Rock the Amazon at your peril

In a massive study scientists have shown that climate change could turn the Amazon rainforest from a carbon ally into a carbon criminal. Writing in this week's Science Leeds University ecologist Professor Oliver Phillips, together with an international team of more than 60 collaborators, describes ...

Cig addiction could be in your genes

Tobacco causes around a quarter of all cancer deaths in the UK, as well as heart disease, lung disease and other heart problems.  And it’s a fiercely addictive drug, meaning that people find it hard to give up. But some people do manage to quit the cigs relatively easily, while other fight a li...

Hungry Jupiter

Scientists have spent a lot of time trying to simulate the birth of the solar system, partly to try and understand our solar system and partly to try and estimate how many other similar solar systems there are out there. But one thing that has confused them is Jupiter's moons - there aren't enough o...

Spying on the sense of self

One of the most intriguing areas of neuroscience at the moment is the issue of the “sense of self” – basically, how we are aware of our own thoughts and personality. Previous research has shown that a few areas of the brain – the prefrontal cortex, the posterior cingulated cortex, and the parietal r...

Predicting Landslides

Predicting earthquakes and avalanches is notoriously difficult, scientists have been attempting to do so for hundreds of years with very little success, and a group from imperial college london may have worked out why. Both earthquakes and avalanches are types of critical phenomina, the classic exa...

Near Earth Objects - DD45's Near Miss

Astronomical objects often pass by the Earth. This week saw DD45 pass within the orbit of the Moon, only twice as far away as satellites!

This Week in Science History - The First Phone Call

You may take your telephone for granted, but it all started this week in 1876...