Science News

People who have type 2 diabetes may experience more cognitive problems later in life, according to a new study.

The NASA New Horizons mission to Pluto is reaching its conclusion and the spacecraft will wake up for the last time on Saturday. New Horizons will spend the next seven months gathering data on the distant dwarf planet wi...

Clues can be found in the young human brain's need for energy.

A new study will help researchers create longer-lasting, higher-capacity lithium rechargeable batteries, which are commonly used in consumer electronics. In a study published in the journal ACS Nano, researchers showed h...

Chemists and engineers at Oregon State University have discovered a fascinating new way to take some of the atmospheric carbon dioxide that's causing the greenhouse effect and use it to make an advanced, high-value mater...

The aging process affects everything from cardiovascular function to memory to sexuality. Most worrisome for many, however, is the potential loss of eyesight due to retinal degeneration.

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have figured out how to reverse the characteristics of a key bonding material -- polyurea -- providing an inexpensive alternative for a broad number of applic...

Technology has changed rapidly over the last few years with touch feedback, known as haptics, being used in entertainment, rehabilitation and even surgical training. New research, using ultrasound, has developed an invis...

First developed in China in about the year A.D. 150, paper has many uses, the most common being for writing and printing upon. Indeed, the development and spread of civilization owes much to paper's use as writing materi...

The Orion spacecraft atop a Delta IV rocket waits at the Kennedy Space Center for Thursday's launch.Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett NASA plans to launch its new human spacecraft, Orion, this Thursday December 4th in its first ...

Researchers working at the Advanced Light Source (ALS) of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have combined key features of two highly acclaimed X-ray spectroscopy t...

We are rarely violent because we fail to think about right and wrong, we do it because it feels like the right thing, say Alan Page Fiske and Tage Shakti Rai (full text available to subscribers)

The amount of sleep that you get on an average night is influenced by two regions of your DNA, new research finds.

(Phys.org)--Our current understanding of the universe is that the majority of its mass consists of dark matter (DM) - but there's a wrinkle: Despite having an idea about some of its properties - dark matter is cold, mass...

A preliminary, Internet-based survey suggests that Sophia will keep her ruling role as top baby girl's name of 2014, while Jackson is likely to gain popularity among baby boys.

Wanderers is an inspiring vision of humanity's expansion beyond planet earth, showing digital recreations of actual places in the Solar System, built from photos and maps that we might find if...

All the latest on newscientist.com: dog-computer interfaces, good Ebola news, HIV gets less aggressive with age, moonship engineer and more

The idea of creating life from scratch is deeply rooted in the imagination, from ancient mythology up to modern science fiction. Yet recent scientific advances in understanding what defines life at...

The eminent British physicist Stephen Hawking warns that the development of intelligent machines could pose a major threat to humanity.

NASA's Orion space capsule is scheduled to travel 3,600 miles from Earth on Dec. 4, then rocket back to Earth to test out a variety of systems during an unmanned flight. No human-spaceflight vehicle has traveled so far s...

Battle-scarred bones found under an English parking lot two years ago really do belong to the medieval King Richard III, according to a new analysis of genetic and genealogical evidence.

According to a recent study conducted by a team of scientists from the University of Oxford, the AIDS virus, which currently infects over 35 million people worldwide, is weakening itself as it adapts to the human immune ...