Nicotine in third-hand smoke, the residue from tobacco smoke that clings to virtually all surfaces long after a cigarette has been extinguished, reacts with the common indoor air pollutant nitrous acid to produce dangerous carcinogens. This new potential health hazard was revealed in a multi-institutional study led by researchers with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab).

The details surrounding the emergence and evolution of religion have not been clearly established and remain a source of much debate among scholars. Now, an article published by Cell Press in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences on February 8 brings a new understanding to this long-standing discussion by exploring the fascinating link between morality and religion.

Neuroscientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and their colleagues have tied the human aversion to losing money to a specific structure in the brain–the amygdala.

Advanced maternal age is linked to a significantly elevated risk of having a child with autism, regardless of the father's age, according to an exhaustive study of all births in California during the 1990s by UC Davis Health System researchers.

Just over 5 years after the $10M Ansari X PRIZE was won by a private space team, President Barack Obama announces that NASA funding would also be used to entice companies to build private spacecraft to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station after the space shuttle retires.

At SIGGRAPH Asia 2009, members of the Reality Media Lab Team at Ritsumeikan University presented an augmented reality system demonstrating a woodworking application.

The benefits of marijuana in tempering or reversing the effects of Alzheimer's disease have been challenged in a new study by researchers at the University of British Columbia and Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute.

Consuming two or more soft drinks per week increased the risk of developing pancreatic cancer by nearly twofold compared to individuals who did not consume soft drinks, according to a report in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

"People have to be able to make money off their brains and their hearts," Jaron Lanier was telling me. "Or else we're all going to starve, and it's the machines that'll get good."

Scientists announced today (7 Feb) they have identified for the first time definitive variants associated with biological ageing in humans. The team analyzed more than 500,000 genetic variations across the entire human genome to identify the variants which are located near a gene called TERC.