Viruses keep it simple and that makes them smart - though they are too elementary to be able to reproduce by themselves, they exploit the reproductive "machinery" of cells by inserting pieces of their own DNA so that it is transcribed by the host cell.

To do this, they first have to inject their own genetic material into the cells they infect.

An international team of researchers has studied how this occurs and how long it takes for this process to be completed.

For many years scientists and engineers have been trying to provide low-cost solar energy by developing a cheap solar cell that is both highly efficient and at the same time simple to build, enabling it to be mass produced. Now, the team led by Empa researcher Ayodhya N. Tiwari has made a major leap forward: the researchers are presenting a new manufacturing technique for CIGS solar cells, in which tiny quantities of sodium and potassium are incorporated into the CIGS layer.

The special treatment alters the chemical composition of the complex sandwich structure – thereby altering its electronic properties, as confirmed by various methods including detailed electron microscope investigations.  

A few months ago astronomers created a new 3-D map of stars at the center of our Galaxy which cleared showed the bulge at its core.

Previous explanations suggested that the stars that form the bulge are in banana-like orbits, but a paper published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society suggests that the stars probably move in peanut-shell or figure of eight-shaped orbits instead.

Video games, including the violent shooter games which are found to be good and bad in various studies, may boost children's learning, health and social skills, according to a review of research published in the
American Psychologist.

The review comes out as debate continues among psychologists and other health professionals regarding the effects of violent media on youth. An American Psychological Association task force is conducting a comprehensive review of research on violence in video games and interactive media and will release its findings in 2014.  

Epigenetics has been used for rather comical effect in some cases, with a whole lot of things being correlated to the diets of parents and even grandparents.

There is good news; your epigenetic heritage is not a prison. Rats whose mothers were fed a high-fat diet during pregnancy and nursing were able to stave off some of the detrimental health effects of obesity by exercising during their adolescence. Get the kids out and play and it doesn't matter how fat their moms are.

Rain as acidic as undiluted lemon juice may have played a part in killing off plants and organisms around the world about 252 million years ago during the most severe mass extinction in Earth's history, known as the Great Dying.

The cause of such a massive extinction is an ongoing scientific debate, centering on several potential causes, including an asteroid collision similar to what likely killed off the dinosaurs 186 million years later; a gradual, global loss of oxygen in the oceans; and a cascade of environmental events triggered by massive volcanic eruptions in a region known today as the Siberian Traps.