“Survival of the fittest” has popularly described evolution for more than a century, but a new study published in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters provides further evidence that random genetic mutations over millions of years may also play a powerful role.

Florida and California scientists are the first to link the evolution of proteins — the organic compounds that determine the structure and function of living things — to a species’ metabolic rate.

An Earth-like planet is likely forming 424 light-years away in a star system called HD 113766, say astronomers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

Scientists have discovered a huge belt of warm dust – enough to build a Mars-size planet or larger – swirling around a distant star that is just slightly more massive than our sun. The dust belt, which they suspect is clumping together into planets, is located in the middle of the system's terrestrial habitable zone. This is the region around a star where liquid water could exist on any rocky planets that might form. Earth is located in the middle of our sun's terrestrial habitable zone.

At approximately 10 million years old, the star is also at just the right age for forming rocky planets.

The newest dinosaur species to emerge from Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument had some serious bite, according to researchers from the Utah Museum of Natural History (UNMH) at the University of Utah. “It was one of the most robust duck-billed dinosaurs ever,” said lead author Terry Gates. “It was a monster.”

Researchers from the Utah museum, the national monument and California’s Raymond M. Alf Museum of Palaeontology unearthed fossils of this ancient plant-eater from the rocks of the Kaiparowits Formation. Researchers announced the name of the creature – Gryposaurus monumentensis.

The ozone hole over Antarctica has shrunk 30 percent as compared to last year's record size. According to measurements, this year’s ozone loss peaked at 27.7 million tons, compared to the 2006 record ozone loss of 40 million tons.

Ozone is a protective layer found about 15 miles above us, mostly in the stratospheric stratum of the atmosphere that acts as a sunlight filter shielding life on Earth from harmful ultraviolet rays. Over the last decade the ozone layer has thinned by about 0.3% per year on a global scale, increasing the risk of skin cancer, cataracts and harm to marine life.

Researchers at UCLA have developed a model that could help engineers and scientists speed up the development of hydrogen-fueled vehicles by identifying promising hydrogen-storage materials and predicting favored thermodynamic chemical reactions through which hydrogen can be reversibly stored and extracted.

The new method, published in Advanced Materials, was developed by Alireza Akbarzadeh, a UCLA postdoctoral researcher in the department of materials science and engineering; Vidvuds Ozolins, UCLA associate professor of materials science and engineering; and Christopher Wolverton, professor of materials science and engineering at Northwestern University in Illinois.

Einstein's Theory Of General Relativity has been under assault for the better part of a century. No one can really prove it wrong but it's commonly assumed to be wrong.