Is there life on Mars? It’s possible, but it may not be Martian, say scientists. New research, published in the open access journal BMC Microbiology, suggests that conditions on Mars are capable of supporting dormant bacteria, known as endospores. This raises concern about future attempts to detect Martian life forms because endospores originating on Earth could potentially hitch a ride to Mars and survive on its surface.
Soil on Mars is thought to be rich in oxidising chemicals that are known

A bit of Earth-bound chemistry has led scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, to conclude that there is an unsuspected wind of low-energy cosmic ray particles blowing through the galaxy.

The cosmic rays aren’t energetic enough to make headway against the solar wind to reach Earth, but they appear to have a big impact on the chemistry within tenuous clouds of gas between stars, so-called diffuse interstellar clouds.

“This implies a new population of cosmic rays no

If your computer screen is covered with Web browser windows to let you monitor the news headlines, weather, traffic and stock market while you work, you might be suffering from information overload.

Computing researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology experienced this problem and have created a prototype software program to move such information from the center of your awareness to the periphery. Called InfoCanvas, the program creates an abstract pictorial representation of informat

Data compares blue collar workers and white collar workers

Men who work in female-dominated professions, such as clerks and classroom aides, are 47 percent more likely to lash out in violence against wives or live-in girlfriends than a control group of white-collar managers, according to a recent study by a sociologist at the University of California, Riverside.

That is just one of the surprises found by Scott Melzer, a postgraduate researcher, who used a national data set

An increasing amount of genetic engineering in agriculture closely resembles the conventional crop breeding that has been done for thousands of years, and unnecessarily stringent regulation of this type of gene research is choking off its usefulness, one expert says in a new policy forum in Science.

Government regulations that lump all types of genetic engineering together, instead of making reasonable distinctions between differing technologies, is stifling research, favors the efforts of

Research to be presented at American Academy of Neurology meeting on April 3

Results of a clinical trial conducted by Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) reveal yoga or exercise assists multiple sclerosis (MS) patients with fatigue. The study was conducted and funded within the Oregon Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine in Neurological Disorders (ORCCAMIND) at OHSU. The research results will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology meeting on April 3 in Ho