Only 4% of the universe is made of known material - the other 96% is traditionally labelled into two sectors, dark matter and dark energy. Dr HongSheng Zhao at the University of St Andrews believes dark matter and its counterpart dark energy may be more closely linked than was previously thought.

Astronomers believe that both the universe and galaxies are held together by the gravitational attraction of a huge amount of unseen material, first noted by the Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky in 1933, and now commonly referred to as dark matter.

Dr Zhao reports that, "Dark energy has already revealed its presence by masking as dark matter 60 years ago if we accept that dark matter and dark energy are linked phenomena that share a common origin.”

Sports pundits across the country have been comparing the so-far unbeaten 2007 New England Patriots to the perfect 1972 Dolphins all year. A New York cardiologist has used the scientific statistics used in large-scale medical trials to determine which of the two teams is superior.

Using a format and approach typically reserved for the cardiovascular therapy studies he writes and reviews, Dr.

A team at the University of Copenhagen have tracked down a genetic mutation which took place 6-10,000 years ago and is the cause of the eye color of all blue-eyed humans alive on the planet today.

What is the genetic mutation?

“Originally, we all had brown eyes”, said Professor Eiberg from the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine. “But a genetic mutation affecting the OCA2 gene in our chromosomes resulted in the creation of a “switch”, which literally “turned off” the ability to produce brown eyes.”

The OCA2 gene codes for the so-called P protein, which is involved in the production of melanin, the pigment that gives color to our hair, eyes and skin.

Healthy consumers can handle low levels of bacteria occasionally found in cosmetics but for severely ill patients these bacteria may trigger life-threatening infections, as patients in the intensive care unit at one Barcelona hospital discovered after using contaminated body moisturizer. The Burkholderia cepacia bacteria outbreak is detailed in Critical Care.

Five patients suffered from infection including bacteremia, lower respiratory tract infection and urinary tract infection associated with the bacterial outbreak in August 2006.

Although there is unquestionably much left to be discovered about life on Earth, charismatic animals like mammals are usually well documented, and it is rare to find a new species today—especially from a group as intriguing as the elephant-shrews, monogamous mammals found only in Africa with a colorful history of misunderstood ancestry.

Like shrews, these small, furry mammals eat mostly insects. Early scientists named them elephant-shrews not because they thought the animals were related to elephants but because of their long, flexible snouts. Ironically, recent molecular research has shown that they are actually more closely related to elephants than to shrews.

Monster.com is the perfect example of a company that spent its entire marketing budget on a Super Bowl ad and launched a success story. Is that the exception?

No, it turns out that Super Bowl advertisements do work, but not in the way you might expect. They don't often launch small companies into the Pro Bowl of the business world. Rather, a good Super Bowl ad means people assume the advertising works, anticipate more revenue, and push up the stock price of the company - without actually increasing sales.

Researchers in the University at Buffalo School of Management and Cornell University examined 529 commercials that aired during 17 Super Bowls from 1989-2005, and found that investors favored stocks of firms that aired likeable Super Bowl commercials.

Boosted by physical and mental exercise, neural stem cells continue to sprout new neurons throughout life, but the exact function of these newcomers has been the topic of much debate. Removing a genetic master switch that maintains neural stem cells in their proliferative state finally gave researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies some definitive answers.

Without adult neurogenesis — literally the “birth of neurons” —genetically engineered mice turned into “slow learners” that had trouble navigating a water maze and remembering the location of a submerged platform, the Salk investigators report in the Jan. 30 Advance Online Edition of Nature. The findings suggest that, one day, researchers might be able to stimulate neurogenesis with orally active drugs to influence memory function, the researchers say.

Earthquakes occurring at the edges of tectonic plates can trigger events at a distance and much later in time, according to a team of researchers reporting in Nature. These doublet earthquakes may hold an underestimated hazard, but may also shed light on earthquake dynamics.

"The last great outer rise earthquakes that occurred were in the 1930s and 1970s," said Charles J. Ammon, associate professor of geoscience, Penn State. "We did not then have the equipment to record the details of those events."

The outer rise is the region seaward of the deep-sea trench that marks the top of the plate boundary

February’s issue of Pediatrics offers a study saying there is reason to rethink blaming the spike in autism diagnoses on thimerosal, a mercury-containing preservative routinely used in several childhood vaccines until the late ‘90s.

The research from the University of Rochester suggests that infants’ bodies expel the thimerosal mercury much faster than originally thought – thereby leaving little chance for a progressive build up of the toxic metal.

Some parents and pediatricians believe that the series of thimerosal-containing shots many infants received in the 1990s, when the average number of vaccines kids received increased sharply, had put them at risk for developmental disorders.

A study in Social Science Quarterly says that religious women are less likely to have abortions than secular women - not because they're more pro-life, but because they're less likely to get pregnant before marriage.

“Religious influences on attitudes are much more powerful than religious influences on behavior,” the authors note. “While religion is the main reason for differences in abortion attitudes, religion is a relatively minor reason for differences in abortion behavior.”