’Sleeping your life away’ could be more than a saying.

Excessive sleeping may increase your risk of an early death by up to 15%. So hints a new analysis of data collected on one million people by the American Cancer Society. The figures cast doubt on the reputed benefits of eight hours’ sleep a night.

People with the longest lives get only seven hours of sleep each night, find psychiatrists at the University of California, San Diego 1 . Why seven is the magi

Atmospheric carbon dioxide is lower at the weekend.

The climate-monitoring station on Mauna Loa volcano on Hawaii, 3,400 metres above sea level, could hardly be farther away from it all. Yet even here there is no escaping the weekly rhythm of modern life. The observatory records lower concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at the weekend than during the week.

Because there is no known natural cause of such a seven-day cycle, Randall Cerveny of Arizona State Univer

Monkey tests hint compound could paralyse malaria parasite in humans.

A new-found chemical can root out malaria parasites hiding in red blood cells and stop them reproducing. It may become a much-needed new weapon in the war against one of the world’s biggest killers.

The compound clears monkeys of infection with the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum at doses far lower than existing antimalarial drugs. But testing in humans is a few years away at least, say

Bio-Rad Laboratories Inc., multinational manufacturer and distributor of life science research products and clinical diagnostics, has announced the creation of a complete solution for automated BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease) testing. This highly scalable platform is the first testing system of its kind, providing both screening and confirmation testing capabilities all in one package, and will enable laboratories to reduce staffing costs and increase the speed and security

From cutlery and cooking pans to the inside of a Formula 1 car engine or a huge chemical process plant, stainless steel is all around us. It’s not meant to corrode, but it can, and when it does the results can be disastrous, whether it’s a hole in your dishwasher or a failed industrial plant.

Unlike rusting, stainless steel corrosion is highly localised and apparently random. Tiny holes called pits can drill through a substantial thickness of steel in a relatively short time. The pits can ca

Combining Hubble Space Telescope images with radio observations has revealed a highly unusual system consisting of a fast spinning pulsar and a bloated red companion star. The existence of the system is something of a mystery – the best explanation so far is that we have our first view of a millisecond pulsar just after it has been `spun up` by its red companion star.

Although more than 90 specimens of the exotic species of fast-spinning `millisecond pulsars` are known today, no observation