Stories by Alison Abbott

A team from the Francis Crick Institute wants a permit to use so-called CRISPR/Cas 9 technology in basic research

Experiment compares the way monkey and human brains respond to abstract information

A study on decision-making stokes controversy over the power of a distracted mind, an idea popularized by Malcolm Gladwell's best-selling Blink

Haruko Obakata caused a sensation earlier this year with papers, now discredited and retracted, that claimed a simple method for creating pluripotent stem cells

An appeals court in Italy says six scientists did not cause deaths that resulted from the 2009 L'Aquila earthquake

Nobel prizewinners May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser have spent a career together near the Arctic circle exploring how our brains determine a place, such as a room, street or landscape

Artificial sweeteners seem to change the microbiomes of our guts

A new video maps births and deaths of notable people, showing the rise and fall of cultural centers in the past 2,600 years

DNA from the skeleton shows similarities to modern Native Americans, while its skull structure matches those of Paleoamericans that came across the Bering land bridge

H.M. (Henry Gustav Molaison) was missing part of the hippocampus, which is involved in creating memories

Researchers seek a more competitive system for science as the government shuns closer ties with the European Union and decrees it will target any organization receiving money from abroad

Disclosures and resignations reveal scientific concerns over the methods of Italy's Stamina Foundation

A new study reveals, despite polarized opinion about brain-training packages, that playing a 3-D race car-driving video game reduced cognitive decline in subjects aged 60-85

A diet rich in polyamines, found in fermented soybeans and in wheat germ, has been found to reverse age-related memory decline

Failure to replicate intelligence-priming effects ignites row in research community

A newly discovered unusual nucleic-acid structure might have a role in regulating some genes

The detailed annotation of the pig genome will speed along efforts to help breed healthier and meatier pigs as well as create more faithful models of human disease

A court-ordered shut down could spell the end for a facility in Italy that faced allegations of maltreatment of dogs

A scientific scandal in Hungary recalls discredited and prejudicial notions about race

The first placebo-controlled trial of implanted electrodes is positive, but recovery is usually slow and procedures are being fine-tuned