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The lethal fault cuts through the middle of a Tennessee bean field and then ducks beneath the Mississippi River, making a beeline for New Madrid , Missouri. Named the Reelfoot fault, this geological crack combined with neighbouring faults two centuries ago to unleash a series of devastating earthquakes that have been called the biggest to strike the contiguous United States in recorded history.

It is one of the most serious allegations that could be made about a doctor: manipulating patients' histories to make money. So it is no wonder that the charges, levied by editors of the British Medical Journal (BMJ) in January against medical researcher Andrew Wakefield, are still getting close scrutiny. Now an American whistleblower advocacy group has joined the fray over Wakefield, who in 1998 hypothesized a link, now scientifically disproven, between the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine (MMR) and autism

Food is the body’s fuel. Now a study finds that the amount of energy in that fuel can depend not just on its calorie content--but on how it’s prepared. And the research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , could explain an ancient leap in human evolution

Click to enlarge. Credit: Randy Wind/Martin Roelfs (illustration); Kudernac, Ruangsupapichat et al

By Yereth Rosen ANCHORAGE, Alaska, Nov 9 (Reuters) - A storm forecast to be [More]

Rattus rattus, via alexfiles on Flickr (click image) It seems that everywhere you find a group of humans, you’ll find a clan of rats hiding in the shadows. This history seems born out of opportunity for the rat, but we’ve done our part to help them get around the world rather easily.

The Japanese government is searching for new ways to clean up the mess created by the reactor meltdowns earlier this year at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant . As lawmakers and officials study new energy policy options , which they plan to present by next spring, a company called Cyberdyne, Inc. is offering to help with the more immediate concern of removing radioactive debris in and around the reactors with the help of a robotic exoskeleton.

By Heidi Ledford of Nature magazine A computer program has been trained to grade breast cancer, predicting which tumours are associated with worse outcomes and, therefore, deserve more aggressive treatment.

Who shot first, Han Solo or Greedo? If you’re a diehard Star Wars fan, you know the answer is Han Solo.

LAS VEGAS–Three-dimensional medical imaging of two baby woolly mammoths from Siberia named Lyuba and Khroma has given scientists an unprecedented view of the internal anatomy of these creatures. At the annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, Ethan Shirley and Daniel Fisher of the University of Michigan and their colleagues presented the results of their analyses of the images. I wrote about their observations–and the intriguing new questions they raise about mammoth development and evolution– here .

“Officers, life doesn’t have to be ugly. See, look at the birds out there. Listen to their call: ‘Oo-wee! Oo-wee! Oo-wee! Oo-wee!” — Beverly Sutphin, Serial Mom Alas, as fans of John Waters’ masterpiece know, Beverly’s love of her feathered friends didn’t extend to homo sapiens

By Eric Hand of Nature magazine Dragon, the privately built space capsule intended to haul cargo and astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS), is auditioning for another high-profile role.

By Matt Kaplan of Nature magazine The image of a Tyrannosaurus rex racing after a jeep in the 1993 film Jurassic Park inspired a generation's ideas about the extinct predator, but for decades studies have concluded that dinosaurs could not move quickly. An analysis now suggests that although big dinosaurs are unlikely to have been able to run, the animals could instead have reached a fair clip by power-walking

The tweet, posted on September 1, 2011, by @qikipedia, read in its entirety: “It would take an elephant, balanced on a pencil to break through a sheet of graphene the thickness of cling film.” Some detective work revealed that the statement originated with mechanical engineering professor James Hone of Columbia University, who said in 2008, “Our research establishes graphene as the strongest material ever measured, some 200 times stronger than structural steel. It would take an elephant, balanced on a pencil, to break through a sheet of graphene the thickness of Saran Wrap.” The professor’s contention raises numerous questions, the first one being “What is graphene?” Microsoft Word doesn’t know--it keeps giving graphene the red squiggly underline, which means, “Surely you mean grapheme.” (I surely don’t, despite the fact that I’m littering this page with graphemes.) [More]

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