News
Plants can feel pain, according to German researchers, and they talk to each other using chemical signals. Using highly sensitive microphones, Dr. Frank Kuhnemann and his colleagues found that plants release the gas ethylene (the same stuff used to make polythene) when the...
The investigation into autism has taken a new twist, in that a new theory has emerged that autism is an autoimmuine disorder, In other words the result of the body turning upon itself. In the latest work, Simon Murch and colleagues from the Royal Free Hospital studied 25 c...
Scientists will announce tomorrow that drinking Tea regularly if you have had a heart attack has a protective effect on your health, according to a report in the Journal of the American Heart Association. The researchers found that among 1900 men and women who had had hear...
Fast food advertisers are encouraging an epidemic in obesity. Windhause and Marlene from Louisiana State University studied fast food ads from the last 25 years on Saturday morning TV, the prime spor for targetting children. The portions on the films have apparently double...
A man from Hertfordshire has come up with a novel de-spidering device for removing spiders from walls or the sides of the bath. John Dony's invention consists of a transparent plastic box, open on one side. You put the open side of the box over the spider, trapping it, and...
A surgically implanted "pacemaker for the brain" significantly improves depression - and its benefits last for at least two years, according to the results of the first long-term follow-up study of the treatment. Vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) is conventionally us...
The make-up industry is never going to believe this, but scientists in Spain have shown how eating poo can be used for cosmetic effects. But luckily this doesn't mean that a trip to Superdrug is about to get very unpleasant - the studies were done using a rare breed of vul...
A Taiwanese company has created a genetically modified zebra fish that will glow in the dark, but environmentalists are worried that the fish will start a trend for bio-engineered "Frankenstein pets". The modified fish are set for import into Britain later in the...
