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Neuroscientists trying to tease out the mechanisms underlying the basis of human sympathy have found that such feelings trigger brain activity not only in areas associated with emotion but also in areas associated with performing an action. But, when people act in socially inappropriate ways this activity is replaced by increased activity in regions associated with social conflict.

Understanding the neurophysiology of such basic human characteristics as sympathy is important because some peo

Cytomegalovirus, hidden in most people, begins to give up secrets of its stealth

Princeton scientists have taken an important step toward understanding a virus that infects and lies dormant in most people, but emerges as a serious illness in transplant patients, some newborns and other people with weakened immune systems.

The virus, called human cytomegalovirus, enters the bone marrow and can hide there for a lifetime. Until now, however, scientists had not been able to stud

Scientists are to go below ground in seven tropical countries to search for the largest source of untapped life left on Earth.

Experts know that, millimetres below the surface in the twilight, subterranean world, of the earthworm and the nematode, tens of thousands of new species of tiny organisms including bacteria, fungi, insects, mites and worms await discovery.

Scientists are also convinced that unraveling the secrets of how they operate may be the key to restoring the fe

Researchers in the Materials Sciences Division (MSD) of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, working with crystal-growing teams at Cornell University and Japan’s Ritsumeikan University, have learned that the band gap of the semiconductor indium nitride is not 2 electron volts (2 eV) as previously thought, but instead is a much lower 0.7 eV.

The serendipitous discovery means that a single system of alloys incorporating indium, gallium, and nitrogen can convert virtually the full spectru

Nicotine isn’t all bad, despite its addictive qualities and its presence in tobacco products, increasingly taboo in these health-conscious times. As a chemical compound, nicotine even has beneficial properties. It’s used around the world as a relatively cheap, environmentally friendly insecticide, repelling bugs that attack tobacco and other plants, and – contrary to popular misconceptions – it is not a carcinogen.

Take a nicotine molecule and snip off a methyl group, though, and y

Clinical tests began today of a novel vaccine directed at the three most globally important HIV subtypes, or clades. Developed by scientists at the Dale and Betty Bumpers Vaccine Research Center (VRC), part of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the vaccine incorporates HIV genetic material from clades A, B and C, which cause about 90 percent of all HIV infections around the world.

“This is the first multigene, multiclade HIV vaccine to enter human trials,” no