Science: Candidates' platforms offer similar goals but different paths

Both John McCain and Barack Obama strongly support government investment in science and technology. They say that expanded research and development are vital for America's health, economy and environment. Otherwise, they warn, the U.S. may be overtaken by Europe, China and elsewhere. | 10/09/08 14:47:00 By - Robert S. Boyd

Will new Mars lander be parked or scrapped?

America's next daring adventure on Mars -- a one-ton rolling science laboratory scheduled to launch next October -- is in deep trouble. Huge cost overruns and technical difficulties may cause the $2 billion dollar Mars Science Laboratory to be delayed or cancelled outright, members of a NASA advisory committee were warned last week. | 10/05/08 13:25:00 By - Robert S. Boyd

Scientists probing what happened before big bang

When the huge subatomic-particle smasher under the Swiss-French border starts running, it's supposed to reveal what happened the instant after the big bang, the theoretical beginning of our universe 13.7 billion years ago. | 09/22/08 14:58:00 By - Robert S. Boyd

Physicists: U.S. could cut oil use with better houses, cars

The U.S. can reduce its dependence on foreign oil and greenhouse-gas emissions by making cars and buildings much more energy efficient, according to a study released Tuesday by a large national association of physicists. Among the suggestions: roofs that reflect rather than absorb sunlight. | 09/16/08 14:57:00 By - Renee Schoof

New psychotropic drugs no better than the old, study finds

A comparison of medications for severe mental illness shows that an old drug works just as well as new ones for teenagers, plus it doesn't cause the weight gain that has worried patients, parents and doctors, researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill report today. | 09/15/08 07:34:58 By - Sarah Avery

Nitrogen emerges as the latest climate-change threat

WASHINGTON — Scientists are raising alarms about yet another threat to Earth's climate and human well-being. This time it's nitrogen, a common element essential to all life. | 09/12/08 13:05:00 By - Robert S. Boyd

This year's fall weather patterns raising tornado concerns in Kansas

There's a hint of autumn crispness in the air. The Kansas State Fair is in high gear in Hutchinson. To local meteorologists and weather buffs, those are clear signs that tornado season looms. Tornado season? In the fall? | 09/10/08 07:27:25 By - Stan Finger

Low levels of Arctic sea ice signal global warming's advance

This year will see the second-biggest loss on record of Arctic sea ice — a sign that the area of ice coverage is shrinking at a pace faster than once expected. The trend suggests that global warming is likely to increase, polar bear habitat will decline and previously icebound areas could be opened to oil and gas exploration. | 09/09/08 20:03:00 By - Renee Schoof

Scientists fear impact of Asian pollutants on U.S.

From 500 miles in space, satellites track brown clouds of dust, soot and other toxic pollutants from China and elsewhere in Asia as they stream across the Pacific and take dead aim at the western U.S. | 08/31/08 06:00:00 By - Les Blumenthal

Scientists close in on mass killer of life on earth

Scientific sleuths think they're making progress toward pinning down what caused the extinction of most plants and animals on Earth some 251 million years ago. The perpetrator wasn't an asteroid or comet, like the impact that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, but a cascade of events that began with a monstrous outpouring of hot, reeking lava in Siberia that released massive amounts of carbon dioxide. | 08/27/08 17:30:34 By - Robert S. Boyd

Washington's Hanford B Reactor named National Historic Landmark

Hanford's B Reactor was named a National Historic Landmark on Monday, recognizing the role it played in shaping 50 years of U.S. and world history. | 08/26/08 07:28:08 By - Annette Cary

Reactor that made fuel for Nagasaki bomb declared landmark

The designation of B Reactor is an important step in preserving the historic reactor as a museum. Built in 11 months as the United States raced to produce an atomic bomb during World War II, B Reactor produced plutonium for the first nuclear explosion in the New Mexico desert and for the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan. | 08/25/08 15:02:56 By - Annette Cary

The ultimate face-recognition tool is in our heads, researchers say

Ever wonder why it's so much easier to remember people's faces than their names? Neuroscientists have identified a pea-sized region in the brain that reacts more strongly to faces than it does to cars, dogs, houses or body parts. Researchers say humans developed a chunk of brain tissue dedicated to face recognition because it helped them quickly spot friends and foes. | 08/21/08 14:46:00 By - Robert S. Boyd

Researchers hunt for energy in strange places

Scouring the Earth for new sources of clean, renewable energy, scientists and engineers are exploring some unusual nooks and crannies. Kites, waves, tides, ocean currents, geysers, garbage, cow manure, old utility poles, algae and bacteria are being enlisted in the effort to lower the world's reliance on climate-warming coal and oil. | 08/17/08 06:00:00 By - Robert S. Boyd

Science's awesome challenge: Creating artificial life

Scientists are advancing slowly toward one of the most audacious goals humans have ever set for themselves: creating artificial life. They've already accomplished some steps needed to construct a simple, single-celled organism that's capable of evolving and reproducing itself — basic requirements for life. | 08/04/08 16:26:00 By - Robert S. Boyd

Duke study: HIV strikes within days, faster than once thought

The finding that HIV infects and attacks the body within days drastically narrows the window when intervention is possible and means clinicians must test more and sooner if they hope to catch an infection before it can be transmitted to someone else. | 07/25/08 07:26:56 By - Zoe Elizabeth Buck

Alaska rate of birth defects far outpaces national average

Alaska infants are twice as likely to be born with major birth defects as infants in the U.S. as a whole, according to a new study by the state Department of Health and Social Services — and officials are at a loss to explain why. | 07/17/08 07:44:52 By - George Bryson

How can you tell where a bird's from? Just listen to its accent

Humans aren't the only creatures whose regional drawls and twangs give them away. The same thing goes for songbirds. A scientist at Duke University has found that birds, just like humans, learn their songs from one another and "talk" like the birds they grow up with. | 07/17/08 07:16:28 By - Zoe Elizabeth Buck

Battle of chips: Computer beats human experts at poker

Human pride took a hit 11 years ago when IBM's Big Blue computer beat world chess champion Gary Kasparov. Now it's poker players' turn to be humiliated by a machine. A computer system called Polaris outperformed some of the world's top players last weekend at a human-vs.-machine competition in Las Vegas. The score was computer 3, humans 2, with one draw. | 07/10/08 14:00:00 By - Robert S. Boyd

New satellite to shed light on Earth's warming

NASA plans to launch a new satellite next year that will help scientists fill in a gap in their understanding of global warming: the role of clouds and airborne particles. The satellite Glory, targeted for launch next June, will give scientists a much better tool to measure particles than any satellite so far. The particles, known as aerosols, are bits of things such as dust and smog. | 07/03/08 16:41:00 By - Renee Schoof

No bigger than a thumbnail, yet this mussel is a huge pain

Never heard of the quagga mussel? It's becoming a major threat to water systems around the United States. Only the size of a thumbnail, it multiplies by the thousands, clogging municipal water pipes, taking food from native species and maybe even spurring the growth of bacteria that causes botulism. From the Great Lakes to southern California, researchers are struggling to find ways to fight it. | 06/24/08 18:00:00 By - Kat Glass

In cancer war, viruses can be good guys

Viruses aren't always the bad guys. Sure, they can cause colds, measles, AIDS and other miseries. But with some tinkering, these tiny organisms may become a new and better way to treat cancer. In the last few years, scientists have been genetically engineering various viruses so they attack cancer cells but leave healthy cells alone. | 06/23/08 15:48:00 By - Robert S. Boyd

Stem cells also help broken bones heal, researchers say

Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have found stem cells that will help bones heal, a possible aid to patients whose breaks won't heal. | 06/17/08 07:21:07 By - Zoe Elizabeth Buck

NASA tests robotic vehicles in Washington state dunes

NASA has been racing at the dunes for two weeks testing new robotic vehicles that have been developed at laboratories across the country. The equipment is intended to be used in decades to come when the space agency returns to the moon and eventually puts humans on Mars. | 06/11/08 18:46:52 By - Joe Chapman

NASA reveals plans for lunar base, asks industry for ideas

NASA is asking private industry to come up with creative ideas for a lunar outpost that can house four astronauts for one to four weeks on the moon starting about 2024. | 06/09/08 16:06:00 By - Robert S. Boyd

Will DNA link Alaska Indians to 10,300-year-old man?

Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian Indians gathering in Juneau on Friday got a chance to prove they're directly related to one of the very first Alaskans — a 10,300-year-old mariner whose bear-chewed bones were discovered a decade ago in a cave on Prince of Wales Island. | 06/06/08 13:39:13 By -

Tour de Romance? Anti-doping agency studies Viagra ban

Untold numbers of men — and their partners — can attest to Viagra as a performance enhancer in the bedroom. Can it also perk up performance in a bicycling race? | 06/06/08 07:01:04 By - Linda Robertson

High oil prices fuel development of new hybrid batteries

The silver lining in high oil prices is that they may hasten the arrival of energy alternatives that should bring a number of benefits. New battery technologies could leave the United States less reliant on foreign oil while reducing harmful carbon dioxide emissions. Work is under way to use new battery technologies to propel tugboats, delivery trucks and even diesel locomotives. | 06/04/08 17:19:34 By - Kevin G. Hall

China likely to beat U.S. back to the moon, NASA says

The goal of NASA's Constellation program is to return astronauts to the moon by 2020. The head of NASA's moon program says Chinese astronauts are on schedule to beat that goal by two or three years. The Chinese lead will be even longer if the American schedule slips, as some space experts predict. | 06/04/08 14:20:00 By - Robert S. Boyd

Microbes thrive where nothing else lives

Life keeps popping up in the most unlikely places. In the last few days, scientists reported finding unexpected colonies of microorganisms occupying three very different regions on Earth. | 06/03/08 16:08:00 By - Robert S. Boyd

Kennedy surgeon is considered among world's best

Dr. Allan Friedman, the neurosurgeon-in-chief at Duke University Hospital who operated on Sen. Edward Kennedy's brain tumor today, is considered among the best tumor and vascular neurosurgeons in the world. He's responsible for over 90 percent of all tumor resections at Duke. | 06/02/08 13:08:48 By - Leah Friedman

Race to moon competition gets a N. Carolina entrant

In the category of audacious goals, a team of Raleigh-area business leaders and North Carolina State University faculty members has entered a worldwide contest to launch the first private rocket to the moon. | 06/01/08 15:13:04 By - Tim Simmons

Smallest Earth-like planet detected

Astronomers have discovered what may be the smallest alien planet yet — a rocky "SuperEarth" only four times heavier than our home planet. It's orbiting a small star at a distance that puts it in the so-called "habitable zone" — a region neither too hot nor too cold for liquid water and therefore suitable for possible life. | 05/30/08 17:03:15 By - Robert S. Boyd

Study looks at healing properties in alligator blood

It's not going to make the big beasts lurking in South Florida's canals seem any nicer, but new research suggests a little alligator might be good for human health. | 05/30/08 05:51:03 By - Curtis Morgan

Which city pollutes most? (Hint: It's not New York or L.A.)

The study, called Shrinking the Carbon Footprint of Metropolitan America, calculates that the average Lexington, Ky., resident was responsible for putting 3.46 metric tons of carbon emissions into the atmosphere in 2005. | 05/29/08 07:19:35 By - Andy Mead

Cells die to keep you alive

In an act of ultimate self-sacrifice, millions of human cells commit suicide every day, making your life better by their death. Now scientists are learning to control this biological demolition process and enlist it in the war on cancer. It's called "programmed cell death" (PCD) or, in scientific jargon, apoptosis (ah - pop - TOE - sis). | 05/28/08 00:34:00 By - Robert S. Boyd

GAO says moving infectious disease lab is risky

The Homeland Security Department never fully assessed the risk of moving the countries research on highly contagious animal diseases from an island lab to the mainland, an official of Congress' investigative arm told lawmakers on Thursday. | 05/22/08 19:05:01 By - Queenie Wong

New study finds steep costs of doing nothing on climate

Doing nothing about global warming would cost America dearly in the rest of this century because of stronger hurricanes, higher energy and water costs, and rising seas that would swamp coastal communities, according to a new study by economists at Tufts University. | 05/22/08 18:18:00 By - Renee Schoof

For first time, astronomers witness a star explode and die

The remnants of thousands of supernovas have been seen before, but, thanks to a lucky break, astronomers in January witnessed the actual explosion of a supernova — a star's final burst of energy before it collapses in on itself. The star-burst lasted only five minutes, but it shone brighter than a billion normal stars combined. | 05/21/08 15:42:00 By - Robert S. Boyd

Finding quake survivors just one use for remote heartbeat detectors

A system that detects the faint electric signals of beating human hearts is being used to help rescuers frantically seeking to locate people trapped under the rubble in China's horrific earthquake. | 05/20/08 20:04:20 By - Robert S. Boyd

Researchers find supernova that's just 140 years old

RALEIGH — A scientist at North Carolina State University has discovered the youngest known supernova in our galaxy. It's only 140 years old, NCSU announced Wednesday. | 05/14/08 19:12:13 By - David Ranii

Florida fire threatens habitat of endangered seaside sparrow

Struggling to protect a tiny endangered bird, firefighters battled a sprawling East Everglades wildfire on Wednesday from the air and the ground. | 05/14/08 19:05:53 By - Tim Chapman

Polar bear listed as an endangered species

Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne announced Wednesday that the agency will list the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, a decision that could cast the bears as the enduring symbol of the effects of global warming. But the designation will come with strings to "keep from harming the economy." | 05/14/08 15:55:24 By - Erika Bolstad

Weather experts puzzled by high number of killer tornadoes

Deadly tornados are striking more frequently this year, forecasters say, but there's no one particular reason for it. | 05/13/08 07:55:16 By - Bill Graham

Mars landing May 25 will kick off a year of space missions

Despite a painful budget squeeze, the United States will undertake a jampacked array of new astronomy missions over the next 12 months. The goals range from counting tiny specks of carbon in Earth's atmosphere to surveying the outer boundary of the solar system and studying the farthest corners of the universe. | 05/12/08 15:03:00 By - Robert S. Boyd

McCain goes green in West Coast speech

John McCain called Monday for reductions in carbon emissions and slammed the Bush administration for failing to lead the fight against climate change. McCain's proposal of reducing carbon emissions to 60 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 is less than Hillary Clinton's and Barack Obama's call for levels 80 percent below 1990. Still, he got some praise from conservationists. | 05/12/08 19:06:53 By - Matt Stearns

Researchers: Lake Tahoe clarity helped by building limits

Scientists who for decades reported the famously clear Lake Tahoe to be turning ever murkier have discovered that the decline actually has been leveling since 2001. | 05/12/08 17:42:41 By - Chris Bowman

Pollution levels have dropped in U.S. coastal waters

Some good news from the government scientists who study pollution in U.S. coastal waters: A newly released 20-year study shows overall levels of pesticides and industrial chemicals are generally decreasing. | 05/12/08 00:01:00 By - Renee Schoof

Another recipe for ethanol: homegrown sweet sorghum

What's sweet like sugarcane, looks something like corn and could be grown in much of the United States to make ethanol? Sweet sorghum. American pioneers used sweet sorghum as a substitute for sugar. Now researchers are wondering if it isn't a better way to make ethanol than corn. | 05/08/08 15:27:00 By - Renee Schoof

Senate Democrats criticize EPA for impeding science

The Environmental Protection Agency's top science adviser defended his boss for holding meetings with White House officials that are kept secret from Congress and the public. Senators said the practice raises questions about the EPS's independence. | 05/07/08 19:16:55 By - Renee Schoof

U.S. consumers rank last in world survey of green habits

Americans rank last in a new National Geographic-sponsored survey released Wednesday that compares environmental consumption habits in 14 countries. Americans were least likely to choose the greener option in three out of four categories — housing, transportation and consumer goods. As for food, only the Japanese were less 'green.' | 05/07/08 00:08:00 By - Queenie Wong

More killer germs resisting world's antibiotics

The threat of death-defying bacteria, stubborn organisms that refuse to be conquered by antibiotic medicines, is growing more alarming. Infectious microbes that used to be able to resist only one drug, such as penicillin or methicillin, now resist multiple drugs. Some can survive virtually every weapon in doctors' medicine cabinets. | 05/05/08 15:55:00 By - Robert S. Boyd

Alaska seeks to show polar bears aren't threatened

Alaska's state legislature is looking to hire a few good polar bear scientists. The conclusions have already been agreed upon — researchers just have to fill in the science part. Goal: undermine the perception that melting Arctic ice threatens the polar bear's survival. | 05/04/08 06:23:24 By - Tom Kizzia

Mysterious algae blooms choking Florida Bay

Scientists who monitor Florida Bay and anglers who chase tarpon and bonefish in its maze of shallows fear that algae blooms are returning to the body of water at the tip of Florida, a rerun of the early 1990s, when a string of blooms decimated vast swaths of seagrass beds and sponges. | 05/04/08 05:54:29 By - Curtis Morgan

Researchers still unsure what's causing Reno quakes

MOGUL, Nev. — Geoff Blewitt, a University of Nevada physicist who focuses on measuring minute earth movements with GPS, believes that since a swarm of earthquakes began west of Reno, a 20-square-mile area has shifted eastward one centimeter — just under a half-inch. | 05/03/08 07:44:08 By - Carrie Peyton Dahlberg

Calif. study links fast food to increases in obesity, diabetes

SACRAMENTO — It's often said, "You are what you eat," but new research suggests that where you eat may have a lot to do with it, as well. | 04/29/08 08:30:10 By - Dorsey Griffith

Reno, Nev., puzzled by weeks-long earthquake swarm

Neighborhoods west of Reno, Nev., are being jolted by a swarm of quakes that are fascinating seismologists but frustrating residents. | 04/29/08 08:29:02 By - Carrie Payton Dahlberg

'Voracious' jumbo squid invading Pacifc Northwest waters

No one knows exactly why they started appearing in increasing numbers off Washington state and Oregon, or how many of them there are, but scientists and commercial fishermen believe jumbo squid, known to attack divers, could threaten the declining salmon population and signal another change brought on by global warming. | 04/27/08 06:00:00 By - Les Blumenthal

Dangerous Russian space landing raises alarms at NASA

The terrifying landing Saturday of a Russian space capsule with three astronauts aboard is raising serious concerns about how to get humans to and from the International Space Station. | 04/24/08 15:31:00 By - Robert S. Boyd

Chances of destructive earthquake rise slightly in Washington state

WASHINGTON -- The chances of a destructive earthquake in Washington state have increased slightly because of the discovery of two new major faults and revised calculations for the Cascadia Subduction Zone off the coast, where two tectonic plates grind against each other. | 04/22/08 17:44:43 By - Les Blumenthal

S. Florida confronts what will happen when the waters rise

Under conservative predictions of a three-foot rise in sea level, high tide would wash daily into downtown Miami, South Beach and Hollywood by century's end. At five feet, the sea would swallow much of the Everglades and cover pavement from Fort Lauderdale across to Naples. | 04/22/08 06:50:20 By - Curtis Morgan

Florida moving closer to Canada? Tiny measurements yield big discoveries

As scientists learn how to make more exact measurements, they're finding some astonishing surprises. New technologies are enabling researchers to measure things such as time, distance, temperature, weight, force, size and motion with a precision never before achieved. | 04/15/08 14:47:00 By - Robert S. Boyd

Do clean-energy wind turbines make people nearby sick?

People who live near the turbines say the noises they emit make them ill. One researcher calls it “wind turbine syndrome,” a collection of symptoms that include headaches, anxiety attacks and high blood pressure. | 04/13/08 21:32:22 By - Karen Dillon

Feds call for ban on salmon fishing as population plummets

The population of chinook last year reached 35-year low and this year is expected to drop further. A ban on catching salmon would cost California 2,236 jobs. | 04/11/08 23:02:03 By - Matt Weiser

Drugs in drinking water: Do we need to care?

The unending list of contaminants in water and elsewhere is a growing public burden. Asked if they faced more health risks than past generations, majorities of Americans polled in 1980 said yes. Asked a similar question in 2003, they said yes again. So why are experts relatively unfazed? | 04/11/08 14:53:00 By - Frank Greve

Phobos, the larger of Mars' two moons, via NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

The camera shot two pictures, 10 minutes apart, which show the moon's features in unprecedented detail. Phobos is only 13-1/2 miles in diameter and weighs less than 1,000th as much as Earth. | 04/09/08 17:10:02 By - Robert S. Boyd

Researchers say global warming is having little impact on hurricanes

ORLANDO — We're in a busy period of hurricane activity that will inflict unimaginable damage, but global warming is not the cause, leading researchers told the nation's foremost forecasters and other experts Friday. | 04/05/08 11:12:14 By -

Astronomers revel in recent spate of discoveries

The year 2008 is turning out to be stellar for astronomy. New discoveries in the sky are popping up like fireflies. Recent highlights include a whopping haul of new planets around faraway stars. | 04/03/08 15:32:00 By - Robert S. Boyd

Faster computers may use light instead of electricity

Scientists and engineers are racing to develop ways to use light instead of electricity to avoid traffic jams inside computers. | 04/02/08 14:37:00 By - Robert S. Boyd

Distant star's demise previews our sun's death

Astronomers at 25 observatories around the world began aiming their telescopes this week at a preview of our sun's eventual death. Their target is a slowly cooling "white dwarf" star in the constellation Virgo that eventually will become a cold, black cinder. | 03/27/08 11:42:00 By - Robert S. Boyd

Study links big-belly weight to dementia

Going into middle age with a big belly could set the wheels in motion for dementia in later life, a new study says. | 03/26/08 17:34:08 By - Barbara Anderson

McCain on global warming: Strong warnings, few details

Since his last try for the presidency in 2000, John McCain has listened closely to the evidence on global warming, agreed with scientists that pollution is much to blame and concluded that the United States must limit its emissions from fossil fuels. | 03/23/08 06:00:00 By - Renee Schoof

Fly research into human diseases bearing new fruit

Most people think of fruit flies as annoying little pests zipping around bananas or grapes on the kitchen counter. But to biologists, they're diamonds on the wing. Thousands of researchers have ground out almost 16,000 scientific papers in the last five years. | 03/20/08 11:26:00 By - Robert S. Boyd

Energy, water demands are on collision course

It takes a lot of water to produce energy. It takes a lot of energy to provide water. The two are inextricably linked, and claims on each are rising. | 03/12/08 00:58:00 By - Robert S. Boyd

Our solar system isn't what it used to be

Move over, Copernicus. Your once-revolutionary idea — that the Earth revolves around the sun rather than the other way around — has been eclipsed.

Recent years have brought a sweeping new revolution in solar system astronomy. The Earth still orbits the sun, as Copernicus declared 400 years ago, but the planetary system in the textbooks you studied is now out of date. | 03/04/08 06:00:00 By - Robert S. Boyd

Bird flu remains dangerous as it continues to mutate

Like the rumble of distant thunder, bird flu continues to spread across Asia, Africa and Europe. Although it's been out of the news lately in the United States, scientists say that avian influenza, as it's also known, remains a serious threat to human and animal health. | 02/20/08 14:22:00 By - Robert S. Boyd

Panel: Global-warming mass extinctions preventable

What's likely to happen if the world does nothing to combat global warming? The answer from the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was jaw-dropping: more than 40 percent of known plant and animal species could become extinct by the end of this century. | 02/19/08 14:55:00 By - Renee Schoof

Despite doubts, nuclear energy making comeback

Like it or not, the nukes are coming. Driven by soaring energy demands, the high cost of gas and oil and worries about global warming, an expansion of peaceful nuclear power increasingly appears to be inevitable. | 02/09/08 06:00:00 By - Robert S. Boyd

Bush budget seeks more for climate change

President Bush proposed large increases for nuclear energy and for capturing and storing carbon from coal-burning power plants in his 2009 budget requests for funding to combat climate change. At the same time, though, his budget would cut money for solar energy research and would provide only a small increase for other renewable-energy programs. | 02/04/08 18:43:00 By - Renee Schoof

Experts trying to preserve world's digital knowledge

If you've lost family photos, can't listen to your beloved old cassette tapes or no longer can read important files stored on your previous computer, you're not alone. | 01/29/08 14:41:00 By - Robert S. Boyd

Northwest looks to develop energy from volcanoes

Deep beneath the Cascades Mountains in the Northwest, where molten magma heats the Earth's crust and occasionally bursts through cracks and fractures in violent volcanic eruptions, lurks an energy source that scientists think could be tamed to help power the region. | 01/22/08 06:00:00 By - Les Blumenthal

Tropical disease headed toward U.S., health officials warn

U.S. health officials are warning that a sometimes-deadly tropical disease that's spread by mosquitoes is re-emerging worldwide and could gain a foothold in the U.S. one day. Dengue, a flu-like illness, infects 50 million to 100 million people a year. | 01/14/08 06:00:00 By - Tony Pugh

Scientists explore using viruses to combat germs

Silently, invisibly, vast miniature armies are waging a fight to the death on land and sea. The defenders are bacteria, the one-celled microbes that infest every cranny on Earth, from the seafloor to garden soil to the human gut. The aggressors are a class of viruses known as bacteriophages — literally ``bacteria-eaters'' — that happily slaughter their far bigger foes. | 01/10/08 00:09:00 By - Robert S. Boyd

Oceans' growing acidity alarms scientists

Seven hundred miles west of Seattle in the Pacific at Ocean Station Papa, a first-of-its-kind buoy is anchored to monitor a looming environmental catastrophe. As the oceans absorb more and more carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, they're gradually becoming more acidic. | 12/16/07 06:00:00 By - Les Blumenthal

Alien planets can have sunsets, too

For the first time, astronomers have spotted what looks like a sunset on a planet outside our solar system, they announced this week. Using the Hubble Space Telescope, they detected traces of a red haze surrounding a Jupiter-like ball of hot gas circling a star in the northern sky 63 light-years — 370 trillion miles — from Earth. | 12/13/07 15:07:00 By - Robert S. Boyd

Greenland ice melts at record rate, scientists find

Rising temperatures caused ice to melt in Greenland at a record rate this year, climate scientists reported Monday. | 12/10/07 16:23:00 By - Robert S. Boyd

Scientists explore DNA variations to root out diseases

Your DNA has the hiccups. It stutters, gags, repeats itself and skips stuff like a nervous teenager giving a speech in school. Scientists are studying the effects of these irregularities in the human genetic code. Some variations cause disease. Others can help identify criminals, trace ancestors and shed light on the course of evolution. | 11/15/07 06:00:00 By - Robert S. Boyd

Scientists track early evolution of sight

Scientists have traced the origin of eyes back to a transparent blob of living jelly floating in the sea about 600 million years ago. | 11/06/07 07:00:00 By - Robert S. Boyd

U.S. explores ocean winds, waves, currents as new energy sources

A year after a bitter congressional fight over offshore drilling for oil and gas, the Bush administration wants to tap the ocean's winds, waves and currents for alternative energy. | 11/05/07 18:39:00 By - Barbara Barrett

New seagoing robots read oceans' vital signs

Scientists have just finished deploying a worldwide network of 3,000 automated floating sensors that will provide unprecedented information about the oceans' powerful impact on the world's climate. | 11/02/07 14:17:00 By - Robert S. Boyd

China launches lunar probe, joins Asian race to moon

China's first lunar probe streaked into an overcast sky Wednesday, joining a race to the moon that's swept up three Asian powers and posed a serious challenge to NASA five decades after the first space race began. | 10/24/07 13:51:00 By - Tim Johnson

Scientists: Owl recovery plan 'deeply flawed'

A group of independent scientists has concluded that a draft recovery plan for the northern spotted owl was "deeply flawed," fueling allegations that the proposal was manipulated by political appointees in Washington who were determined to boost logging in Northwest forests. | 09/30/07 07:00:07 By - Les Blumenthal

'Dark energy' still baffles astronomers

Ten years ago, an unexpected astronomical discovery stunned the scientific world: Two rival teams of astrophysicists separately claimed that most of the universe is made of an invisible substance they called "dark energy." Only a tiny fraction, they said, consists of the ordinary atoms that make up stars, chairs and people. | 09/26/07 19:33:31 By - Robert S. Boyd

Competition heats up for world's fastest supercomputer

In the next few weeks, engineers at Argonne National Laboratory, 25 miles outside Chicago, will install the first pieces of a machine that will have more than triple the speed of the world's fastest computer. | 09/25/07 06:00:00 By - Robert S. Boyd

Human Genome Project is beginning to bear fruit

A bumper crop of fresh discoveries connects specific bits of DNA to numerous diseases, including cancer, diabetes, blindness and AIDS. New findings are being published almost weekly in scientific journals. Scientists say they're important steps toward future treatments or cures. | 09/02/07 13:01:43 By - Robert S. Boyd

Scientists' galaxy quest yielding hundreds of new planets

It's boom time for planet hunters. Astronomers are bagging new worlds at a average rate of more than two a month. | 07/24/07 06:00:49 By - Robert S. Boyd

Audubon warns of decline in some bird populations

Some of the nation’s most common birds are disappearing at alarming rates. While loss of such habitat as fringe forests, grasslands and wetlands is believed to be the culprit, there are mounting concerns that global warming could be starting to take a toll. | 06/25/07 06:00:27 By - Les Blumenthal

Scientists report rise in levels of carbon dioxide

Instead of slowing down, worldwide carbon-dioxide levels have taken a sudden and alarming jump since the year 2000, an international team of scientists reported Monday. CO2 emissions from fossil fuels mostly coal, oil and gas are increasing at three times the rate experienced in the 1990s, they said. The rapid acceleration could make the battle against global warming even more difficult than it already appears. | 05/21/07 03:00:00 By - Robert S. Boyd

Hydrogen cars may be a long time coming

President Bushs goal of putting the next generation of Americans into cars fueled by hydrogen is slipping away. Technology, economics and human behavior are proving to be formidable obstacles to the presidents dream of using hydrogen the most abundant element in the universe to reduce Americas dependence on gasoline. The administrations plan is to combine hydrogen with oxygen in a fuel cell, a boxy device that takes in those elements and puts out water, heat and electricity. The electricity can power an electric motor or recharge a battery to drive a car. | 05/15/07 03:00:00 By - Robert S. Boyd

Chefs urge Congress to protect wild salmon

You can grill it, broil it, bake it, poach it, barbecue it, smoke it, turn it into croquettes or serve it raw as sushi, with lemon and butter, in a cranberry reduction sauce, with fennel or dill or garlic mashed potatoes. But nearly 200 chefs from around the country warned Tuesday that unless lawmakers act quickly, wild salmon could disappear from their restaurants faster than it takes to boil an egg or ruin a souffle. | 05/08/07 03:00:00 By - Les Blumenthal

Small planet may be able to support life, astronomers say

In a significant advance in the search for extraterrestrial life, European astronomers have discovered what they say may be the first habitable planet orbiting a nearby star. They described their find as an Earthlike rocky planet thats small enough and warm enough that it might have liquid water, a necessary condition for life, on its surface. With an estimated radius only 50 percent larger than Earths, the new planet would be the smallest of about 200 such bodies that have been detected so far outside the solar system. It weighs about five times as much as Earth, apparently the lowest mass of any other known planet. | 04/24/07 03:00:00 By - Robert S. Boyd

U.S. losing its lead in a vital branch of physics

The United States is losing its lead in high-energy physics, a field of science its dominated since the 1930s. Scientists say Europe is now in the vanguard of a worldwide search to discover the deepest secrets that Mother Nature hides in bits and pieces of atoms. At least 15 years, probably more, will pass before American physicists lead the pack again. | 04/17/07 03:00:00 By - Robert S. Boyd

Campuses use technology to alert people to emergencies

Some universities and cities have set up elaborate voice-mail and e-mail systems to alert people in case of emergencies, such as the massacre at Virginia Tech. The systems take advantage of the spread of cell phones, handheld digital devices and the Internet to swiftly communicate threats, from tornadoes to armed intruders. | 04/17/07 03:00:00 By - Robert S. Boyd

Global warming expected to have dramatic impact on U.S., Canada

Climate scientists released a grim portrait Monday of the likely effects of global warming on the United States and Canada. More droughts, floods, heat waves, infectious diseases and extinctions are possible for two of the most prosperous countries on the planet, according to the North American section of the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Poor countries in tropical Africa and Asia will be hit even harder by the effects of higher temperatures and rising sea levels. | 04/16/07 03:00:00 By - Robert S. Boyd

Deleting embarrassing e-mails isn't easy, experts say

If Karl Rove or other White House staffers tried to delete sensitive e-mails from their computers, experts said, investigators Deleting a document or e-mail doesnt remove the file from a computers hard drive or a backup server. The only thing thats erased is the address known as a pointer indicating where the file is stored. Its like removing an index card in a library, said Robert Guinaugh, a senior partner at CyberControls LLC, a data forensic-support company in Barrington, Ill. You take the card out, but the book is still on the shelf. | 04/13/07 03:00:00 By - Robert S. Boyd

Industry tries new ways to fight global warming

Sometime this summer, a huge coal-fired power plant near the shore of Lake Michigan will try a new process to capture carbon dioxide (CO2), a powerful greenhouse gas that gushes from its smokestack. The experiment at the We Energies plant in Pleasant Prairie, Wis., is among a batch of technologies aimed at slowing the rising tide of CO2 in the atmosphere, which scientists have concluded is a leading cause of global warming. Half the electricity generated in the United States comes from burning coal, Americas most plentiful and cheapest energy source. Unfortunately, burning coal is also a major producer of carbon dioxide, releasing an estimated 1.5 billion tons of the heat-trapping gas every year. Experts think that much of the buildup can be avoided if CO2 is captured at power plants and stored underground or under the ocean for hundreds, even thousands, of years. This process, known as Carbon Capture and Sequestration, is one of the hottest fronts in the battle against global warming. | 04/01/07 06:00:00 By - Robert S. Boyd

NASA budget squeeze delays the successor to the space shuttle

The federal budget squeeze has forced NASA to abandon hope of launching a successor to its three aging space shuttles by 2014, the target that President Bush set in his Vision for Space Exploration plan three years ago. Instead, the United States will have to rely on Russia or commercial aerospace companies to ferry cargo and crews to the International Space Station for five years after the last shuttle is retired in 2010. | 03/15/07 03:00:00 By - Robert S. Boyd

Today's catastrophes are tragic, but Earth has experienced far worse

Tornadoes, hurricanes, blizzards, floods, wildfires, earthquakes, tsunamis: Mother Nature seems to have it in for our world these days. In a way, though, we live in a relatively peaceful time. While its no comfort to those hurting or grieving now, Earth saw far greater catastrophes in its long and troubled past. The planet has been frozen, roasted, smothered, battered, shaken, half-drowned. Entire species have been obliterated; so far, fortunately, that doesnt include Homo sapiens, but weve had a close call. And these are all natural calamities, not those caused by humans, such as war, terrorism or the Holocaust. | 03/14/07 03:00:00 By - Robert S. Boyd

Experts think a `gravity tug' might ward off asteroid

NASA and the Air Force are studying ways to ward off a medium-sized asteroid that will streak within 18,000 miles of Earth in 2029 and has an extremely slight chance of crashing into our planet in 2036. Ideas discussed at a Planetary Defense Conference here this week include a gravity tug or space tractor that would hover near the space rock and tow it into a safe orbit. Other possibilities include a head-on collision with an unmanned spaceship or a nuclear explosion. | 03/05/07 03:00:00 By - Robert S. Boyd