Science

For decades, DNA has been used to identify victims of crime, even victims of war crimes. But there's no international standard for using DNA analysis for identifying bodies after a disaster. So some scholars are calling for an international group with the same reach as weapons inspectors.

For the past couple of years, NASA has been using remotely piloted aircraft to study hurricanes. And they are turning up new information about things like how dust from Africa can determine whether weather systems become hurricanes in the Atlantic.

Planthoppers are champion jumpers — launching themselves upward, hundreds of times their own height, in just a couple of milliseconds. They achieve this feat with the help of cog-like teeth on their legs — the first mechanical gear system ever found in nature.

The chemistry of dozens of streams and rivers across the U.S. is changing. Waters are becoming more alkaline — the opposite of acidic. And the reason is counterintuitive — researchers believe that acid rain is to blame.

"This is the real deal. Voyager 1 has finally reached interstellar space; the first time a spacecraft has been in the space between the stars," says one project scientist. Launched in 1977, the probe has been surveying the solar system.

Cut a tumor from a child's brain and you may save a life. But surgery can hurt the child if healthy brain cells are removed. A Seattle doctor is working on a substance that might help. It binds tightly to cancer cells and makes them glow, so they're easier to distinguish from healthy tissue.

People who lack special needs but simply want to keep their pets with them all the time can easily find fake "service animal" certifications on the Web. But those phony credentials can create problems for people with disabilities who legitimately need trained service dogs.

Range hoods are designed to capture the pollutants from your stove, but many models are not effective and it's hard for consumers to know how good a hood is. But researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab are developing a new standardized test that manufacturers can use to rate their range hoods.

The aging brain may be more flexible than we thought, a study of older adults now suggests. After playing a racing car video game an hour a day, thrice weekly for a month, adults age 60 and over were better at multitasking than untrained 20-year-olds.

Scientists aren't sure exactly why holes form in the hot and glowing outermost layer of gas surrounding the sun. But one theory is that the dark blotches we see on images of the sun could be the remnants of the (relatively) cool splotches called sunspots.