Folic acid has long been touted as an important supplement for expectant mothers, to prevent defects in the baby’s developing brain and spinal cord. It is added as a supplement to breads, pastas, rice and cereals to help ensure that women are exposed to sufficient amounts of this nutrient even before they know they’re pregnant.

Imagine communicating with your bank, the IRS or your doctor by way of an Internet that was actually secure, where if any bad actor were to try to eavesdrop you would know immediately. Such is the promise of secure quantum communication, and has been since it was 'almost ready' starting in the 1990s.

For quantum communication to become the standard, technical challenges still lie ahead. To make progress toward devices that can send and receive quantum data, researchers at Stanford University have created a novel quantum light source. 

THE languages known as Austronesian are spoken by more than 380 million people in territories that include Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Madagascar and the islands of the Pacific. How did the population¬s of such a large and diverse area come to share a similar tongue? It is one of the most controversial questions in genetics, archaeology and anthropology. The University of Huddersfield's Professor Martin Richards belongs to a team of archaeogenetic researchers working on the topic and its latest article proposes a solution based on what has been the most comprehensive analysis so far of DNA from the region.

Local modifications in histone proteins alter DNA packing density in the cell nucleus to regulate gene activity. They also form the basis of a code in which the significance of a given pattern or motif depends on its broader context.

What bones are to bodies, the cytoskeleton is to cells. The cytoskeleton maintains cellular structure, builds appendages like flagella and, together with motor proteins, powers cellular movement, transport, and division. Microtubules are a critical component of the cytoskeleton, vital for cell division and, because of that, an excellent target for chemotherapy drugs.

Microtubules can spontaneously self-organize, transforming from many singular components into one large cellular structure capable of performing specific tasks. Think Transformers. How they do that, however, has remained unclear.

Some scientists have been so convinced that iron fertilization will help mitigate carbon increases in the atmosphere that, as in Germany and other countries, they have violated international law with illegal experiments.

Another study has found that fertilizing the oceans with iron to produce more carbon-eating algae will not work as those ecological activists have envisioned.