High-resolution images show that the solar corona is filled with large, banana-shaped magnetic structures called coronal loops. It is thought that these coronal loops, some over a few 100,000 km long, play a fundamental role in governing the physics of the corona and are even responsible for huge atmospheric explosions that occur in the atmosphere, what we call solar flares.

As if a vaguely distant coach and a missing striker who doesn't like his fans is not bad enough, a new study says Scots are more patriotic than those in England. 

Dr. Jackie Abell from Lancaster University, writing in the British Psychological Society's Journal of Social Psychology, said the study set out to understand the differences between how the Scottish and the English demonstrate their nationalism via support for the national football team.

One thing the film industry get right - and they don't get much right, since romantic comedy behavior in real life is likely to get you a restraining order - is that music evokes moods.

French researchers (naturally) say they have determined that if you want to successfully ask a woman on a date, the right soundtrack could improve the odds. They found women were more prepared to give their number to an ‘average’ young man after listening to romantic background music.

Giant freak waves - seriously, that is what oceanographers and physicists call them - are called that because they can appear on the open sea out of nowhere.

Researchers from the Ruhr- Universität Bochum and the University of Umeå, Sweden say they have developed a new statistical model for non-linear, interacting waves in computer simulations which will allow them to be theoretically calculated and modeled.

Scientists from the Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and Collaborative Research Center 746 of the University of Freiburg say they have discovered a new mechanism which plays an essential role in the assembly and growth of mitochondria, the 'power plants' of the cell.

These organelles make energy stored in food ready for use by the cell. The generators in the cellular power plants are biological membranes located inside the mitochondria. Even minute errors in the composition of the inner mitochondrial membrane can lead to severe metabolic derangements, which can have an especially negative impact on the energy-hungry muscle and nerve cells.

During pregnancy, many women experience remission of autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis and uveitis and scientists have described a biological mechanism they say is responsible for changes in the immune system that helps explain that remission.

The expression of an enzyme known as pyruvate kinase is reduced in immune cells in pregnant women compared to non-pregnant women, says biophysicist Howard R. Petty from the University of Michigan Kellogg Eye Center, and Roberto Romero, M.D., of the National Institutes for Health. Their study coming in the August issue of the American Journal of Reproductive Immunology also reports that expression of the enzyme is lower in pregnant women compared to those with pre-eclampsia, a condition with inflammatory components.