Science News

Revolutions, civil war and economic boom and bust - the changing age structure of a country's population could be behind them all, says Fred Pearce (full text available to subscribers)

How RFID tags, carbon-fiber airframes, and battery sensors will change the course of flight. RFID Tags A regular addition to cellphones and bank cards, radio frequency identification (RFID) tags are creeping into airplan...

A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences analyzed the health impacts of coal pollution by taking advantage of a de facto control group created by a Chinese government policy that provided ...

Both the quality and quantity of sperm start to decline earlier than was thought, and older men become more likely to have girls

This gun is just a few improvements away from being terrifying. Just a few months after the first 3-D printed gun caused plastic panic around the globe, there is now a 3-D printed rifle, revealed this week by YouTube use...

A newly discovered parasitoid wasp is the first of its genus caught piggy-backing on its host species - as it waits for its larvae's lunch to be laid

Of 19 mammal species surveyed, only two showed signs that their population dwindled around the time of the Indonesian eruption

A new analysis of a 10-year-old study suggests people slumber less deeply close to a full moon, with a corresponding dip in levels of the hormone melatonin

Happily, these drones are for educational (not killer) purposes. These honeycomb-like drones use advanced networking technology to fly smoothly in large formations. Created as a teaching aid by researchers at ETH Zurich,...

The virtual reality headset goes in for real-reality instead. The Oculus Rift is a virtual-reality headset that makes for a crazy-immersive experience. (Example: you can feel what it's like to get your head lopped off wi...

Given up smoking have you? A tooth implant can now tell from your mouth's movements whether you've been following medical advice on diet and smoking

The art on Google's home page celebrates the researcher whose data was crucial to Watson and Crick's discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA

Sixth graders at a charter school in Madison, Wisconsin, lead the charge to restore a local park and play a key role in efforts to revitalize a struggling community.

What we search for on the web can be used, anonymously, to give a unique insight into what we are really worrying about

Cats with formidable canines roamed the Earth 11,000 years ago, but exactly how they used their teeth is a mystery. Could a small marsupial offer clues?

Using lasers and magnetic fields, the fastest thing in the universe, light, has been halted for a minute - the time it takes to make 20 round-trips to the moon

An ultrasound scan is used to get an image from within the human body. It is most widely known for its use during pregnancy.