Science News

Tom Magliozzi, one of the hosts of the National Public Radio show "Car Talk," died yesterday from complications of Alzheimer's disease. But how does Alzheimer's disease kill?

People with narcolepsy are much more likely to experience lucid dreaming, which could help them combat terrifying nightmares.

Mathematics is more fun than most of us reckon: think World of Warcraft with a pencil, says the comedian who wrote Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension

A century ago, scientists unearthed fossils of a gigantic carnivorous dinosaur bigger than Tyrannosaurus rex in the Sahara desert, but until recently, paleontologists thought the fearsome beast was lost to history.

Marijuana's popularity has fluctuated throughout history and across the globe. But in the United States, this drug is becoming ever more mainstream. Here are maps showing states with highest and lowest rates of pot smoki...

To avoid financial crises we must ditch ideological arguments about regulation and understand that the economy is an ecosystem, say three complexity theorists (full text available to subscribers)

There's still time to hit the peak for colorful fall leaves, and a new foliage forecast map can help people plan their viewing trips more than a week ahead.

After a vent from Hawaii's Kilauea volcano opened up in June, it sent a thick river of lava on a slow march toward the village of Pahoa on the Big Island's east side. Several months later, the federal government on Monda...

To keep wild King Penguins from stressing out, researchers piloted a rover to collect data from Passive Integrated Transponders tags (PIT-tags).

Childhood beliefs about the soul and afterlife stick with people as they age, shaping their views in adulthood, even if they say otherwise, a new study finds.

If you took the junk from the back of your closet and combined it with the dirty laundry already on your floor, you would have an even bigger mess. While this principle will likely always hold true for our bedrooms, it t...

We've often written about the "Internet of Things." This is the idea that as chips get smaller, more energy efficient, and more connected, we'll embed them in everything around us to...

Conservation of water will have to become a way of life in California as projections suggest long-term drought will become the norm

Contrary to an urban legend, there are not as many rats as people in New York City, a new study shows. A statistician says a generous estimate for the rat population would be 2 million -- far fewer than New York's 8 mill...

Humans harbour different, less diverse gut flora than our nearest relatives, which makes sense in light of our diet but could have a health downside

All the latest on newscientist.com: weird wet worlds, copyright battles, our instinct for probability, human-bird musical harmony and more

Queen's University is today leading the celebrations of a landmark in modern science, made 50 years ago by John Stewart Bell, a Queen's University graduate and Nobel Prize for Physics nominee.

The physics community has spent three decades searching for and finding no evidence that dark matter is made of tiny exotic particles. Case Western Reserve University theoretical physicists suggest researchers consider l...

Boss of UK spy agency GCHQ censures US tech companies for facilitating terrorists with their social networks – but others say encryption is good for everyone

According the Navy, the F-35C Lightning II "carrier variant" JSF successfully made the flight deck of USS Nimitz's (CVN 68) on Nov. 3rd, 2014.

Originally published: Oct 31 2014 - 2:45pm, Inside Science News ServiceBy: Alexander Hellemans, Contributor(Inside Science) -- Researchers around the world are studying how to destroy chemical and biological warfare agen...

Astrophysicists and cosmologists are turning to statisticians to help them analyze an ever-increasing deluge of data. In late 1801 the orbit of the newly discovered asteroid Ceres carried it behind the sun, and astronome...