When chemists want to produce a lot of a substance -- such as a newly designed drug -- they often turn to catalysts, molecules that speed chemical reactions. Many jobs require highly specialized catalysts, and finding one in just the right shape to connect with certain molecules can be difficult. Natural catalysts, such as...

A new analysis of the setting for last month's devastating earthquake in China by a team of geoscientists shows that the quake resulted from faults with little seismic activity, and that similar events in that area occur only once in every 2,000 to 10,000 years, on average.

An analysis of previous studies indicates that among men and high-risk women with a certain type of heart attack or angina an invasive treatment strategy (such as cardiac catheterization) is associated with reduced risk of rehospitalization, heart attack or death, whereas low-risk women may have an increased risk of heart...

A new pathway for methane production has been uncovered in the oceans, and this has a significant potential impact for the study of greenhouse gas production on our planet. The article reveals that aerobic decomposition of an organic, phosphorus-containing compound, methylphosphonate, may be responsible for the supersaturatio...

The potential market for tiger products in China is enormous, but a vast majority of the Chinese public would rather have wild tigers than tiger-bone wine, according to new research.

Scientists have argued about the origins of Mercury's smooth plains and the source of its magnetic field for more than 30 years. Now, analyses of data from the January 2008 flyby of the planet by the Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft have shown that volcanoes were involved in...

Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have identified a method that can predict with 70 percent accuracy whether a woman undergoing in vitro fertilization treatment will become pregnant. The researchers found that four factors - total number of embryos, number of eight-cell embryos, percentage of embryos...

Running for more than 1,000 kilometers along picturesque coastline, California's Highway 1 is easy prey for many of the natural hazards plaguing the region, including landslides.

Each day, a staggering number of cells perform a feat that still amazes researchers with its complexity: they divide to produce perfect replicas of each other. The process is called mitosis, and an inability to control it is one of the hallmarks of cancer. Researchers have discovered a novel biochemical activity involved in...

Even in geology, it's not often a date gets revised by 500 million years. But geologists now say they have found strong evidence that a half-dozen major basins in India were formed a billion or more years ago, making them at least 500 million years older than commonly thought.