More »

The word Sargassum conjures up images of a vast floating island off the coast of Bermuda, the mystical Sargasso Sea that has fascinated and inspired sailors’ tales for hundreds of years. Sargassum is actually a floating seaweed that drifts on ocean currents in the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean, and Gulf of ... Read More »

An international team of researchers has uncovered a destructive mechanism at the molecular level that causes a well-known phenomenon associated with obesity, called leptin resistance. They found that mice fed a high-fat diet produce an enzyme named MMP-2 that clips receptors for the hormone leptin from the surface of neuronal ... Read More »