ORLANDO (Reuters) – Scientists trying to understand why destructive wood-eating termites are so resistant to efforts to exterminate them have come up with an unusually repugnant explanation. Termites’ practice of building nests out of their own feces creates a... More »
SYDNEY (Reuters) – An international team of scientists in China has discovered what may be the earliest known creature with a distinct face, a 419 million-year-old fish that could be a missing link in the development of vertebrates. The fossil find in China’s ... More »
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – Leading scientists said on Friday they were more certain than ever before that humans are the main culprits for climate change and predicted the impact from greenhouse gas emissions could linger for centuries. The Intergovernmental Panel ... More »
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – A U.N. panel of global climate scientists were set to work through Thursday night to ensure that their strongest case yet for man-made global warming would make sense to the widest possible audience. Drafts show that the Intergovernmental... More »
(Reuters) – A Russian Soyuz rocket blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Wednesday to deliver three new crew members to the International Space Station. The Soyuz rocket and capsule lifted off at 4:58 p.m. EDT on an express route to the sta... More »
(Reuters) – A Russian Soyuz rocket blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Wednesday to deliver three new crew members to the International Space Station. The Soyuz rocket and capsule lifted off at 4:58 p.m. EDT on an express route to the sta... More »
OSLO (Reuters) – Climate experts on a U.N. panel should focus more on shorter reports on specialist subjects such as extreme weather in a shift from sweeping overviews of the kind being prepared this week in Stockholm, many scientists and governments say. The ... More »
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – A United Nations panel of experts met on Monday to review a draft report that raises the probability that climate change is man-made to 95 percent and warns of ever more extreme weather unless governments take strong action. Scientists an... More »
OSLO (Reuters) – Scientists meet on Monday to prepare the strongest warning yet that climate change is man-made and will cause more heatwaves, droughts and floods this century unless governments take action. Officials from up to 195 governments and scientists ... More »
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) – NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity has come up empty-handed in its search for methane in the planet’s atmosphere, a gas that on Earth is a strong indicator of life, officials said on Thursday. The rover landed on Mars in August 201... More »
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – California scientists have discovered four species of legless lizards hidden in unlikely habitats among central valley oil derricks, sand dunes at the end of a Los Angeles airport runway and other arid and desolate spaces. The finding... More »
WALLOPS ISLAND, Virginia (Reuters) – An unmanned Antares rocket blasted off from a seaside launch pad in Virginia on Wednesday, sending a cargo capsule to the International Space Station. The 13-story rocket, developed by Orbital Sciences Corp., lifted off at ... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – British cosmologist Stephen Hawking has backed the right for people who are terminally ill to choose to end their lives and to receive help to do so as long as safeguards are in place. The wheelchair-bound Hawking was diagnosed with motor ne... More »
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) – NASA on Monday cleared a second commercial company to launch a cargo ship to the International Space Station, with blastoff slated this week from a Virginia spaceport. If successful, Orbital Sciences Corp. would join private... More »
BEIJING (Reuters) – China aims to train astronauts from other countries who will conduct missions with their Chinese counterparts, state news agency Xinhua cited a senior official as saying on Monday. China will also share the technological achievements of its... More »
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) – Scientists have been debating for more than a year whether NASA’s 36-year-old Voyager 1 spacecraft has left the solar system and become the first human-made object to reach interstellar space. By a fluke measurement, they no... More »
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) – Two Russian cosmonauts and a U.S. astronaut left the International Space Station on Tuesday, leaving a skeleton crew to maintain the outpost until replacements arrive later this month. Outgoing station commander Pavel Vinogr... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Defense Department and NASA expect to spend about $44 billion to launch government satellites and other spacecraft over the next five years, including $28 billion in procurement funding, the Government Accountability Office said... More »
LONDON (Reuters)- As Susan sits chatting to a nurse in a London clinic, a light tapping sound by her head signals that parts of her brain are being zapped by thousands of tiny electro-magnetic pulses from a machine plugged into the wall. The 50 year-old doctor... More »
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) – Engineers have resolved a minor glitch with a new NASA robotic lunar probe, which blasted off Friday night for the first leg of a 30-day trip to the moon. Shortly after the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer, or ... More »
(Reuters) – An unmanned Minotaur 5 rocket blasted off from the Virginia coast on Friday to send a small NASA science satellite on its way to the moon, officials said. The Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer spacecraft, known as LADEE, was designed t... More »
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) – More than 40 years after the last Apollo astronauts left the moon, NASA is preparing to launch a small robotic spacecraft to investigate one of their most bizarre discoveries. Crews reported seeing an odd glow on the lunar h... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – The average height of European men grew by a surprising 11 centimeters from the early 1870s to 1980, reflecting significant improvements in health across the region, according to new research published on Monday. Contrary to expectations, th... More »
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) – NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity turned its cameras skyward to snap pictures of the planet’s moon, Phobos, passing in front of the sun, images released on Thursday show. Curiosity landed on Mars in August 2012 for a two-year miss... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – Scientists have grown the first mini human brains in a laboratory and say their success could lead to new levels of understanding about the way brains develop and what goes wrong in disorders like schizophrenia and autism. Researchers based ... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – Scientists have grown the first mini human brains in a laboratory and say their success could lead to new levels of understanding about the way brains develop and what goes wrong in disorders like schizophrenia and autism. Researchers based ... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – Scientists have grown the first mini human brains in a laboratory and say their success could lead to new levels of understanding about the way brains develop and what goes wrong in disorders like schizophrenia and autism. Researchers based ... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – Scientists have grown the first mini human brains in a laboratory and say their success could lead to new levels of understanding about the way brains develop and what goes wrong in disorders like schizophrenia and autism. Researchers based ... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – Scientists have grown the first mini human brains in a laboratory and say their success could lead to new levels of understanding about the way brains develop and what goes wrong in disorders like schizophrenia and autism. Researchers based ... More »
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – An unmanned Delta 4-Heavy rocket, the largest in the U.S. fleet, blasted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on Wednesday to put a classified spy satellite into orbit for the National Reconnaissance Office, officials said W... More »
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) – The first Japanese astronaut to live aboard the International Space Station is preparing for a return flight, this time to serve as commander, officials said on Wednesday. Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Age... More »
BEIJING (Reuters) – China will land its first probe on the moon at the end of this year, state media reported on Wednesday, the next step in an ambitious space program which includes eventually building a space station. In 2007, China launched its first moon o... More »
LIMA (Reuters) – In Peru, home to the spectacular Inca city of Machu Picchu and thousands of ancient ruins, archaeologists are turning to drones to speed up sluggish survey work and protect sites from squatters, builders and miners. Remote-controlled aircraft ... More »
SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Malaysian entrepreneur Matt Chandran wants to revive the moribund post-mortem by replacing the scalpel with a scanner and the autopsy slab with a touchscreen computer. He believes his so-called digital autopsy could largely displace the c... More »
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) – The Kepler space telescope’s planet-hunting days are over because its broken positioning system cannot be fixed, NASA officials said on Thursday. The observatory was launched in 2009 to hunt for Earth-sized worlds suitably p... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The long-tailed, orange-furred, big-eyed olinguito – said to resemble a cross between a house cat and a teddy bear – is the newest mammal and the first carnivore discovered in the Americas in 35 years, the Smithsonian Institution announc... More »
(Reuters) – A U.S. horse association soon will be required to add cloned horses and their offspring to its prestigious registry, a federal judge in Texas ruled on Monday. The decision could encourage cloning and open the way for the animals to participate in l... More »
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) – An unmanned Delta 4 rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on Wednesday carrying a communications satellite for the U.S. military and its partners, including Australia, which paid for the spacecr... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Information about the most famous and valuable human cells in the history of science is about to become a little harder for researchers to get. The National Institutes of Health announced on Wednesday that it had reached an agreement with ... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Last year was one of the 10 hottest on record, with sea levels at record highs, Arctic ice at historic lows and extreme weather in various corners of the globe signaling a “new normal,” scientists said Tuesday in the 2012 State of the Cl... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – The world’s first laboratory-grown beef burger was flipped out of a petri dish and into a frying pan on Monday, with food tasters declaring it tasted “close to meat”. Grown in-vitro from cattle stem cells at a cost of 250,000 euros ($332,000... More »
(Reuters) – The NASA rover Curiosity survived its daredevil landing on Mars one year ago Tuesday and went on to discover that the planet most like Earth in the solar system could indeed have supported microbial life, the primary goal of the mission. “The stunn... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – A corner of west London will see culinary and scientific history made on Monday when scientists cook and serve up the world’s first lab-grown beef burger. The in-vitro burger, cultured from cattle stem cells, the first example of what its cr... More »
(Reuters) – Kirobo, a knee-high talking robot with red boots and a black and white body, has blasted off from Japan for the International Space Station to test how machines can help astronauts with their work. The Japanese-speaking robot, equipped with voice- ... More »
(Reuters) – NASA is considering re-activating a mothballed space telescope to help find asteroids that could be on a collision course with Earth, according to a senior U.S. space agency official. Launched in December 2009, the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explor... More »
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) – Astronomers slated to meet this week to discuss observing plans for Comet ISON may not have much to talk about. The so-called “Comet of the Century” may already have fizzled out. “The future of comet ISON does not look brigh... More »
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – A team of paleontologists have discovered the fossilized remains of a 72 million-year-old dinosaur tail in a desert in northern Mexico, the country’s National Institute for Anthropology and History (INAH) said on Monday. Apart from bein... More »
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – A team of archaeologists have discovered the fossilized remains of a 72 million-year-old dinosaur tail in a desert in northern Mexico, the country’s National Institute for Anthropology and History (INAH) said on Monday. Apart from being... More »
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) – A robotic space probe nearly 900 million miles from Earth turned its gaze away from Saturn and its entourage of moons to take a picture of its home planet, NASA said on Monday. The resulting image shows Earth as a very small... More »
OLYMPIA, Washington (Reuters) – A North American bumblebee species that all but vanished from about half of its natural range has re-emerged in Washington state, delighting scientists who voiced optimism the insect might eventually make a recovery in the Pacif... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – By 2012, Eastman Chemical seemed to be perfectly positioned when it came to producing plastic for drinking bottles. Concerns about a widely used chemical called bisphenol A (BPA) had become so great that Walmart stopped selling plastic bab... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – By 2012, Eastman Chemical seemed to be perfectly positioned when it came to producing plastic for drinking bottles. Concerns about a widely used chemical called bisphenol A (BPA) had become so great that Walmart stopped selling plastic bab... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – Scientists have created an “intelligent” surgical knife that can detect in seconds whether tissue being cut is cancerous, promising more effective and accurate surgery in future. The device, built by researchers at London’s Imperial College,... More »
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) – A spacewalk to work on the International Space Station ended abruptly on Tuesday when a water-like liquid started building up inside an Italian astronaut’s helmet, NASA officials said. U.S. astronaut Chris Cassidy and Italy’... More »
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) – An astronomer studying archived images of Neptune taken by the Hubble Space Telescope has found a 14th moon orbiting the planet, NASA said on Monday. Estimated to be about 12 miles in diameter, the moon is located about 65,4... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – Scientists have unraveled how a gene long associated with obesity makes people fat by triggering increased hunger, opening up potential new ways to fight a growing global health problem. A common variation in the FTO gene affects one in six ... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Powerful earthquakes thousands of miles (km) away can trigger swarms of minor quakes near wastewater-injection wells like those used in oil and gas recovery, scientists reported on Thursday, sometimes followed months later by quakes big en... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – An airplane entirely powered by the sun touched down in New York City late on Saturday, completing the final leg of an epic journey across the United States that began over two months ago. The Solar Impulse, its four propellers driven by e... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – An airplane entirely powered by the sun embarked on the final leg of a journey across the United States on Saturday, taking off from Washington, D.C., for a roughly 21-hour flight to New York City. The Solar Impulse, its four propellers dr... More »
ALMATY, Kazakhstan (Reuters) – A Russian rocket carrying three navigation satellites worth around $200 million crashed shortly after lift-off from the Russian-leased Baikonur launch facility in Kazakhstan on Tuesday after its engines suddenly switched off. The... More »
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) – NASA has selected Space Florida, a state-backed economic development agency, to take over operations, maintenance and development of the space shuttle’s idled landing site at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, officials sa... More »
BEIJING (Reuters) – Three Chinese astronauts returned to Earth on Wednesday, touching down in north China’s Inner Mongolia after a successful 15-day mission in which they docked with an experimental manned space laboratory. The Shenzhou 10 spacecraft, China’s ... More »
BEIJING (Reuters) – Three Chinese astronauts returned to Earth on Wednesday, touching down in north China’s Inner Mongolia after a successful 15-day mission in which they docked with an experimental manned space laboratory. The Shenzhou 10 spacecraft, China’s ... More »
BEIJING (Reuters) – Three Chinese astronauts returned to Earth on Wednesday, touching down in north China’s Inner Mongolia after a successful 15-day mission in which they docked with an experimental manned space laboratory. The Shenzhou 10 spacecraft, China’s ... More »
BEIJING (Reuters) – Three Chinese astronauts returned to Earth on Wednesday, touching down in north China’s Inner Mongolia after a successful 15-day mission in which they docked with an experimental manned space laboratory. The Shenzhou 10 spacecraft, China’s ... More »
BEIJING (Reuters) – Three Chinese astronauts returned to Earth on Wednesday, touching down in north China’s Inner Mongolia after a successful 15-day mission in which they docked with an experimental manned space laboratory. The Shenzhou 10 spacecraft, China’s ... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – Plants do complex arithmetic calculations to make sure they have enough food to get them through the night, new research published in journal eLife shows. Scientists at Britain’s John Innes Centre said plants adjust their rate of starch cons... More »
PARIS (Reuters) – The European Space Agency signed final contracts with Thales Alenia Space Italy for work on a pair of missions to assess if the planet Mars has or ever had life, officials said at the Paris Airshow this week. Until last year, the ExoMars prog... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – NASA called on backyard astronomers and other citizen-scientists on Tuesday to help track asteroids that could create havoc on Earth. The U.S. space agency has already identified 95 percent of the potentially planet-killing NEOs – near E... More »
(Reuters) – An airplane entirely powered by the sun landed in Washington on Sunday after a flight from St. Louis, the next-to-last leg of a journey across the United States intended to boost support for clean energy technologies. The Solar Impulse landed at Du... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. regulators have opened a probe into whether a Lockheed-Boeing joint venture that launches U.S. government satellites into space has flouted antitrust laws. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is investigating whether United Launch Al... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – The outlawing of drugs such as cannabis, magic mushrooms and other psychoactive substances amounts to scientific censorship and is hampering research into potentially important medicinal uses, leading scientists argued on Wednesday. Laws and... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – Genetic sequence data on a deadly strain of bird flu previously unknown in people show the virus has already acquired some mutations that might make it more likely to cause a human pandemic, scientists say. But there is no evidence so far th... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – British scientists have developed a new vaccine against foot-and-mouth disease that is safer and easier to manufacture, an advance they believe should greatly increase production capacity and reduce costs. The technology behind the livestock... More »
JACKSON, Mississippi/CHICAGO, Illinois (Reuters) – The doctor who cured an HIV infected baby for the first time is happier talking to children than to adults and is finding all the attention since the news came out a little overwhelming. Dr. Hannah Gay and col... More »
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – Trying to prevent HIV infection through vaginal gels or daily tablets has proven ineffective in the southern African region ravaged by the disease because people did not use the medicines properly, a study released on Monday said. A gr... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A day after an exhaustive national report on cancer found the United States is making only slow progress against the disease, one of the country’s most iconic – and iconoclastic – scientists weighed in on “the war against cancer.” And he d... More »
