The main ingredient of wood, cellulose, is one of the most abundant organic compounds on Earth and a dream source of renewable fuel. Now, bioengineers suggest that it could feed the hungry as well. In a new study, researchers have found a way to turn cellulose into starch, the most common carbohydrate in the human diet.

Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home, the nursery rhyme advises.

And some 72,000 ladybugs have found a home within the Mall of America, where mall managers have released the insects inside the fully enclosed shopping and entertainment complex.

The Bloomington, Minn., mall, which is so huge it could hold seven Yankee Stadiums, also has more than 30,000 live plants, including about 400 trees, which act as natural air purifiers for the indoor mall.

DENVER — If marijuana is legalized and properly regulated, its proponents have long said, it could generate millions of dollars in state tax revenue. But how the drug should be taxed has proved to be a thorny question.

Under the proposal, the first $40 million collected from a 15 percent excise tax would be used to build public schools. Revenue from a 15 percent sales tax imposed, in addition to the state’s 2.9 percent sales tax and any local sales tax, would be apportioned to local governments and for

ANN ARBOR—Long-term exposure to air pollution may be linked to heart attacks and strokes by speeding up atherosclerosis, or "hardening of the arteries," according to a University of Michigan public health researcher and colleagues from across the U.S.

Sara Adar, the John Searle Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at the U-M School of Public Health, and Joel Kaufman, professor of environmental and occupational health sciences and medicine at the University of Washington, led the study that found that higher concentrations of fine particulate air pollution (PM2.5) were linked to a faster thickening of the inner two layers of the common carotid artery—an important blood vessel that provides blood to the head, neck and brain.

Streetlights are so bright they can be seen from orbit and even might tell aliens we’re here on Earth.

But the lights are misdirected. They often illuminate places that don’t need to be illuminated and create light pollution that makes life harder for astronomers and amateur stargazers to see the night sky and can even confuse migratory birds, leading them to crash into buildings.

Conspiracy theorists of the world, believers in the hidden hands of the Rothschilds and the Masons and the Illuminati, we skeptics owe you an apology. You were right. The players may be a little different, but your basic premise is correct: The world is a rigged game. We found this out in recent months, when a series of related corruption stories spilled out of the financial sector, suggesting the world's largest banks may be fixing the prices of, well, just about everything.

A classic arcade game could help adults with lazy eye, according to a small new study.

Researchers from McGill University found that Tetris, a puzzle-type game invented in 1984 that involves matching falling blocks, could help train the eyes of people with adult amblyopia (the scientific name for lazy eye).

Amblyopia occurs when the central vision in one eye isn't developed properly, and can lead to having crossed eyes or near- or far-sightedness, according to the American Optometric Association.

Sleep deprivation is a quick and efficient way to treat depression. It works 60 to 70 percent of the time—far better than existing drugs—but the mood boost usually lasts only until the patient falls asleep. As an ongoing treatment, sleep deprivation is impractical, but researchers have been studying the phenomenon in an effort to uncover the cellular mechanisms behind depression and remission. Now a team at Tufts University has pinpointed glia as the key players.

"I feel like I have been dropped into my body. I know this is my voice and these are my memories, but they don't feel like they belong to me."

It happened out of the blue. Louise Airey was 8 years old, off sick from school, when suddenly she felt like she had been dropped into her own body. "It's just so difficult to verbalise what this feels like," she says. "All of a sudden you're hyper aware, and everything else in the world seems unreal, like a movie.".

In science fiction, one of the most popular concepts is the cyborg — a creature that's part human and part machine. Now, a Russian billionaire is determined to take this sci-fi trope and make it a reality.

The man is named Dmitry Itskov, and no, this isn't an April Fools' joke. Itskov is totally serious about wanting to make humans immortal by merging them with machines, and he's been pushing the project forward since 2011 when he founded the 2045 Initiative, ostensibly the deadline for "substance-independent" minds to receive artificial bodies — what some scientists refer to as the Singularity.

The genetic lineage of Europe mysteriously transformed about 4,500 years ago, new research suggests.

The findings, detailed today (April 23) in the journal Nature Communications, were drawn from several skeletons unearthed in central Europe that were up to 7,500 years old.

It may have been Charles Fort, in one of his more memorable passages, who described the strange discovery best:

London Times, July 20, 1836:

That, early in July, 1836, some boys were searching for rabbits’ burrows in the rocky formation, near Edinburgh, known as Arthur’s Seat. In the side of a cliff, they came upon some thin sheets of slate, which they pulled out.

Little cave.

Seventeen tiny coffins.

Three or four inches long..

Many original Tibetan texts were lost or destroyed amid the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1950. Thanks to centuries of contact with Tibet, however, Mongolia is believed to have some of the few remaining originals. In addition to ancient Tibetan and Mongolian documents, rare Sanskrit manuscripts, including 800 verses by Nagarjuna, a 2nd-century Indian Buddhist philosopher, inscribed on birch bark, have been identified in the collection.

First discovered during a survey two years ago, disk-shaped copper plates found by archaeologists near the ancient site of Hippos-Sussita just east of the Sea of Galilee continue to mystify them.

Now, archaeologists involved in the ongoing excavations at the site are reaching out to scholars and the public alike to help them find the answer to the riddle.