Primitive stars are thought to have formed from material forged shortly after the Big Bang, 13.7 billion years ago and are mainly observed in the Milky Way. But now researchers are reporting that they have uncovered more primitive stars located in neighboring dwarf galaxies. The discovery was made possible by much more detailed spectra obtained with the UVES instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope.

"We have, in effect, found a flaw in the forensic methods used until now," says Else Starkenburg, lead researcher on the project. "Our improved approach allows us to uncover the primitive stars hidden among all the other, more common stars."

The southern limit of permafrost in the James Bay Region in northern Quebec, Canada is now 130 kilometers further north than it was 50 years ago, according to two researchers from the Department of Biology at Université Laval. A lack of long term climatic data for the area makes it impossible for the researchers to confirm the cause, but If the trend continues, permafrost in the region will completely disappear in the near future. The results of the new study appear in Permafrost and Periglacial Processes.

An analysis of the skeletal remains found in Carthaginian burial urns could finally lay to rest the millennia-old conjecture that the ancient empire of Carthage regularly sacrificed its youngest citizens. An examination of the remains of Carthaginian children revealed that most infants perished prenatally or very shortly after birth and were unlikely to have lived long enough to be sacrificed.

The findings, published this week in PLoS ONE, refute claims from as early as the 3rd century BCE of systematic infant sacrifice at Carthage that remain a subject of debate among biblical scholars and archaeologists. Authors of the new study say it's more likely that very young Punic children were cremated and interred in burial urns regardless of how they died.

Natural selection – the force that drives evolution – acts not only on whole organisms and individual genes, but also on gene networks, according to a new study appearing in Nature this week.The finding suggests that natural selection is both more powerful and more complex than scientists recognized.

Biologists have struggled for many years to explain how it is possible that some people who carry a mutated gene don't express the trait or condition associated with the mutation. This common but poorly understood phenomenon, known as incomplete penetrance,  may be partially due to environmental factors and the influence of other genes, but scientists say other forces are likely at work here as well.

The authors of a new study in Nature say that some cases of incomplete penetrance may be controlled by random fluctuations in gene expression.

In a study of intestinal development of C. elegans, a small worm, the team was able to pinpoint specific fluctuations that appear to determine whether the mutant trait is expressed or not.

New images from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope showing where supernova remnants emit radiation a billion times more energetic than visible light have brought astronomers a step closer to understanding the source of cosmic rays.

Cosmic rays consist mainly of protons that move through space at nearly the speed of light. In their journey across the galaxy, the particles are deflected by magnetic fields, which scrambles their paths and masks their origins.