The secret to a longer life

The hypothalamus is a small structure located deep within the brain. It plays a critical role in controlling growth, reproduction and metabolism - but now it could hold the key to ageing too.

A team of scientists in the US looked at this region of the brain in mice. They found that blocking a chemical in this area increased the animals' lifespan. Healthy mice typically live for between 600 to 1000 days.

But the rodents in the study were living about a fifth longer without suffering problems that are common in old age, such as muscle loss or...

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Advances in technology and medicine continue to improve our quality of life. They also increase our life expectancy, that is how long we are expected to live. What do you think are the advantages and disadvantages to this trend?

Humanoid robot shows off advances in technology, dances to Gangnam Style

Our humanoid friends and help-mates have just celebrated National Robotics week - with special events such as a Robot Zoo, and a Robot Block Party.

They may be the stuff of science fiction, but robots are now widely used in industry. And more and more they take on such dangerous tasks as defusing bombs or flying aircraft over hostile territory.

Smoke billows at the Los Angeles Korean Festival, rising from enormous grills, skillets of dumplings, fried potato pancakes — for a one weekend a year, a small park in central Los Angeles becomes a fairground. Vendors sell food, Korean groceries, and makeup. And L.A.’s Korean population — the largest outside Korea — turns out by the thousands.

But in one corner, the hubbub is something quite different.

Two of Dennis Hong’s postgrad students take turns working on a...

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The Gangnam Style by the South Korean musician PSY has attracted  international attention. A couple of young researchers at a graduate school in the US are even making a humanoid robot mimic the moves of the dance.

New research seeks to determine what dreams mean

Science is on the road to helping you understand all those cryptic dreams that you've had.

In a new study recently published in "Science," researchers at Brown University were able to describe the images dreamers saw by reading MRI scans of their brain activity.

Though this work is still in the earliest stages, it could lead the way to better understanding of not just what we dream about, but also why we dream at all.

Masako Tamaki, a research associate in Brown University’s Department of Cognitive, Linguistic & Psychological Sciences who is a part of the study, says the dreamers were monitored via MRI, and then awoken shortly after the dream ends and...

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Do you ever wonder what your dreams mean? Scientists are conducting research in an effort to answer that question. However, one of the researchers says they are far from understanding the purpose of dreams.