Fertility doctors have developed a fitness test for embryos which they claim could substantially improve the chances of pregnancy.
Gay men and heterosexual women have similar shaped brains, says new study.
Andrew Collier Cameron stretches a hand towards the charcoal skies over the Kingdom of Fife, eastern Scotland, and talks of a planet that lies far beyond the clouds. It has never been seen, even through the most powerful space telescopes. It revealed itself to Cameron only by casting the tiniest of shadows as it strayed in front of its parent star, 1 000 light years from his office at St Andrew’s University.
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/ 11 September 2007
Climate change and an increasing population could trigger a global food crisis in the next half century as countries struggle for fertile land to grow crops and rear animals, scientists warned recently. To keep up with the growth in human population, more food will have to be produced worldwide over the next 50 years than has been during the past 10 000 years combined, the experts said.
British scientists are developing a force-field to protect astronauts and spacecraft from hazards on future missions to the moon, Mars and beyond. Although the shield is unlikely to withstand a full-on assault from the Klingons, it is designed to act as a “virtual umbrella” to shelter astronauts and sensitive electronics from the violent blasts of radiation that erupt from the sun.
Hidden beneath the panels of an ordinary-looking family car lies enough technology to eliminate the major cause of road accidents: the driver. The unassuming black VW Passat parked in London’s Science Museum looks like it has been abandoned by a disgruntled motorist. But the big red button on the rear passenger door and a discreet beermat-size disc on the roof offer clues about the future of motoring.
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/ 27 February 2007
Scientists may be a step closer to understanding one of the most brilliant minds ever to grace the field, that of Albert Einstein, the man who unravelled the mysteries of the atom. Researchers at Lausanne University identified an unknown role for a type of brain cell that Einstein is thought to have had in more copious supply than the average male.
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/ 19 February 2007
A good dose of motherly love may be enough to alter our genetic code, leaving us less fearful and stressed out in later life, researchers have found. The striking claim suggests that rather than our genetic blueprint being fixed before birth our bodies can tweak its biological book of instructions, allowing us to adapt more swiftly to a changing world.
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/ 26 January 2007
A year-long quest to identify the worst sound in the world ended with top honours going to the backdrop of a market town in Britain on a Saturday night: a person vomiting. The sound won out over fingers being dragged down a blackboard, a dentist’s drill and wailing babies in an online study that drew 1,1-million votes from around the world.
A limitless supply of spare organs, hard evidence of aliens and a machine that puts you in the mind of an animal. These are some of the predictions made about the world of 2056 by a batch of the planet’s most prominent scientists, including psychoÂlogist Steven Pinker, philosopher Dan Dennett and astronomer Sir Martin Rees.