The distinctive "fecal prints" of microbes could provide a record of how Earth and life have co-evolved over the past 3.5 billion years as the planet's temperature, oxygen levels, and greenhouse gases have changed but it's been difficult to decipher much of the information contained in this record.

A new project sheds light on the mysterious digestive processes of microbes, opening the way towards a better understanding of how life and the planet have changed over time. Using a new technique, researchers  focused on the microbes that live on the ocean floor where the microbes consume the sulfate found in seawater because oxygen is in short supply.

Scrapie is a neurodegenerative disease that has been known for centuries and which affects sheep and goats. Similar to Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) or mad cow disease, scrapie is caused by a transmissible pathogen protein called prion.

A new study finds that the pathogens responsible for scrapie in small ruminants (prions) have the potential to convert the human prion protein from a healthy state to a pathological state. In mice models reproducing the human species barrier, this prion induces a disease similar to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

The magi, as you know, were wise men – wonderfully wise men – who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents.

A guy messes up his life, and the lives of those around him. We send him for rehabilitation: A jail term, AA meetings, community service, anger management classes, or restitution to victims.

The 2011 east coast earthquake felt by people from Georgia to Canada likely originated from a fault “junction” just outside of Mineral, Virginia, according to new U.S. Geological Survey research published in the Geological Society of America’s Special Papers.

A young boy sits on the carpet, his feet disappearing into a giant pair of sweatpants he put on over his own clothes before loosely tying his ankles together.

He has taken the sweatpants off and is now trying to put them back on inside out without removing the ankle cuffs.

Yes, it can be done.



Holly Bernstein, who earned a PhD in mathematics at Washington University in St. Louis in 1999, watches him struggle for a bit and then says, “Remember the pants have more than one hole. You don’t necessarily have to put them back on the way you put them on in the first place.”

Lost memories can be restored, which offers some hope for patients in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease.

The belief has been that memories are stored at the synapses -- the connections between brain cells, or neurons -- which are destroyed by Alzheimer's disease. The new study provides evidence contradicting the idea that long-term memory is stored at synapses.

The Christmas Truce is no stranger to popular entertainment – this year more than any other as its 100th anniversary is marked. The famous moment when British and German soldiers climbed out of the trenches in peace on Christmas Day 1914 has been replicated and ruminated upon in history books, film, and propaganda – and now advertising. In the UK, the supermarket Sainsbury’s 2014 Christmas advert dramatizes the event, prompting cries of outrage that it has trivialized it.

But what really happened 100 years ago?

After a year in which further details of national intelligence agencies' shadowy surveillance networks were laid bare, a fresh leak of documents reveals the obsessive surveillance that extends as far north as Lapland.

Santa’s Arctic Workshop (SAW) has deployed a multinational panopticon surveillance program, according to leaked documents being called “the Snowman Files”.

Smile, though your heart is aching. Morgan, CC BY

By Annie Austin, University of Manchester