A number of red squirrels are immune to squirrelpox viral disease, which many believed would lead to the extinction of the species, scientists have discovered.

Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers have used gene therapy to restore useful vision to mice with degeneration of the light-sensing retinal rods and cones, a common cause of human blindness. Their report, appearing in the Oct. 14 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, describes the effects of broadly expressing a light-sensitive protein in other neuronal cells found throughout the retina.

Several genes that play a role in how our body's cells normally auto-destruct may play a role in age-related hearing loss, according to research published online in the journal Apoptosis – a journal devoted to the topic of cell suicide, or programmed cell death.

CT scan reconstructions of Corythosaurus; the nasal cavity is green, and the brain purple. Paleontologists have long debated the function of the strange, bony crests on the heads of the duck-billed dinosaurs known as lambeosaurs. The structures contain incredibly long, convoluted nasal passages that loop up over the tops of their skulls.

The Bada Lab at Scripps holds the original samples used by Stanley Miller to study the origins of life. Lightning and gases from volcanic eruptions could have given rise to the first life on Earth, according to a new analysis of samples from a classic origin-of-life experiment by NASA and university researchers. The NASA-funded result is the subject of a paper in Science appearing October 16.

When French memoirist Marcel Proust dipped a pastry into his tea, the distinctive scent it produced suddenly opened the flood gates of his memory.