Researchers have found chemical evidence for the presence of sulfur in the Earth's core. They determined the composition of the core, which is inaccessible to direct sampling, by analyzing isotopes - atoms of the same element that have different masses - of copper in various crust and mantle rocks and then comparing them with the chemical composition of meteorites, representative of the materials that formed the Earth. 

Mapping the human brain’s network of interconnections, known as the connectome is typically done with help from computational tools because recreating interconnections between different brain regions has been challenging in the lab.

Researchers at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) have developed a method to recreate connections between neurons from two different brain areas in a dish. Their findings were published in Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience.

Decades ago, the American Council on Science and Health said that saturated fats were not as bad as was being portrayed and replacements would be worse. Natural Resources Defense Council and other scare-story-of-the-month groups had sided with yet another ban on food to get mainstream media attention and said anyone who disagreed must be a shill for Big Bacon. They wanted everything replaced with trans fats.

Now, science has been proven correct again and anti-science groups look foolish. The FDA has found partially hydrogenated oils have no value and some risk, so they are going to be banned unless companies receive an exemption. 

In 1915 Albert Einstein formulated the theory of general relativity which fundamentally changed our understanding of gravity. He explained gravity as the manifestation of the curvature of space and time. Einstein's theory predicts that the flow of time is altered by mass.

This effect, known as "gravitational time dilation", causes time to be slowed down near a massive object. It affects everything and everybody; in fact, people working on the ground floor will age slower than their colleagues a floor above, by about 10 nanoseconds in one year.

With infectious diseases increasing worldwide, the need to understand how and why disease outbreaks occur is becoming increasingly important. Looking for answers, a team of biologists found broad evidence that supports the controversial 'dilution effect hypothesis,' which suggests that biodiversity limits outbreaks of disease among humans and wildlife. 

"The dilution effect hypothesis is important because it warns that human-mediated biodiversity losses can exacerbate disease outbreaks, yet it has been contentiously debated," said study lead author Dr. David Civitello, postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Integrative Biology at University of South Florida. 

Child fitness levels are falling at an even faster rate than first feared - and it has nothing to do with obesity, according to a new study. Of more than 300 pupils aged between 10 and 11 who took part, the researchers expected that children with a lower BMI would do better than the heavier children they measured six years ago.

But the follow-up to a 2009 study showed child fitness declined by 8% over the previous ten years - yet the children they tested were actually thinner than those measured in 2008.