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The Ancient Egyptians cherished their fragrant scents, too, as perfume flacons from this period indicate. In its permanent exhibition, Bonn University's Egyptian Museum has a particularly well preserved example on display. Screening this 3,500-year-old flacon with a computer tomograph, scientists at the university detected the desiccated residues of a fluid, which they now want to submit to further analysis. They might even succeed in reconstructing this scent.

Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have discovered the origins of nanorod diameter, demonstrating that the competition and collaboration among various mechanisms of atomic transpo...

A fossil discovery in China prompts researchers to question the scaly image of dinosaurs.

More babies were born in the United States in 2007 than any year in the nation's history — and a wedding band made increasingly little difference in the matter. The 4,317,119 births, reported by federal researchers Wednesday, topped a record first set in 1957 at the height of the baby boom.

Free-floating messages in the bloodstream could soon provide a unique window into the body. Researchers worldwide are racing to decipher circulating genetic material for better ways to diagnose disease, monitor pregnancy, and even improve food safety. [More]

For the successful takeover of alternative energy over conventional sources of energy we need a good battery technology too for power storage. The devices we want to keep on using need to be recharged. And we all know that recharge takes hours whether it's our mobiles or laptops. If the researchers from MIT has [...]Posted in: Batteries, Inventions

Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers are investigating a new way to block reproduction of the hepatitis C virus (HCV) - targeting not the virus itself but the human genes the virus exploits in its life cycle. In the March 19 Cell Host & Microbe, they report finding nearly 100 genes that support the replication of HCV and show that blocking several of them can suppress viral replication in cultured cells.

NEW YORK (AP) -- A small dinosaur that once roamed northeastern China was covered with a stiff, hairlike fuzz, a discovery that suggests feathers began to evolve much earlier than many researchers believe - maybe even in the earliest dinosaurs. Scientists had previously identified feathers and so-called 'dinofuzz' in theropods, two-legged meat-eaters that are widely considered the ancestors of birds....

[The following is an exact transcript of this podcast.]Seventy percent of all antibiotics in this country go to livestock like pigs and chickens. And concern is growing about drug-resistant bacteria that sprout up in crowded livestock facilities and may spread to humans. Now researchers suggest that a vector for that spread may be the common housefly. [More]

Ever since doctors started replacing worn or damaged bones and teeth with plastic, metal, or ceramic parts, scientists have been on a quest to develop the perfect material for these orthopedic and dental implants. Initially, the challenge was to overcome the body's response to foreign materials, i.e. the strong tendency to reject them. While a lot of progress has been made, and millions of patients receive implants every year ranging from teeth to hip joints, medical implants still do not achieve the same fit and stability as the original tissue that they replace. Researchers have found that the response of host organisms to nanomaterials is different than that observed to conventional materials and that nanopatterning of the surface of implant materials therefore leads to much more compatible prostheses. One approach to improving the biological performance of implants is by functionalizing a non-physiological metallic implant surface through the application of biologically active coat