Cells are basically tiny computers: They send and receive inputs and output accordingly. If you chug a Frappuccino, your blood sugar spikes, and your pancreatic cells get the message. Output: more insulin.

But cellular computing is more than just a convenient metaphor. In the last couple of decades, biologists have been working to hack the cells’ algorithm in an effort to control their processes. They’ve upended nature’s role as life’s software engineer, incrementally editing a cell’s algorithm—its DNA—over generations.

Image copyright: SPL

The scale of “fake research” in the UK appears to have been underestimated, a BBC investigation suggests. Official data points to about 30 allegations of research misconduct between 2012 and 2015.

However, figures obtained by the BBC under Freedom of Information rules identified hundreds of allegations over a similar time period at 23 universities alone. There are growing concerns around the world over research integrity.

Image copyright: ANU

Have you ever thought about discovering a planet? It may not be as fanciful as you think. Astronomers at the Australian National University (ANU) want help in searching for a ninth planet thought to be orbiting our Solar System.

With a working title of Planet Nine, it is speculated to exist beyond Pluto. Amateur stargazers have been promised input on naming the planet if they spot it on a website showing digital images of space.

In 2001, the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) announced that carbon dioxide (CO2) was causing the earth to warm and developed computer models to predict how much the earth would warm in the future.

Does any empirical scientific evidence exist to support this premise of the IPCC? The answer is no, in fact it is just the opposite, CO2 has a cooling effect. The major components in the atmosphere that cause the earth to be cooler than it would be otherwise are the so-called greenhouse gases.

In the period from 2000-2015, the hole in the ozone layer shrank by more than 4 million square kilometers—nearly a billion acres—according to a new report in the journal Science.

During the 1980s and into the 1990s, news of a massive hole in the ozone layer caused worldwide panic, stoked by everything from rumors of sheep being blinded by increased atmospheric radiation to the fear of a skin cancer pandemic and even comparisons to “AIDS from the sky.”

Environmentalists truly believed and predicted during the first Earth Day in 1970 that the planet was doomed unless drastic actions were taken.

Humanity never quite got around to that drastic action, but environmentalists still recall the first Earth Day fondly and hold many of the predictions in high regard. So this Earth Day, The Daily Caller News Foundation takes a look at predictions made by environmentalists around the original Earth Day in 1970 to see how they’ve held up.

A new scientific paper authored by seven scientists affiliated with the Russian Academy of Sciences was just published in the scientific journal Bulletin of the Russian Academy of Sciences: Physics.

The scientists dismiss both “greenhouse gases” and variations in the Sun’s irradiance as significant climate drivers, and instead embrace cloud cover variations — modulated by cosmic ray flux — as a dominant contributor to climate change.

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/cet_info_mean.html

According to the Met Office, last month much milder than average, although it only ranked 34th warmest since 1772. The warmest February was actually way back in 1779.

Looking at the figures for England as a whole, average temperatures for February do seem to have been on the rise since the 1980s.

Past the ridiculous claim that average global temperature going from, say, 58F to 59.8F will increase the incidence of diabetes, the bulk of this lame study occurred during the pause. What warming happened then? Any actual increase in diabetes incidence could easily be attributed to changes in detection and diagnoses.

According to Nasa, there have been no sunspots on the surface of our star in two weeks, leading to predictions the solar minimum has begun early. The sun follows cycles of roughly 11 years where it reaches a solar maximum and then a solar minimum.

During the former, the Sun gives off more heat, and less in the latter. By observing the sun through Nasa’s powerful Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft, experts have noticed there has been very little activity.

Image copyright: GETTY IMAGES

People who wake at night with an urge to go to the loo may need to cut back on salt in their diets, doctors from Japan are suggesting. The problem – called nocturia – which mainly affects the over-60s, leads to disrupted sleep and can significantly affect people’s lives.

In a study of more than 300 volunteers, researchers found that reduced salt intake led people to urinate less. Advice to follow a sensible diet could help improve symptoms, UK doctors said.

Image copyright: SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

Scientists have located an impact crater linked to powerful tsunamis that swept across part of ancient Mars. The team believe an asteroid triggered 150m-high waves when it plunged into an ocean thought to have existed on northern Mars three billion years ago.

Lomonosov crater in the planet’s northern plains fits the bill as the source of tsunami deposits identified on the surface. Details were outlined at the 48th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference.

President Trump has slammed global warming as an elaborate hoax and forced the United Nations to stop making it compulsory for nations to contribute funding to global climate change programs.

G20 officials who met on Friday announced that “climate change is out for the time being” after President Trump dismantled Barack Obama and Angela Merkel’s old blueprint for compulsory financial donations to the cause.

European  and American science institutions are sounding the alarm about the real and pressing danger of space weather. At a time when man-made global warming scares are increasingly dismissed as fake news scientists are turning their attentions beyond our planet where perhaps the greatest threat to life exists.

Image copyright: NASA/JPL-CALTECH/SETI INSTITUTE

After two decades of development and “heartbreak”, scientists are on the verge of sending missions to explore the ocean world of Europa. Could this be our best shot at finding life elsewhere in the Solar System?

Orbiting the giant planet Jupiter is an icy world, just a little smaller than Earth’s moon. From a distance, Europa appears to be etched with a nexus of dark streaks, like the product of a toddler’s chaotic scribbling.