Finding could lead to new biodegradable devices based on living cells that are capable of detecting changes in the environment

If you are reading this sitting down then the chances are you are also increasing your risk of developing heart disease, blood clots on the brain and even certain types of cancer.

Her experience of women’s subordinate role, she said, told her 'I was not cut out to be a wife'

Robert Lefkowitz and Brian Kobilka won the prize for their pioneering roles in revealing the inner workings of an important family of protein molecules called the G-protein-coupled receptors

Medals won at the London Olympics should not handed out until 2020 because it will be years before testers can be sure that the athletes did not take drugs, a leading sports scientist has suggested.

Cheating athletes 'could exploit medical advances by using drugs not yet detectable'

A scientific review of genetic technology that can give tomorrow's athletes a helping hand

Medical scientists have taken an important step towards understanding how the diseased liver can repair itself in a breakthrough that could eventually lead to the development of new treatments for chronic liver illnesses, which at present can only be cured by organ transplants.

Leading neuroscientists believe that the UK Government may be about to sanction the development of chemical incapacitants for British police that would be banned in warfare under an international treaty on chemical weapons.

A greenfinch looks on suspiciously from afar. The finest details of his green and yellow plumage and his eyes twitching from side to side are visible through the binoculars.

Written in lively style by two American academics, this book questions the stability of the "food empire" on which humanity depends. We are complacent, they claim, due to four assumptions: there will be more "biochemical fixes" to maintain bumper crops; continuation of the "mild, sunny weather" of recent centuries; dependence on fragile monocultures; reliance on cheap fossil fuels to power freezers and synthesise fertilisers. "For a hundred years," the authors point out, "our industrial food empire has been astoundingly successful but all empires stumble and fall."

Further to yesterday's obituary of the Nobel Prize-winning scientist Baruch Blumberg, Tam Dalyell writes:

Rather a lot happened in the first part of BBC4's Women in Love – two drownings, at least one fight, a rape – though you wouldn't necessarily know it. The quiet, almost whimsical, nature of William Ivory's script allowed events to unfold gently, playing second fiddle to the internal dramas of the characters. It's a risky strategy: an adaptation of D H Lawrence's dual novels, The Rainbow and Women in Love, in which the predominant themes are sex and guilt could be a recipe for introspective torpor if ever there was one. And yet, to my mind, it all came off.

Alberto Granado was the young doctor who accompanied his fellow Argentinian and childhood pal Ernesto “Che” Guevara on an idealistic motorcycle odyssey through South America in the early 1950s.