Scientists have discovered a second code hiding within DNA. This second code contains information that changes how scientists read the instructions contained in DNA and interpret mutations to make sense of health and disease.

A research team led by Dr. John Stamatoyannopoulos, University of Washington associate professor of genome sciences and of medicine, made the discovery. The findings are reported in the Dec. 13 issue of Science.

Read the research paper. Also see commentary in Science, "The Hidden Codes that Shape Protein Evolution."

The work is part of the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements Project, also known as ENCODE. The National Human Genome Research Institute funded the multi-year, international effort. ENCODE aims to discover where and how the directions for biological functions are stored in the human genome.

Why do some kinds of animals live longer than others? For mammals, part of the answer may lie in the number of anti-inflammatory genes.

From mouse to man — and across 12 other mammal species examined — researchers found that those with more copies of genes called CD33rSIGLEC, which is involved in fighting inflammation, have a longer life span.

Moreover, mice that researchers bred to have fewer copies of these genes experience premature aging and early death compared with normal mice, the study found.

"Though not quite definitive, this finding is provocative," said Dr. Ajit Varki, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, who co-led the study.

"As far as we know, it's the first time life span has been correlated with simple gene copy number."

Scientists report this finding today (April 7) in the online journal eLife.

Inflammation is a healthy and necessary function of a body's immune system, and is triggered when tissues are injured by bacteria, viruses, toxins or some other kind of trauma. It happens when chemicals released by the immune system to fight infection or repair tissue cause blood vessels to leak, resulting in telltale swelling and redness.

Chronic inflammation, however, is a prolonged reaction of the immune system that is damaging and life-threatening. This might be an overreaction to food proteins such as gluten, as seen in people with celiac disease; a self-destructive attack of the body's on parts, as seen in those with rheumatoid arthritis; or long-term inflammatory activity that culminates in a host of ailments, such as circulatory disease, some cancers, and Alzheimer's disease.

In this last example, chronic inflammation is seen as a hallmark of aging. Vast classes of pharmaceutical drugs to treat chronic diseases work by fighting inflammation. The Mediterranean-style diet — high in fruits, vegetables and healthy oils — is also aimed at reducing inflammation, and is thought to increase human life expectancy.

Pentagon researchers say a new tool in the military's arsenal will enable soldiers on the ground to order laser-guided missile strikes from high in the sky about seven-times faster than before.

Officials with the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) said on Monday that a recent exercise undertaken by the US Marine Corps successfully demonstrated the state-of-the-art abilities of a Persistent Close Air Support System, or PCAS, which lets troops coordinate attacks with precision from miles apart using specially-equipped Android tablets.

In a statement, DARPA said the test occurred March 27 somewhere in the southwest US as part of Operation TALON REACH and involved the use of wearable tablets among infantry and aviation teams alike in order to carry out a simulated strike.

Marines on the ground plotted out an aerial assault using portable tablets and a program called KILSWITCH — a contrived acronym of Kinetic Integrated Low-cost Software Integrated Tactical Combat Handheld — to successfully coordinate an airstrike in a fraction of the time it usually takes, DARPA said.

Lt. Gen. Jon M. Davis, the Marine Corps' deputy commandant for aviation, said he was "very pleased" with the success of the program after only a single exercise.

Scientists at Virginia Tech have come up with a brand new way to create hydrogen fuel: It's cheap, fast and produces clean results, and involves plain old corn stalks, cobs and husks.

It's long been known that the use of hydrogen has a tremendous potential both, for increasing energy efficiency and for greatly reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But as the Virginia team write in their study, published on the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, "producing it in a distributed, carbon-neutral, low-cost manner requires new technologies."

"Our new process could help end our dependence on fossil fuels," Percival Zhang, an associate professor of biological systems engineering in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and the College of Engineering, explained in a statement. "Hydrogen is one of the most important biofuels of the future."

A new battery developed at Stanford may well revolutionize personal technology. It charges in a minute, lasts thousands of cycles and is much safer than current commercial models. Right now it lacks capacity, but its creators say it's a work in progress.

"We have developed a rechargeable aluminum battery that may replace existing storage devices, such as alkaline batteries, which are bad for the environment, and lithium-ion batteries, which occasionally burst into flames," said Hongjie Dai, a chemistry professor at Stanford.

Two California fault lines — the Calaveras Fault and the Hayward Fault — are actually connected, new research shows, meaning an earthquake resulting from the pair could be much more destructive than originally thought, with a potential for a magnitude 7 quake or greater.

Seismologists from the University of California Berkeley used two decades of satellite data to look at "ground deformation" and "fault creep," a news release explained. Creep describes the constant, slow movement of a fault line as opposed to a fault line that's still between quakes, like San Andreas, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. "The Hayward Fault is actively moving, year-by-year," the USGS noted.

However, as Estelle Chaussard, lead researcher from UC Berkeley, explained to weather.com, though the ground is continuously moving, this movement is not producing any earthquakes. Until, that is, there's a rupture.

New analysis of data from the Japanese Suzaku X-ray satellite has revealed that the well-known supernova remnant named 3C 397 was the result of an explosion involving just one star, not the merging of a pair of white dwarfs, NASA officials revealed on Thursday.

Hiroya Yamaguchi, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, and his colleagues from the US and Japan reviewed observations conducted over five years ago.

"Mounting evidence indicates both of these mechanisms produce what we call type Ia supernovae," Yamaguchi, lead author of a paper published last month in The Astrophysical Journal, said in a statement. "To understand how these stars explode, we need to study the debris in detail with sensitive instruments like those on Suzaku."

The scientific community is facing a 'pollution problem' in academic publishing, one that poses a serious threat to the "trustworthiness, utility, and value of science and medicine," according to one of the country's leading medical ethicists.

Arthur L. Caplan, PhD, director of the Division of Medical Ethics in the Department of Population Health at NYU Langone Medical Center, shares these and other observations in a commentary publishing April 3 in the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings.

"The pollution of science and medicine by plagiarism, fraud, and predatory publishing is corroding the reliability of research," writes Dr. Caplan. "Yet neither the leadership nor those who rely on the truth of science and medicine are sounding the alarm loudly or moving to fix the problem with appropriate energy."

In a landmark decision, Russian space agency Roscosmos and its US counterpart NASA have agreed to build a new space station after the current International Space Station (ISS) expires. The operation of the ISS was prolonged until 2024.

"We have agreed that Roscosmos and NASA will be working together on the program of a future space station," Roscosmos chief Igor Komarov said during a news conference on Saturday.

The talks were held at Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

The two agencies will be unifying their standards and systems of manned space programs, according to Komarov. "This is very important to future missions and stations."

The ISS life cycle was to expire in 2020. "Under the ISS program the door will be open to other participants," Komarov told reporters.

The next goal for the two agencies is a joint mission to Mars, NASA chief Charles Bolden told journalists.

Roscosmos and NASA are working with each other and other partners on a global roadmap of space exploration, Bolden said. "Our area of cooperation will be Mars. We are discussing how best to use the resources, the finance, we are setting time frames and distributing efforts in order to avoid duplication."

Doctors are set to scan damaged bones and 3D-print the missing parts, which will later transform into the recipient's own tissue.

The scientists of the Russian National Research Nuclear University developed a technique to convert animal bones into material that can substitute the damaged parts of human bones, the institution's press service said in a statement.

The new substance is based on biological hydroxyapatite - a white powder that resembles cement when mixed with a biological polymer. It is soft and flexible like plasticine when kneaded but hardens after being placed on the damaged bone.

With time, the organism dissolves this "cement" replacing it with its own bone tissue. As the substance is derived from animal bones, it preserves biological activity, which is an essential advantage and a significant ground for successful regeneration.