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Swiss and American researchers have found a way to program cells to determine whether they have become cancerous, and if they have, to order their own suicide.  

Too much alcohol dulls more than your wits. It also weakens your immune system and could make you much more vulnerable to viruses, including H.I.V.

The ‘hydrogen economy’ requires a lot of things, but first is an easy and cheap supply of hydrogen. A Penn State professor thinks he has found a way to access that supply. 

In an advancement in biotechnology, a new microscope has allowed researchers to watch molecules move within a cell on a millisecond-by-millisecond time scale for the first time.

Scientists are getting closer to creating life from a test tube in laboratory settings. Thanks to machines that replicate R.N.A. strands, Earth may be the first place we experience alien life. 

Ray Kurzweil is an expert at predicting the future. In tracking our progress in the technological-evolutionary journey, Kurzweil has identified six epochs, each of which is characterized by a major paradigm shift.

Lack of trust is at the root of many of the world’s problems, says the neuroeconomist Paul Zak, who claims to have found the brain chemical, oxytocin, responsible for empathy.

–Guest post by Patrick Riley, AoE Culture Correspondent If you accept the notion that no one knows what to eat these days since they’re bombarded with conflicting nutritional advice at every […]

An experiment carried out more than 50 years ago has revealed that volcanoes may have played a crucial role in the formation of the first organic building blocks of life on Earth.

M.I.T. physicist Alan Guth has suggested that new universes—known as “pocket universes”— are constantly being created, but they cannot be seen from our universe.

Researchers discovered that levels of a molecule called neuropeptide Y (NPY) directly relate to whether we have a “glass half empty” or “glass half full” attitude towards life.

[cross-posted at The Huffington Post] I’ve watched this TED talk by Sugata Mitra several times now. And every time I watch it, my brain keeps asking the same question: In […]

Theoretically, there could be people and planets made out of antimatter rather than matter, but where are they?

Graphene is in incredibly strong, one-molecule thick layer of carbon atoms that could someday be used to create life-sustaining nanorobots.

GUEST POST BY JASON SILVA “Intertwingularity” is a term coined by Ted Nelson to express the complexity of interrelations in human knowledge.   He wrote: “EVERYTHING IS DEEPLY INTERTWINGLED. In an […]

Science has called this discovery the most significant scientific advance of 2010. Back in March, a group of researchers designed what is effectively the first quantam gadget.

In the first of several posts on the AAAS meetings held this month in Washington, DC, Simone Lewis-Koskinen reports on a panel at the conference that encouraged scientists to “communicate […]

I hate the whole concept of Fox’s television show, Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? Here’s why… The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel thought it would be fun to have local […]

“Text messagers and computer gamers aren’t alone in the willful misspelling department. RNA molecules do it, too.”

On the 9th of December, Astronomers Madhusudhan, Harrington and colleagues recently discovered a massive gas giant planet, orbiting a star which they have coined the first carbon-rich world ever observed. […]

Taste is both a sense and a preference; a gustatory pleasure and a social inquiry of what’s beautiful, proper, unique and stylish. What is taste on a neurological level and […]

A new bioplastic made from switchgrass is durable, capable of withstanding high temperatures, and, most importantly, biodegradable. Could this technology placate critics of corn-based alternatives?

An inventor believes he has solved the riddle of how to get humans exploring serious ocean depths previously too dangerous to investigate—by getting us to breathe liquid like fish.

In 15 to 20 years, says futurist Ray Kurzweil, a biotechnology revolution will yield powerful ways for us to reprogram our genes. Our bodies will be altered on the genetic […]

Graphene is in incredibly strong, one-molecule thick layer of carbon atoms that could someday be used to create life-sustaining nanorobots.

“Biophysicists have calculated natural system couldn’t get faster, more sensitive or more efficient without first relocating to an alternate universe with alternate physical constants.”

Could life on earth have come from outer-space? NASA finds that the universe is filled with giant carbon buckyballs that might have fallen to earth a long time ago.

“It’s high time we recognize that carbon dioxide has been treated unfairly.” Forbes’ Larry Bell touts the accomplishments of the oft-reviled chemical compound.

In place of ethanol production largely judged to be harmful to the environment and automobile engines, new producers are making hydrocarbon fuel from cellulose.

A DIALOGUE BETWEEN JASON SILVA AND TECHNO-ECOLOGIC SCHOLAR RICHARD DOYLE Richard Doyle also goes by mobius, an indicator of just how important interconnections are to him – and how transformative, […]