Science News

100 babies. No adults. One island. Without language, culture or tools, what would they become and how would their own children evolve? (full text available to subscribers)

The chance that a person will get bird flu in the United States is low, but those who come into close contact with infected birds may be at higher risk of infection, the CDC warned today.

A man with a red and blistered little finger got an unexpected surprise after visiting his doctor. His finger infection wasn't bacterial in nature, but caused by the herpes simplex virus, according to a new case report.

It started about five years ago with a practical chemistry question.

Gut bug swaps are being used for a widening group of illnesses – but a New Scientist investigation reveals that many doctors are worried about side effects (full text available to subscribers)

You may not want to hand them an apron and spatula just yet, but chimpanzees have many of the smarts to cook food, researchers found in a series of experiments with sweet potatoes and carrots.

Researchers unearthed several giant vertebrae from a giant shark that trolled the seas about 100 million years ago.

Researchers Felix Warneken and Alexandra Rosati have discovered that chimpanzees have the cognitive skills needed to cook food, suggesting that cooking probably came soon after control of fire in human evolution.

The so-called Charlie Charlie Challenge is based on shaky science, but there are some real and powerful forces behind this parlor game, according to one expert.

An exceptionally preserved mummy is giving insight into the medical history and life of a 17th century woman

Come to Singularity Hub for the latest from the frontiers of finance and technology as we bring you coverage of Singularity University and CNBC's Exponential Finance conference. The Bitcoin saga is worthy of...

Some of the large lakes that sit atop the Greenland ice sheet can completely drain billions of gallons of water in a matter of hours. Now geoscientists know why: hidden movements of the ice sheet trigger giant cracks to ...

The lakes that form atop Greenland's Ice Sheet, called supraglacial lakes, can rapidly, and mysteriously, drain billions of gallons of water in a matter of hours. Here's a look at the stunning icy-blue lakes.

Three of Pluto's four small moons are moving in step, and the fourth looks darker than the rest – creating a puzzle as to how they formed

It would be unacceptable to leave 100 children on an island to see how they grow up. But that doesn't mean we can't use science to guess what would happen

The growth of a rat forelimb grown in the lab offers hope that one day amputees may receive fully functional, biological replacement limbs

Take gold spirals about the size of a dime...and shrink them down about six million times. The result is the world's smallest continuous spirals: "nano-spirals" with unique optical properties that would be almost impossi...

In a given year, 32.6 million Americans have drinking problems, a new study finds.

The weather-shifting phenomenon El Niño threatens drought in key farming regions and a spike in food prices. Speculators are watching, says Eric Holthaus

Magnetic resonance tomography (MRT) images are an important diagnostic tool. The achievable contrast depends on how well the nuclear spins that form the basis of the imaging signals can be controlled. Mathematically, the...

The lakes that form atop Greenland's Ice Sheet, called supraglacial lakes, can rapidly, and mysteriously, drain billions of gallons of water in a matter of hours. Geoscientists have figured out how this vanishing act occ...

When experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Switzerland start collecting the first 13-teraelectronvolt (TeV) particle collisions data today, a long wait will be over for three University of Massachusetts Amher...