Science News

Touchscreens treat all fleshy finger pads alike: Most detect a simple change in electrical current or in sound or light waves regardless of who is swiping. Researchers at Disney Research, Pittsburgh, have built a touc...

The picture of the giant planet might help tease out clues to how worlds form – or it might show that the object is no planet at all

The Exploratorium, San Francisco's famous hands-on science museum, is moving to a new location on the Embarcadero. We got to follow along as employees packed up exhibits in the old location at the Palace of Fine Arts nea...

Hook Theory mined data to see how chords are used, then mapped them. Pop music might come off as formulaic sometimes, and, to some extent, that's probably true. Hook Theory is a song database, and after analyzing 1,300 p...

These animals are often kept as pets or farmed for their prized fur.

The Exploratorium, a San Francisco icon, will soon reopen as a stunning, new, energy efficient building on the city's Embarcadero.

NeuroSpire, with Jake Stauch at the helm, has developed software that lets companies scan brains to deliver better ads--and do it on the cheap. About four years ago, Jake Stauch was in a neuroscience class at Duke, learn...

All the latest on newscientist.com, including: the great skin safari, brain circuits in Gulf War syndrome, laser violin, the lion's changing face, and more

Beekeepers and environmental activists are suing the US Environmental Protection Agency for failing to ban neonicotinoid insecticides

The batteries' unique design could smooth out the power from renewables and help usher in the rise of more resilient microgrids

Make a condom that people actually want to use, and snag yourself a hundred K from the Gates Foundation. Also you'll save millions of lives. Men are idiots. Hence the common chorus of "but using a condom doesn't feel goo...

Just stay away from our necks, snake 'bot. We've seen Carnegie Mellon University's modular snake robots before, and it looks like one of them has learned a new trick. Throw it at a tree branch or field goal post or some ...

The savannah of human skin is an ecosystem as exotic as any on Earth. Rowan Hooper guides you on a fantastical tour of its terrifying and exotic denizens (full text available to subscribers)

Since the first extra-solar planet was found in 1992, we've made some decent progress in exploring other worlds out there, and may even be zeroing in on that "other Earth."

Round 2 polls close Monday, March 25, at 9 a.m. Happy March Madness! Welcome to round two of the world's nerdiest bracket! To recap: we've compiled a list of some of the strongest, fastest, and strangest landbots and sky...

Recreating extinct species using DNA may become feasible, but it won't resolve our fraught relationship with our environment, warns writer Frank Swain

Whether lodged in, inked on or inserted, a host of foreign objects can become intimate with our bodies

Placebos for sale, what are Lifetrons? binary T-shirts, and more (full text available to subscribers)

The O-Bow captures the grace of a traditional bowed instrument but digital processing makes it far easier to play

The long, lonely road walked by a Galapagos tortoise is pictured in an award-winning photograph by a researcher and artist