Far from being a high precision for computing your way through life, brains are messy and function more on recognition and guesswork, and understanding that is important for the future of medicine.

Nuclear energy easily whips up public panic thanks to the coverage of incidents at Chernobyl and Fukushima. But fear and media hype have overshadowed two basic facts: nuclear power works, and we need it more than ever.

A new Danish study confirms that being surrounded by greenery improves mental health. As more of us move into rapidly growing cities and aim to explore space, we need to plan for a greener future.

If you think you know how gravity works, you're probably wrong. While we can explain what it does, figuring out how has been a multi-decade long exercise in frustration and dead ends.

Determining the tallest mountains on Earth seems like a fairly straightforward task, but it actually depends on which mountains you measure and how you measure them...

Asteroids and comet brought our planet water and the chemical precursors for life. But could they have also given rise to our continents and help set plate tectonics in motion?

You might not care that that some places on Earth are seeing 75% declines in some insects. You really should. When they're gone completely, so are the ecosystems in which we grow our food.

Far too much of what passes for forensic science in courtrooms fails to meet basic scientific standards while sending people to jail. And those who could fix this problem are refusing to help us.

The ancient inhabitants of the Channel Islands suffered an unexplained and serious decline in health some 5,000 years ago. Scientists are still not sure why.

Wealth and power don't just change how you live and your priorities. They also change how your mind works in disconcerting ways.

Environmental groups have been ringing the alarm about plastic waste filling oceans and landfills for decades, and the general public is finally paying attention. But do we have real solutions to this problem?

Before you get your DNA tested, remember that most of the baseline samples used to process your genome only come from three countries and your reports will feature a lot of asterisks.

Paradoxically, we're both closer and farther from zooming across the galaxy than you might think…

Crime and a lack of impulse control go hand in hand. Now, there may be a way to activate that impulse control with an electric current. But we'll need to be careful how we use it.

Tracking the magnetic north pole has been a difficult task over the last few hundred years, and even today, in the age of computers and lasers, it hasn't gotten any easier as scientists were surprised by its rapid migration towards Asia.