Science News

The vast array of behaviors that are seen in autism spectrum disorder seems to cover an even deeper range of genetic complexity just below the surface. And the largest genetic study of autistic children and their parents to date has located a host of new variations in autistic individuals. [More]

I once took part in a vodka tasting contest, in which participants tried to tell an expensive brand from a cheap one. I don’t recall the exact outcome, for obvious reasons. But I do know that several people swore they could taste the difference. [More]

By Andrea Swalec

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Rising global temperatures might already be helping infectious diseases to creep north, according to a report by European scientists.

Onboard navigation and mobile applications can tell drivers how to avoid traffic jams. Trouble is, most of the drivers are already on the road, perhaps already in the jam. But IBM is about to deploy a system that will predict traffic flow up to an hour before it occurs, giving travelers ample time to avoid trouble.

During pilot tests in Singapore, forecasts made across 500 urban locations accurately predicted traffic volume 85 to 93 percent of the time and vehicle speed 87 to 95 percent of the time. Similar results were achieved in Finland and on the New Jersey Turnpike.

By Eugenie Samuel Reich

They are more than a 100 times the mass of the Sun, glow more than 10 million times as brightly, and, over the course of their lives, spew out more than half their mass in the form of a relentless stellar wind. [More]

BP's efforts to drill relief wells are generally viewed as the company's best, and perhaps only, chance to plug the Macondo 252 well gushing thousands of barrels of oil and natural gas into the Gulf of Mexico each day for the past month and a half. With the first relief well nearly two months away, however, BP has wiped a bit of sweat from its collective brow as the lower marine riser package (LMRP) cap installed June 3 has begun collecting an increasing amount of oil each day, according to the company. [More]

Talk about vintage footwear--an international team of archaeologists has discovered the world's oldest leather shoe. One thousand years older than the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt, the 5,500-year-old shoe was perfectly preserved by the cool, dry conditions in the sheep dung–lined cave in Armenia where it was found.

"We thought initially that the shoe and other objects were about 600 to 700 years old because they were in such good condition," Ron Pinhasi said in a prepared statement. He is the lead author on a paper describing the relic , published June 9 in PLoS One . It was only when two tiny strips of leather and some straw from inside the shoe were carbon-dated by independent labs in California and Oxford, England, that the team realized how old the shoe really was--a few hundred years older than those worn by Ötzi, the Iceman .