Breaking Science News

Astronauts struck floating martial arts poses, twirled gyroscopes and manipulated wobbling globes of water during a lecture Thursday from China's orbiting space station that's part of efforts to popularize the space program among young people.

The protected area network in Tanzania is playing a vital role in the survival of savannah bird species as they move west in response to climate and environmental changes, according to new research led by the University of York.

Electronic components built from single molecules using chemical synthesis could pave the way for smaller, faster and more green and sustainable electronic devices. Now for the first time, a transistor made from just one molecular monolayer has been made to work where it really counts. On a computer chip.

State policymakers' attention to teacher quality—an issue education research shows is essential to improving schooling outcomes for racial minority students—is highly responsive to low graduation rates among white students, but not to low graduation rates among black students, according to a Baylor University study.

Best Buy is recalling 5,100 replacement batteries for the MacBook Pro due to a fire risk.

Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom Thursday condemned a Dutch company's decision to delete million of files belonging to users of his defunct website, calling it "the largest data massacre in the history of the Internet".

An experiment with 30 metronomes reveals chimera states which combine aspects of synchrony and of disorder. Researchers had been looking for such states for ten years.

A wooden beam that has long been the focus of the search for a 17th century shipwreck in northern Lake Michigan was not attached to a buried vessel as searchers had suspected, but still may have come from the elusive Griffin or some other ship, archaeologists said Wednesday.

The US government's secret seizure of Associated Press phone records had a "chilling effect" on newsgathering by the agency and other news organizations, AP's top executive said Wednesday.

Microsoft was in talks to boost its position in the mobile phone market by buying the devices business from Nokia but failed to seal a deal, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

Stratasys, a leading maker of 3-D printers, is buying another 3-D printer manufacturer, MakerBot, for $403 million in stock.

Los Angeles' school system, the second largest in the United States, is ordering iPads for all its students, handing Apple a major success in its quest to make the tablet computer a replacement for textbooks.

Car buyers increasingly want high-tech features like voice recognition and navigation. But they're not very forgiving of the car company when those systems fail.

Microsoft handed gamers a victory Wednesday by backing off plans for new-generation Xbox One consoles to require Internet connections and put restrictions on playing second-hand game disks.

Electric sports car maker Tesla announced a recall Wednesday for some of its Model S vehicles over possible weak welds on back seats.

When a new species emerges following adaptive changes to its local environment, the process of choosing a mate can help protect the new species' genetic identity and increase the likelihood of its survival. But of the many observable traits in a potential mate, which particular traits does a female tend to prefer?

The CIA selected Amazon over IBM to build a cloud computing service for the spy agency even though IBM's proposal carried a lower price tag, according to a government report.

Crop yields worldwide are not increasing quickly enough to support estimated global needs in 2050, according to a study published June 19 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Deepak Ray and colleagues from the Institute on the Environment (IonE) at the University of Minnesota.

In the first effort to estimate the overall impact of a city's urban forest on concentrations of fine particulate pollution (particulate matter less than 2.5 microns, or PM2.5), a U.S. Forest Service and Davey Institute study found that urban trees and forests are saving an average of one life every year per city. In New York City, trees save an average of eight lives every year.

Many of West Africa's largest cities continue to lag in their provision of piped water to residents. Filling the service gap are plastic water sachets, which have become an important source of drinking water for the region. This industry provides many jobs and improves access to clean drinking water, yet unintended social and environmental consequences associated with the widespread use of sachet water continues to stir controversy.