figshare, a Digital Science portfolio company, has announced a new partnership with open access publisher Public Library of Science (PLoS) to host the supplemental data for all seven PLoS journals, as well as provide a widget that will enable PLoS users to view data in the articles in the browser alongside the content. 

 figshare provides a free way for researchers to publish, share and get credit for their research data, hosting videos, datasets, graphs, figures and images. By partnering with figshare, PLoS can host data accompanying their publications, making the data easier to access for future use. Through figshare's new widgets, users will also be able to visualize the research objects within the browser. 

A new paper outlines the many pitfalls associated with simulation methods such as Monte Carlo algorithms and other commonly used molecular dynamics approaches.

If a numerical model simulating 25,000 generations of evolution within computers is to be believed, Cornell University engineering and robotics researchers may have discovered why biological networks tend to be organized as modules – a finding that will lead to a deeper understanding of the evolution of complexity.

And they say it will help evolve artificial intelligence. Robot brains with the grace and cunning of animals? What could go wrong?

There is a reason for the disparity between charitable giving among people who advocate smaller government and larger government; people who advocate larger government already feel like they are doing their part by paying more in taxes, so they give less to charity.

Two new research papers signal how the next class of powerful medications may currently reside at the bottom of the ocean. 

Sea life studies could aid researchers in several ways, including the development of new medications and perhaps biofuels. Because many of these ocean animal species have existed in harmony with their bacteria for millions of years, these benign bacteria have devised molecules that can affect body function without side effects - and therefore better fight disease.

A new estimate is that each intravenous drug user contracting Hepatitis C could infect around 20 other people with the virus, half of these transmissions occurring in the first two years after the user is first infected.

During the short time that Roy Thomas took over as writer of the Fantastic Four from Stan Lee, the original writer, it got a lot better.  I know, I know, that is blasphemy.(1) There is a reason Stan Lee gets a cameo in every movie about every Marvel superhero - he co-created them all, he made them all famous. He is a bigger legend than the guys behind Batman or Superman, his economic impact rivals the GDP of many small nations.

Still, when is the last time you read a good Stan Lee comic? Eventually, people are just phoning it in. And that had happened on the Fantastic Four by 1972.

Some time this month, in Poker Flat, Alaska, a team of scientists from  The Aerospace Corporation of El Segundo, Calif.and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center of Greenbelt, Md., will launch a sounding rocket up through the Northern Lights. 

Biologists have discovered a bioelectric signal that can identify cells that are likely to develop into tumors. The researchers also found that they could lower the incidence of cancerous cells by manipulating the electrical charge across cells' membranes. 

Bioelectric signals underlie an important set of control mechanisms that regulate how cells grow and multiply. The study investigated the bioelectric properties of cells that develop into tumors in Xenopus laevis frog embryos. 

Here is a conundrum in the culture wars; genetically modified tobacco has been shown to have numerous beneficial effects and now another one has been added.

The treatment for rabies (painful shots, thankfully not all in the stomach in 2013) is not as bad as the disease (death) but it is hardly civilized, so here is hoping the anti-science crowd does not claim genetically modified tobacco will create giant rats with SuperRabies.  Rabies deaths are not a big issue in the USA, 10 a year or so, and therefore it may be safe to do fundraising campaigns about Frankentobacco here, but for developing nations a better solution would save a lot of lives.