France Telecom said on Thursday it had been picked by Apple to launch its iPhone handset in France.

On the world's coldest continent of Antarctica, the landscape is so vast and varied that only satellites can fully capture the extent of changes in the snow melting across its valleys, mountains, glaciers and ice shelves. In a new NASA study, researchers using 20 years of data from space-based sensors have confirmed that Antarctic snow is melting farther inland from the coast over time, melting at...

A German-American research team of biologists and geochemists has discovered hitherto unknown anaerobic bacteria in marine sediments which need only propane or butane for growth, as reported by the scientific journal Nature in its current online issue.

A stunning discovery by German scientists may make blood doping and the treatment of severe anemia as easy as washing your hair. In the October print issue of The FASEB Journal, researchers show that the estimated 100,000 hair follicles on each person`s head have the potential to become erythropoietin (EPO) factories. EPO, the hormone primarily responsible for the creation of red blood cells, is...

An international team of researchers led by the Smithsonian Institution has completed a new study on Homo floresiensis, commonly referred to as the “hobbit,” a 3-foot-tall, 18,000-year-old hominin skeleton, discovered four years ago on the Indonesian island of Flores. This study offers one of the most striking confirmations of the original interpretation of the hobbit as an island remnant of one...

Astronomers have found evidence that stars have been forming in a long tail of gas that extends well outside its parent galaxy. This discovery suggests that such "orphan" stars may be much more prevalent than previously thought.

A new study led by investigators from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine demonstrates that the process of necrosis, long thought to be a chaotic, irreversible pathway to cell death, may actually be triggered as part of a regulated response to stress by a powerful protein, SRP-6, that can potentially halt necrosis in its path. Further, the research team realized that this protein might...

For nearly 70 years scientists have known that caloric restriction prolongs life. In everything from yeast to primates, a significant decrease in calories can extend lifespan by as much as one-third. But getting under the hood of the molecular machinery that drives this longevity has remained elusive.

An international team of researchers has revealed the genetic secrets of one of the world`s most debilitating human parasites, Brugia malayi (B. malayi), which the World Health Organization estimates has seriously incapacitated and disfigured more than 40 million people around the globe.

For nearly 150 years, scientists have been baffled by the bicycle. How is it possible that a moving bicycle can, all by itself, be so stable?

In the battle against bacteria, researchers have scored a direct hit. They have made a discovery that could shorten the road to new and more potent antibiotics.

Research conducted at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine has shed new light on the structure and function of one of the key proteins in all mammalian cells, protein kinase A (PKA), an enzyme which plays an essential role in memory formation, communication between nerve cells, and cardiac function.

A new look at some old bones have shown that velociraptor, the dinosaur made famous in the movie Jurassic Park, had feathers. A paper describing the discovery, made by paleontologists at the American Museum of Natural History and the Field Museum of Natural History, appears in the Sept. 21 issue of the journal Science.

Hospitals world-wide battle nosocomial infections on a daily basis. One of the most difficult bacteria to combat is Clostridium.difficile. To help ensure the best control methods possible, Dr. Michael Libman, Director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC), studied the most effective ways to eliminate C.difficile bacteria from the hands of health care...

When biological molecules kiss, a new kind of biosensor can tell. A new and deceptively simple technique has been developed by chemists at Vanderbilt University that can measure the interactions between free-floating, unlabeled biological molecules including proteins, sugars, antibodies, DNA and RNA.

Researchers have found that bats have a special ability to detect the polarity of a magnetic field, meaning that the creatures can tell the difference between north and south. The only other animal known to have this ability is the mole rat, while birds, fish, amphibians, and all other non-mammals possess a different version of the magnetic compass.

Scientists at Johns Hopkins recently discovered that a chemical chain reaction that controls organ size in animals ranging from insects to humans could mean the difference between normal growth and cancer. The study, published in the Sept. 21 issue of Cell, describes how organs can grow uncontrollably huge and become cancerous when this chain reaction is perturbed.

Every now and then a space rock hits the world's media - sometimes almost literally. Threatening asteroids that zoom past the Earth, fireballs in the sky seen by hundreds of people and mysterious craters which may have been caused by impacting meteorites; all make ESA's planned mission Don Quijote look increasingly timely.

The influenza A virus does not lie dormant during summer but migrates globally and mixes with other viral strains before returning to the Northern Hemisphere as a genetically different virus, according to biologists who say the finding settles a key debate on what the virus does during the summer off season when it is not infecting people.

A scientist at Leeds whose research is challenging conventional thinking on how the cholesterol-reducing drugs statins benefit cardiac patients, has secured funding to further investigate her findings.

The wisest energy strategy for the United States, and indeed other countries facing similar challenges, is to move away from their reliance on large-scale centralized coal and nuclear plants, and instead, invest in renewable energy systems and small scale decentralized generation technologies. According to Benjamin Sovacool from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, these...

Women with low levels of vitamin D have an increased risk of hip fracture, according to a study led by the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health presented this week at the 29th annual meeting of the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research at the Hawaii Convention Center.

While the visual regions of the brain have been intensively mapped, many important regions for auditory processing remain “uncharted territory.” Now, researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and elsewhere have identified a region responsible for a key auditory process — perceiving “sound space,” the location of sounds, even when the listener is not concentrating on those sounds.

The nations of Asia and the Pacific are being urged to study the issue of biofuels with greater care before deciding on how they will use their agricultural products to generate energy.