New research by a team of scientists from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) offers new insight into the San Andreas Fault as it extends beneath Southern California`s Salton Sea. The team discovered a series of prominent faults beneath the sea, which transfer motion away from the San Andreas Fault as it disappears beneath the Salton Sea. The s...

New, micro-images of strange, worm-like structures uncovered inside a dissected molar might have been held in ancient times as proof that gnawing tooth worms were the cause of tooth decay, a theory widely believed in many cultures before modern times. The structures are not worms, but what they are is still in question. Studies by University of Maryland Dental School researchers’ presented t...

A genetic mutation that lies behind one type of male infertility has been discovered by researchers at Oxford University, Ghent University in Belgium, and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in the USA. The discovery, published in the journal Human Reproduction, may provide a new approach to help some couples that have been unsuccessful in IVF treatments, and could potentially lead to the dev...

Nearly all species have some ability to detect light. At least three types of cells in the retina allow us to see images or distinguish between night and day. Now, researchers at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine have discovered in fish yet another type of cell that can sense light and contribute to vision. Reporting in the journal Nature, the team of neuroscientists shows that retinal horizont...

Engineers at Leeds are developing a way to capture the kinetic energy produced when soldiers march and use it to power their equipment. The new system designed to convert foot-power into battery power could help troops reduce the weight of their packs by up to 10kg. The devices will use high tech ceramics and crystals as piezoelectric transducers in order to convert mechanical stress into an elect...

A chimp`s attention is captured by faces more effectively than by bananas. A series of experiments suggests that the apes are wired to respond to faces in a similar manner to humans. Masaki Tomonaga and Tomoko Imura from the Primate Research Institute at Kyoto University, Japan, tested the effects of a series of different images on chimps` reaction times. Tomonaga said, "It is well known that...

Computer scientists and biologists at the University of Southampton have used the combined power of computing resources within the institution to develop software which provides a better understanding of how viruses evolve. Researchers from OMII-UK, an organisation based at the University`s School of Electronics and Computer Science and a team from the School of Biological Sciences worked together...

The race is on for a successor to the popular ‘flash’ memory used in portable devices. European researchers think they have found a candidate in novel materials combined with a simple, easily fabricated ‘crossbar’ architecture. When you turn off your mobile phone you don’t lose the address book. That’s because data is stored in ‘non-volatile’ memory ...

Applying biological molecules from cell membranes to the surfaces of artificial materials is opening peepholes on the very basics of cell-to-cell interaction. Two recently published papers by a University of Oregon biophysicist and colleagues suggest that putting lipids and other cell membrane components on manufactured surfaces could lead to new classes of self-assembling materials for use in pre...

Fake Internet postcards circulating through e-mail inboxes worldwide are carrying links to the virus known as Zeus Bot, said Gary Warner, director of computer forensics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). Zeus Bot has been named America`s most pervasive computer Botnet virus by Network World magazine, reportedly infecting 3.6 million U.S. computers. "These fake postcards ask use...