In drug design, the protein K-Ras has been on everyone's target list for more than 30 years due to its status as the most commonly mutated oncogene in human cancers.

Despite its high profile, K-Ras has been "undruggable" - many pharmaceutical, biotech, and academic laboratories have failed to design a drug that successfully targets the mutant gene.

Older men with moderate testosterone,
a key male sex hormone involved in maintaining sex drive, sperm production and bone health
, tend to live longer, according to a new paper.

Physicians have long known that low testosterone levels can signal health problems, but the new study found men may not fare better when levels of the hormone rise too high. 

The population-based cohort study analyzed the mortality rate in a group of 3,690 community-dwelling men between the ages of 70 to 89 in Perth, Western Australia. Participants' testosterone and DHT levels were measured between 2001 and 2004. Researchers analyzed the group's survival rate as of December 2010.

When Neil Armstrong took his first step for all mankind in 1969, researchers obviously had no idea how much of a nuisance the lunar soil beneath his feet would be. The scratchy dust clung to everything it touched, causing scientific instruments to overheat and, for Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt, a sort of lunar dust hay fever. The annoying particles even prompted a scientific experiment to figure out how fast they collect, but the data got lost.

Maybe you like to eat carp. Invasive Asian carp have been successfully harvested and served on a dinner plate but the idea of similarly harvesting invasive plants and converting them into ethanol isn't realistic yet - even less realistic than currently mandated and subsidized ethanol. 

Obviously, harvesting invasive plants for use as biofuels is a great idea and merits basic research but from a policy point of view, let's hope the government does not start throwing money at companies. For now, it faces poses numerous obstacles and is too expensive to consider, at least with the current ethanol pathways.

The deadly amphibian disease chytridiomycosis has caused the extinction of Darwin's frogs, according to scientists from the Zoological Society of Londonand Universidad Andrés Bello in Chile. 

Conservation scientists found evidence of amphibian chytridiomycosis causing mortality in  the the northern Rhinoderma rufum endemic to Chile, and linked this with both the population decline of  the southern Rhinoderma darwinii from Chile and Argentina, including from undisturbed ecosystems.

Astronomers have found strong evidence that Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, is producing a jet of high-energy particles.

The connections between the left and the right hemispheres of the brain strengthen in young children while they sleeo, which may help brain functions mature, according to a new paper.

Scientists have known that the brain changes drastically during early childhood: New connections are formed, others are removed and a fatty layer called "myelin" forms around nerve fibers in the brain. The growth of myelin strengthens the connections by speeding up the transfer of information.

Maturation of nerve fibers leads to improvement in skills such as language, attention and impulse control. But it is still not clear what role sleep plays in the development of such brain connections.

The caffeine in a cup of coffee might help your small blood vessels work better, according to a paper presented at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2013, which followed 27 healthy adults and showed that drinking a cup of caffeinated coffee significantly improved blood flow in a finger, which is a measure of how well the inner lining of the body's smaller blood vessels work.

Specifically, participants who drank a cup of caffeinated coffee had a 30 percent increase in blood flow over a 75-minute period compared to those who drank decaffeinated coffee.  

A research team has uncovered what may be the first recognized example of ancient Martian crust.

The genome sequence of a 24,000-year-old Siberian individual demonstrates genomic signatures that are basal to present-day western Eurasians and close to modern Native Americans and provides a key piece of the puzzle in the quest for Native American origins and also sheds light on the genetic landscape of Eurasia 24,000 years ago.