Most Recommended Science News

Forget where you left your keys this morning? Or maybe you left your umbrella in the office before a rainy evening. Don't worry, it's probably not a sign of Alzheimer's - everyone is a little forgetful now and then. But the prevalence of Alzheimer's and other types of dementia, which slowly deteriorate the brain's capacity to make new memories, retrieve older ones and perform other mental and physical tasks, is on the rise as the baby boomer generation hits retirement age. ...

QUITO (AFP) - Ecuador's Galapagos Islands, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, were under a botanical alert Tuesday after a destructive Mediterranean fruit fly (medfly) was detected on the archipelago, the Agricultural Health Service (SESA) said.

Something beneath the surface is changing Earth's protective magnetic field, which may leave satellites and other space assets vulnerable to high-energy radiation.

A huge comet-like object has been spotted inside the orbit of Neptune. The object, at least 30 miles wide, is on the return leg of a 22,500-year journey around the sun, astronomers announced today.

SYDNEY (AFP) - A desperate baby whale abandoned by its mother was still trying to suckle from yachts in an Australian harbour Wednesday as last ditch efforts were being made to save it from death.

A new map of the halo of stars that surrounds our Milky Way Galaxy has revealed a complicated structure of crisscrossing stellar streams, many of which have never been detected before.

The way people recognize faces might say a lot about what culture they come from, scientists now reveal.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Bacterial pneumonia may have killed most people during the 1918 flu pandemic, and antibiotics may be as crucial as flu drugs to fight any new pandemic, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday.

LONDON (AFP) - Australian Aboriginal children can count even without having words for numbers, according to a study by British and Australian experts released Tuesday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A newly discovered "minor planet" with an elongated orbit around the Sun may help explain the origin of comets, researchers said on Monday.

BERLIN - Germans have been treated to the rare sight of a lone and wayward humpback whale swimming in the Baltic Sea, but marine biologists said it may be doomed because the waterway lacks the conditions such mammals need to survive.

Turning conventional neuroscience on its head, new research suggests the human visual system processes sound and helps us see.

ROME (Reuters) - About 60 newly hatched sea turtles lost their way during their ritual passage to the sea and marched into an Italian restaurant instead, a conservation worker said on Monday.

The word "planet" has meant many different things over the millennia and even still its definition is evolving.

STOCKHOLM (AFP) - Wastewater is widely used to irrigate urban agricultural land in developing countries, a practice that has both advantages and disadvantages, a 53-city study presented at a water conference in Stockholm showed Monday.

TOKYO (AFP) - Animal rights activists vowed no let-up in their campaign to stop Japan's whaling as reports Tuesday said Tokyo was seeking further arrests overseas of people who obstructed a hunt.

LONDON (Reuters) - Magpies can recognize themselves in a mirror, highlighting the mental skills of some birds and confounding the notion that self-awareness is the exclusive preserve of humans and a few higher mammals.

WASHINGTON - Answer this without counting: Are there more X's here XXXXXX, or here XXXXX? That's a problem facing people whose languages don't include words for more than one or two. Yet researchers say children who speak those languages are still able to compare quantities.

Whether an ant becomes a dominant queen or a lowly worker is determined by both nature and nurture, it turns out.

MIAMI (AFP) - Tropical Storm Fay was heading eastward toward Florida's Atlantic coast early Wednesday, with forecasters saying it will more than likely make a return trip to the waterlogged state after it finally moves offshore.