Sequencing DNA from individual cells is changing the way that researchers think of humans as a whole.
A neuroscience team has successfully translated signals in the brains of six healthy volunteers into letters to enable them to spell messages. Likened to a “typewriter for the brain,” the advance may help paralyzed people use their brains to communicate. Some of these paralyzed patients have been forced to rely on eye blinks or muscle…
A man fell to Earth from more than 24 miles high, becoming the first human to break the sound barrier under his own power — with some help from gravity. The man, Felix Baumgartner, an Austrian daredevil, made the highest and fastest jump in history after ascending by a helium balloon to an altitude of…
Thousands of years ago, farming spread across Europe and replaced the hunter-gatherer lifestyle of early inhabitants. Now a study of ancient DNA says that trend was driven by farmers moving from place to place. Scientists have long debated how farming expanded across Europe. Did farmers migrate? Did the idea of farming spread from culture to…
General Electric has brushed aside the doubts leading Republican presidential contenders have raised about climate science. The U.S. industrial and financial conglomerate said it had long seen climate change as a valid concern after an internal evaluation of the scientific case in 2005. “We found enough data there to have a company like GE respond…
For a second time in as many months, U.S. House Republicans will try to win approval of legislation to issue up to 55,000 so-called STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) visas to students who earn advanced degrees at U.S. universities. A vote may come by the end of November. The STEM visa bill has a…
A devastating hurricane has made it possible to test a rarely observed effect of evolution in the wild for the first time. Scientists transported forest lizards to a group of Caribbean islands stripped bare of vegetation by Hurricane Frances in 2004. They collected pairs of brown anole lizards from a large forested island near Great…