The group known as Islamic State (IS) reportedly used a sulpur-mustard gas against US troops in Iraq. It was detected in a black oily substance found on a rocket fired at an American airbase in Qayyarah, south of the city of Mosul. None of the soldiers stationed at the airbase – deployed there ...

So now we know what the news is, as expected, Hubble has found new evidence of possible plume activity on Europa. In a series of ten observations, they saw them on three occasions. Here are the images they created.The possible plumes are in the seven o'clock position, not far from the South pole ...

Yesterday I read with interest and curiosity some pages of a book on the search and discovery of the Higgs boson, which was published last March by Rizzoli (in Italian only, at least for the time being). The book, authored by physics professor and ex CMS spokesperson Guido Tonelli, is ...

The 2012 measurements of the Higgs boson, performed by ATLAS and CMS on 7- and 8-TeV datasets collected during Run 1 of the LHC, were a giant triumph of fundamental physics, which conclusively showed the correctness of the theoretical explanation of electroweak symmetry breaking conceived in the ...

For at least a billion years of the distant past, planet Earth should have been frozen over but wasn’t, and one popular notion was that methane, with 23-34 times (yes, it is unclear) the heat-trapping capacity of carbon dioxide, could have reigned supreme for most of the first 3.5 billion years ...

Postglacial rebound, uplift in Greenland blamed on global warming, has actually made it harder to measure ice loss due to global warming, according to a new paper in Science Advances.The Greenland Ice Sheet sits on the Earth’s solid crust, which is in turn perched atop a softer layer of rock ...

Occasionally in science there are theories that refuse to die despite the overwhelming evidence against them. The “aquatic ape hypothesis” is one of these, now championed by Sir David Attenborough in his recent BBC Radio 4 series The Waterside Ape.The hypothesis suggests that everything from ...

Tumours are an accumulation of cells that divide without control, accumulating hundreds of chromosomal alterations and mutations in their DNA. These alterations are triggered in part by a type of damage to the DNA known as replicative stress. To survive in the face of this chaos, tumour cells need ...

With over 120,000 patients in the United States waiting for a kidney transplant, scientists and physicians are constantly looking to expand the pool of available organs through increasing donation and optimizing allocation. Researchers analyzed data from thousands of transplants and developed a ...

Democratic Presidential contender Hillary Clinton is back on the campaign trail after the 68-year-old rested at her home in Chappaqua, New York for a few days last week following what appeared to be a dizzy spell during a visit to the National September 11 Memorial and Museum at the World Trade ...

In 1991, Theo Colborn convened a group of international scientists to discuss concerns about the trans-generational effects of persistent chemicals on predator species in the Great Lakes.  Their report, and a subsequent book authored by Colborn and her colleagues entitled Our Stolen Future ...

Researchers from the University of York have helped to solve an archaeological dispute - confirming that Neanderthals were responsible for producing tools and artifacts previously argued by some to be exclusively in the realm of modern human cognitive abilities. Using ancient protein analysis ...

Laterality is the preference of human beings for one side of our bodies; being left-handed or right-handed, for example, or having a preference for using one eye or ear or the other. In the view of primatologist Eder Domínguez-Ballesteros, "lateralized behavior in humans may in some way have been ...

Our linguistic and legal obsession with “insult” and “offense” is nothing new. In 1832, Sydney resident William McLoughlin was given 50 lashes for using the word “damned” against his master.But what does McLoughlin’s case tell us about today?Welsh Rabbit and lashes from pretty fellowsThe ...

Jeremy Corbyn has recently been re-elected to leader of the labour party in the UK with an even stronger mandate than before of 62% of the vote, as many of you will know. This opens up the possibility of a future prime minister of the UK who has said that he will never authorize use of nuclear ...

The third non-browning Arctic apple variety - yes, using science - the Arctic Fuji, has been approved by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (USDA APHIS). Science has shown they are the same as conventional apples, they just won't brown as much, so ...