Science, Scientist | featured news

The ability to learn and to establish new memories is essential to our daily existence and identity; enabling us to navigate through the world.

Call it a case of high tech meeting low tech, really the lowest of tech.

Mutations have been found to extend the lifespan of animals in the lab such as worms, fruit flies and mice, and appear to play the same role in humans. Professor Linda Partridge, director of the Institute of Healthy Ageing at University College London, said such research could help treat or delay many diseases simultaneously with medication.

It sounds like the movie "Twister" -- teams of scientists in vans, armed with high-tech measuring equipment, barreling across the Oklahoma plains in search of tornadoes. But these scientists are colleagues, not rivals, and these storms aren't Hollywood digital wizardry but the real thing.

While investigators trudge through pig farms and remote villages in Mexico, searching for clues about the new swine flu, answers about the virus' origin may finally appear on a computer, based on genetic codes.

The UC San Diego political scientist stumbled upon the documents in London in 2007.

Eminent scientist said to be very ill in Cambridge hospital.