Twenty years have passed since the first observation of the top quark, the last of the collection of six that constitutes the matter of which atomic nuclei are made. And in these twenty years particle physics has made some quite serious leaps forward; the discovery that neutrinos oscillate and have mass (albeit a tiny one), and the discovery of the Higgs boson are the two most important ones to cite. Yet the top quark remains a very interesting object to study at particle colliders.

  So called "memristors" are an intriguing hot topic in electronics and nanotechnology, and highly controversial to boot. A certain type of memristor device was predicted to exist in 1971. Being perhaps a simple electrical component much like a resistor or capacitor, HP claimed to have discovered the missing memristor in 2008, except, "The Missing Memristor has Not been Found" [Nature Publishing Group’s Scientific Reports 5, 11657 (1215)]

Sepsis kills more Americans every year than AIDS, breast cancer and prostate cancer combined but it gets far less attention. Unlike those other diseases, hours can make the difference between life and death in sepsis.

The results of a recent study show that children who report eating more polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), found in tree nuts, seeds and fatty fish, and consume a higher ratio of PUFA: saturated fatty acids (SFAs), have more lean body mass, lower percent body fat, and less intra-abdominal fat (belly fat).

The study was published in "The Journal of Nutrition" and conducted by researchers at the University of Colorado Anschutz Health and Wellness Center and the University of Colorado School of Medicine at the Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora, Colo. in collaboration with the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Male and female brains operate differently at a molecular level, according to a new study of a brain region involved in learning and memory and responses to stress and epilepsy.

Many brain disorders vary between the sexes, but how biology and culture contribute to these differences has been unclear. The neuroscientists found an intrinsic biological difference between males and females in the molecular regulation of synapses in the hippocampus. This provides a scientific reason to believe that female and male brains may respond differently to drugs targeting certain synaptic pathways.

As reporter Keith Kloor noted in his recent Nature story on the targeting of biotech professors and science advocates,U.S. Right to Know has issued yet a new Freedom of Information Act demand to Washington State University for the email records of Associate Professor of Nutrition Michelle McGuire. The FOIA has resulted in 12,000 documents (not pages) needing to now be reviewed by university lawyers and McGuire.

For more than a century, researchers have tried to pin down exactly why so many animal species play in their infancy. Now a new study in wild macaque monkeys has found that infants who play more actually boost key motor skills. However, these skills are acquired at a cost. The researchers also discovered that active infants grow more slowly.

So what are the evolutionary reasons behind this trade-off? And should human parents who want tall children sit them in front of the TV rather than letting them play in the garden?

The crucial genetic mashup that spawned the yeast that brews the vast majority of beer occurred at least twice -- and both times without human help -- according to a new study.

 More than 2.7 million people in the United States are infected with the hepatitis C virus, according to estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and people infected with the hepatitis C virus are at risk for liver damage, but the results of a new Johns Hopkins study now show the infection may also bring heart trouble.