Dr. Ed Corboy had no idea what was afflicting his 80-year-old mother, Joan Corboy. All he knew for certain was that since being treated for what was a routine diarrheal infection, she seemed to be wasting away and none of her doctors or other health specialists could explain why.

Afraid that his mother was running out of time, Corboy called the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta for advice. Dr. Clifford McDonald told him the infection his mother probably had was of the NAP1 type of the bacteria Clostridium difficile, a virulent strain of a common intestinal bacteria currently plaguing hospitals that now rivals the superbug Methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) as one of the top emerging disease threats to humans.

The inventor of a revolutionary new forensic fingerprinting technique claims criminals who eat processed foods are more likely to be discovered by police through their fingerprint sweat corroding metal.

Dr John Bond, a researcher at the University of Leicester and scientific support officer at Northamptonshire Police, said processed food fans are more likely to leave tell-tale signs at a crime scene.

Speaking before a conference on forensic science at the University of Leicester, Dr Bond said sweaty fingerprint marks made more of a corrosive impression on metal if they had a high salt content.

To activists in cozy offices, the solution to over-hunting is easy; ban it. But unless we put a McDonalds in the forests of Africa, that isn't really an answer. But we need to find one.

A new report from the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CDB) and partners warns that an upsurge in hunting bushmeat—including mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians — in tropical forests is unsustainable and that it poses serious threats to food security for poor inhabitants of forests in Africa, who rely largely on bushmeat for protein.

The authors of the report call on policymakers in the region to develop policies protecting endangered species, while allowing sustainable hunting of "common" game, since there is no clear substitute available if common wild meat sources were to be depleted.

The next major advance in computer processors will be the move from today's two-dimensional chips to three-dimensional circuits, and the first three-dimensional synchronization circuitry is now running at 1.4 gigahertz at the University of Rochester.

Unlike past attempts at 3-D chips, the Rochester chip is not simply a number of regular processors stacked on top of one another. It was designed and built specifically to optimize all key processing functions vertically, through multiple layers of processors, the same way ordinary chips optimize functions horizontally. The design means tasks such as synchronicity, power distribution, and long-distance signaling are all fully functioning in three dimensions for the first time.

When we hear somebody described as “frosty” or “cold”, we automatically picture a person who is unfriendly and antisocial. There are numerous examples in our daily language of metaphors which make a connection between cold temperatures and emotions such as loneliness, despair and sadness.

We are taught at a young age that metaphors are meant to be descriptive and are not supposed to be taken literally but recent studies suggest that these metaphors are more than just fancy literary devices and that there is a psychological basis for linking cold with feelings of social isolation.

The recent dramatic melting and breakup of a few huge Greenland glaciers have fueled public concerns over the impact of global climate change, but that isn't the island's biggest problem.

A new study shows that the dozens of much smaller outflow glaciers dotting Greenland's coast together account for three times more loss from the island's ice sheet than the amount coming from their huge relatives.

In a study just published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, scientists at Ohio State University reported that nearly 75 percent of the loss of Greenland ice can be traced back to small coastal glaciers.