In diseases such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), the body produces too much mucus, making breathing difficult. New research from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis provides clues to potentially counteract inappropriate mucus production.

"The new study lays the groundwork for developing treatments for diseases such as asthma, COPD, cystic fibrosis and even certain cancers," said senior author Thomas J. Brett, PhD, assistant professor of medicine. "It also solves a 20-year mystery about the role of a protein that has long been associated with these diseases."

How does a mother transition genetic control to offspring early in development?

It's part of a larger mystery regarding how embryos regulate cell division and differentiation into new types of cells.

A new article in Cell provides some insight into the mechanism for this genetic hand-off, which happens within hours of fertilization, when the newly fertilized egg is a zygote.

The National Agricultural Statistics Service  of the United States Department of Agriculture has released its honey report for 2014 and found it's boom times for bees.

Hives increased again, another 4 percent, up to a whopping 2.74 million colonies, and honey production is up 19 percent. Yield per colony averaged 65.1 pounds, which is up 15 percent.

If there is a Beepocalypse, the bees have not gotten the memo.

Our nation’s most influential, respected and powerful public health officials and academics are engaged in a vast,corrupt and fraudulent conspiracy to keep desperate smokers ignorant of the facts about how reduced-harm devices (such as e-cigarettes) are likely to help them quit smoking. 

A new paper notes that the Campanian Ignimbrite eruption in Italy 40,000 years ago, one of the largest volcanic cataclysms in Europe and responsible for injecting a significant amount of sulfur-dioxide (SO2) into the stratosphere, coincided with the final decline of Neanderthals as well as with dramatic territorial and cultural advances among modern humans.  

Scientists have long debated if this eruption and the resulting volcanic sulfur cooling and acid deposition could have contributed to the final extinction of the Neanderthals more than climate change or hominin competition. 

A new paper tests this hypothesis using a climate model. 

The big question in policy circles for the last month has been, would the Obama administration that has repeatedly said that putting solar panels on public land should be allowed side with science or with environmentalists when it came to natural gas?

The leading theory of what causes ice ages around the world -- changes in the way the Earth orbits the sun- has been cast into doubt by a new study.

The study raises questions about the Milankovitch theory of climate, which says the expansion and contraction of Northern Hemisphere continental ice sheets are influenced by cyclic fluctuations in solar radiation intensity due to wobbles in the Earth's orbit; those orbital fluctuations should have an opposite effect on Southern Hemisphere glaciers.

A new study finds that even a brief nap can significantly improve memory retention of learned material.

Saarland University graduate student Sara Studte, PhD supervisor Axel Mecklinger and co-researcher Emma Bridger have examined how power naps influence memory performance.

I just came back from Boston and the annual meeting of BAARN – the Boston Area Antibiotic Resistance Network symposium held at the Broad Institute.  The meeting was interesting but the atmosphere was funereal. Many of those losing their jobs with the closure of Cubist’s research center in Lexington, Mass were there as were many whose jobs are threatened at AZ’s facility in Waltham, Mass.

One major topic of discussion during the breaks was – where will all the antibiotic research go?

A comprehensive study examining clinical trials of more than 95,000 patients has found that glucose or sugar-lowering medications prescribed to patients with diabetes may pose an increased risk for the development of heart failure in these patients.