Global warming is on hold, at least temporarily, and being five years behind means we have time for a legitimate basic research solution to become viable technology.

A classic trash-to-treasure story would be producing electricity from carbon dioxide. A new method uses CO₂ from electric power plant and other smokestacks as the raw material for making electricity.

Appalachian-Americans rejoice, archaeologists have added a new piece to your heritage puzzle. The remains of the earliest European fort in the interior of (what is now) the United States have been discovered - and it gives new insight into both the start of the U.S. colonial era and the imperialism of the Spanish.

Concerned parents have been worried about the potential impact of exposure to low levels of mercury on the developing brain, such as when pregnant women consume fish, and that has led to claims that the chemical may be responsible for behavioral disorders such as autism.

Synthetic materials made from organic polymers, like polyurethane foams, usually burn very well due to their high carbon content. They not only burn easily; depending on their chemical composition they can produce toxic gases such as hydrogen cyanide or carbon monoxide.

Upholstered furniture and mattresses commonly use polyurethane foams so they have to be treated with flame retardants. 

The main active constituent of cannabis - tetrahydrocannabinol or THC - has not shown to be effective in slowing the course of progressive multiple sclerosis (MS).

The CUPID (Cannabinoid Use in Progressive Inflammatory brain Disease) study was carried out by researchers from Plymouth University Peninsula Schools of Medicine and Dentistry,the Medical Research Council Clinical Trials Unit and University College London and is the first large, non-commercial clinical study of THC for MS progression.

Of the estimated 20,000 genes humans have, only a fraction are turned on at any given time. It depends on the cell's needs, which can change by the minute or hour.

Determining what those genes are doing means using tools that can manipulate their status on similarly short timescales and that is now possible with technology developed by the Eli and Edythe L. Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. It can rapidly start or halt the expression of any gene simply by shining light on the cells.

The advance in optogenetics, which uses proteins that change their function in response to light, is possible because researchers adapted light-sensitive proteins to either stimulate or suppress the expression of a specific target gene almost immediately after the light comes on.