Science News

In one of the most comprehensive laboratory studies of its kind, Rice University scientists traced the uptake and accumulation of quantum dot nanoparticles from water to plant roots, plant leaves and leaf-eating caterpil...

New work from Carnegie's Ivan Naumov and Russell Hemley delves into the chemistry underlying some surprising recent observations about hydrogen, and reveals remarkable parallels between hydrogen and graphene under extrem...

So much for the warmup laps. Harvard physicists are looking with anticipation to the spring, when the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, Switzerland, fires up after a two-year hiatus for repairs and upgrades. The last ...

Researchers are busy building the scaffolding for next-generation chemistry.

(Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) How do fireflies produce those mesmerizing light flashes? Using cutting-edge imaging techniques, scientists from Switzerland and Taiwan have unraveled the firefly's intricate ...

The team responsible for the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument suite on NASA's Curiosity rover has made the first definitive detection of organic molecules at Mars. Organic molecules are the building blocks of all...

NASA announced Tuesday that its Mars Curiosity rover detected a "a tenfold spike in methane" in the atmosphere. Organic molecules were also detected in a rock sample collected by the rover. Curiosity was "sniffing" the a...

When you lose weight, where does the fat go? Turns out, most of it is exhaled.

Although currently available diagnostic screening systems for breast cancer like X-ray computed tomography (CT) and mammography are effective at detecting early signs of tumors, they are far from perfect, subjecting pati...

Bad news for polar bears: the Arctic is still warming at twice the pace as the rest of the planet, according to a new federal report.

It is becoming possible to image complex systems in 3-D with near-atomic resolution on ultrafast timescales using extremely intense X-ray free-electron laser (XFEL) pulses.

In a development that holds promise for future magnetic memory and logic devices, researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and Cornell University success...

A remote-controlled underwater robot has collected the most detailed information yet about the underbelly of stable Arctic sea ice.

Beyoncé's tweets as sacred text, error messages that tell a tragic tale and the looping program of a failing relationship: we parse a new literary phenomenon (full text available to subscribers)

With services like Twitter and Facebook ready at our fingertips, the internet is making it possible for people to share more than ever about their personal experiences. --

This fall, a new primetime drama appeared on the television network WGN America, featuring scientists at Los Alamos working tirelessly--desperately, even--to develop nuclear weapons during World War II, all while maintai...

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory's gene researchers are accessorizing plant varieties to improve edible crops' structures, customizing them to growing conditions.

A six-legged robot that moves its legs independently can walk over obstacles and rough terrain

Volcanoes punched through a remote part of the West Antarctic ice sheet twice in the last 50,000 years.

The Philae lander is getting enough sunlight to keep warm, team members say, and the Rosetta spacecraft may have already taken pictures of its landing spot

All the latest on newscientist.com: block rockin' beasts, evolution, asteroid soil for space farms, sexology, tsunami shield, Martian methane burps and more

It might not happen for a quarter of a million years, but a nearby star coming closer to the sun could send planetary remnants hurtling to Earth