A new paper says that exposure to a banned neonicotinoid insecticide causes changes to the genes of the honeybee. The paper was written to support the recent decision taken by the European Commission to temporarily ban three neonicotinoids amid concerns that they could be linked to bee deaths.

Honeybees pollinate one-third of the food that we eat and the experiment looked at changes in the activity of honeybee genes linked to one of the recently banned neonicotinoids, imidacloprid.

‘Jumping genes’ found in most living organisms don’t ultimately kill off their hosts, which is a long-standing scientific mystery. 

A new paper reveals how the movement and duplication of transposons is regulated, which prevents a genomic meltdown and instead enables transposons to live in harmony with their hosts - including humans. 

If you apply for a job and the company is interested, they will look at your social media presence to find risky behavior that they're not allowed to come right out and ask about.

A new paper, by people who are not actually in the business of hiring anyone, finds that companies may have a fundamental misunderstanding of online behavior and, as a result, may be eliminating desirable job candidates.

A growing population and greater wealth will mean more demand for meat in developing nations. That brings concern about air quality related to food production.

Some emissions are direct, such as methane from ruminants, while others are secondary, such as growing food to feed animals. 

Two proteins involved in oral taste detection, TAS1R3 and GNAT3, also play a crucial role in sperm development, according to a new paper.

While breeding mice for taste-related studies, the researchers discovered that they were unable to produce offspring that were simultaneously missing two taste-signaling proteins: TAS1R3, a component of both the sweet and umami (amino acid) taste receptors; and GNAT3, a molecule needed to convert the oral taste receptor signal into a nerve cell response. 

Like HAL 9000 in the wonderful movie "2001 -  the space odyssey", the CDF detector is being disassembled piece by piece, losing its functionality bit by bit, and turning from one of the most complex electronics systems ever built into a pile of junk in the course of a long, slow process. The central part of the detector has been transported out of the collision hall on rails, into the assembly hall, which is now serving the opposite purpose. If you ever visited Fermilab, the assembly hall is inside the big orange building you drove by as you got to the Wilson Hall from the east entrance.

Some elite track and field athletes peak young, under the age of 20, while others peak later - but only a small fraction of star junior athletes had similar success as senior athletes.

An Indiana University analysis compared the performance of elite track and field athletes and conclude that physical maturation is behind the disparity, with athletes who mature early reaping the benefits early, seeing their best times, jumps and throws at a younger age than Olympians, many of whom mature later. 

Veloxis Pharmaceuticals announced that LCP-Tacro successfully demonstrated non-inferiority compared to tacrolimus (Prograf®; Astellas Pharma) in its Phase III clinical trial, Study 3002.

The Phase III randomized, double-blind and double-dummy study in 543 de novo kidney transplant recipients, with Prograf as the comparator, met its primary efficacy and primary safety endpoints.

The study was conducted under a Special Protocol Agreement with the FDA and the results are considered pivotal for the planned U.S. regulatory filing expected to occur in the second half of 2013.

Why is it that so many scientific stories seem intent on debunking and end by demonstrating that they are just rehashing opinions and have no actual data?

A recent article purported to debunk the story of the Candiru, which supposedly would be attracted to urine in the water and swim up the urethra to anchor itself into a penis to suck the host's blood.

The candiru, apparently cannot get back out of a human host, and cannot be removed because of the spines – so this little fish does horrendous damage, leading to laceration, hemorrhage, bladder destruction, penis amputation, even death!

There's a new weapon to fight poachers who kill elephants, hippos, rhinos and other wildlife - nuclear bombs. 

By measuring radioactive carbon-14 deposited in tusks and teeth by open-air nuclear bomb tests, researchers can pinpoint the year an animal died, which discloses if the ivory was taken illegally.