Physicists have moved to quash rumours that the elusive Higgs boson - dubbed the God particle - has been detected by a US "atom smasher". A spokesman for the lab which operated the Tevatron accelerator denied scientists had made a discovery there. The Tevatron, based at Fermilab in Illinois, is the US rival to Europe's Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The rumours were made public in a blog post by an Italian particle physicist. But a spokesman for the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) told BBC News: "There is no merit to the rumours of a Higgs discovery." On Tuesday, Fermilab's Twitter feed said: "Let's settle this: the rumours spread by one fame-seeking blogger are just rumours. That's it." Stefan Soldner-Rembold, a spokesperson...

Scientists have used the latest imaging techniques to look inside a python that had just swallowed a rat whole. The resulting footage is part of a project using hi-tech scanning methods to explore animals' anatomy. It took 132 hours for snake to fully digest the rat, the scientists said. Their work has revealed other strange insights into python digestion. They presented the study at the Society for Experimental Biology's annual meeting in Prague, Czech Republic. The researchers carried out a computer tomography or CT scan of an anaesthetised 5kg Burmese python one hour after it had devoured the rat whole. They also used a technique called magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to study the creature's internal organs. By using contrast agents, the scientists were able to highlight...

Scientists working on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) say they have moved a step closer to their aim of unlocking the mysteries of the Universe. The world's highest-energy particle accelerator has produced a record-breaking particle collision rate - about double the previous rate. The collider is now generating around 10,000 particle collisions per second, according to physicist Andrei Golutvin. The LHC is housed in a 27km circular tunnel under the French-Swiss border. The vast machine is operated by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern), based near Geneva in Switzerland. Physicists say this marks the start of turning the LHC into the world's most powerful particle collider. "It's clear that the LHC is the new boy in town, but in two years running...

In a quest to understand how life began on Earth, scientists have discovered that a blast of ultraviolet light may have been the spoon that stirred the simmering primordial soup. The research demonstrates a more commonplace scenario for creating RNA -- believed to be an early coding system for life. And that opens a wider door for life's evolution not only on Earth, but possibly elsewhere in the solar system and beyond. Researchers at Georgia Tech and the University of Roma "La Sapienza" focused on the molecule formamide, the simplest structure containing the required four building blocks of life -- carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen. Previous studies have already shown how heating formamide in a mineral stew creates most of the ingredients for ribonucleic acid, commonly...

This is nothing to spit at: Scientists say they may be able to track deadly mosquito-borne diseases by studying the saliva the insects leave behind when they feed on sugary bait. Mosquito-borne diseases are a major health hazard worldwide. Some, like malaria, chronically afflict certain regions. But others, such as dengue fever, West Nile virus, and chikungunya, can rapidly emerge in new locations or reappear in areas where they've gone dormant. That means public health officials must keep a constant eye on the diseases' movement. The usual methods for detecting mosquito-borne viruses all have a weakness: Relying on clinical diagnoses means a disease has already arrived in the population; keeping ''sentinel'' animals is costly, and the animals themselves provide a...

Scientists in the US have succeeded in developing the first living cell to be controlled entirely by synthetic DNA. The researchers constructed a bacterium's "genetic software" and transplanted it into a host cell. The resulting microbe then looked and behaved like the species "dictated" by the synthetic DNA. The advance, published in Science, has been hailed as a scientific landmark, but critics say there are dangers posed by synthetic organisms. Some also suggest that the potential benefits of the technology have been over-stated. But the researchers hope eventually to design bacterial cells that will produce medicines and fuels and even absorb greenhouse gases. The team was led by Dr Craig Venter of the J Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) in Maryland and California....

A team of 30 Spanish doctors say they have successfully performed the world's first full face transplant. A man injured in a shooting accident received the entire facial skin and muscles - including cheekbones, nose, lips and teeth - of a donor. The man is recovering well after the 22-hour operation, said a spokesperson from Vall d'Hebron University Hospital. Another 10 face transplants have been carried out around the world, but this is believed to be the most complex. Hospital spokesperson Bianca Bont told the BBC: "This is the first total face transplant. "There have been 10 operations of this kind in the world - this is the first to transplant all of the face and some bones of the face."

Scientists have uncovered the mechanism behind the menacing "hood flare" which cobras use as a defensive display. By measuring the electrical activity from the snakes' muscles, they found the precise group of muscles used by cobras to raise their hoods. The researchers say that the cobra's hood evolved as its ribs were "co-opted" to be used in this visual display. They report their findings in the Journal of Experimental Biology Kenneth Kardong, professor of zoology from Washington State University in the US, was one of the authors of the study. He explained that the cobra's hood was "an intriguing problem in evolutionary biology". "In the cobra, both the [rib bones] and the muscles that work them are deployed to erect this visual...

An inability to deal with more than two things at a time may be "hard-wired" into our brain, research suggests. When we try to do two things at once, each half of the brain focuses on a separate task, French scientists say. This division of labour could explain why we find it so difficult to multi-task, they report in the journal Science. It might also explain why people are prone to make irrational decisions when choosing from a long list of items. Lead author Dr Etienne Koechlin told the BBC: "You can cook and at the same time talk on the phone but you cannot really do a third task such as trying to read a newspaper. "If you have three or more tasks you lose track of one task." The French team used an imaging technique to monitor brain activity in 32 volunteers...

Researchers believe they have found evidence of real natural disasters on which the ten plagues of Egypt, which led to Moses freeing the Israelites from slavery in the Book of Exodus in the Bible, were based. But rather than explaining them as the wrathful act of a vengeful God, the scientists claim the plagues can be attributed to a chain of natural phenomena triggered by changes in the climate and environmental disasters that happened hundreds of miles away. They have compiled compelling evidence that offers new explanations for the Biblical plagues, which will be outlined in a new series to be broadcast on the National Geographical Channel on Easter Sunday.

Archaeologists now widely believe the plagues occurred at an ancient city of Pi-Rameses on the Nile Delta, which was...