Four tiny spacecraft soared over the California desert June 15 in a high-altitude demonstration flight that tested the sensor and equipment designs created by NASA engineers and student launch teams.

NASA has announced a Grand Challenge focused on finding all asteroid threats to human populations and knowing what to do about them. The challenge is a large-scale effort that will use multi-disciplinary collaborations and a variety of partnerships with other government agencies, international partners, industry, academia, and citizen scientists. It complements NASA's recently announced mission to redirect an asteroid and send humans to study it.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft, now exploring Saturn, will take a picture of our home planet from a distance of hundreds of millions of miles on July 19. NASA is inviting the public to help acknowledge the historic interplanetary portrait as it is being taken.

TED Talks, the most popular conference and events website in the world with over 1 billion informational videos viewed, provides academics with increased popular exposure but does nothing to boost citations of their work by peers, new research has found.

Three-dimensional printing can now be used to print lithium-ion microbatteries the size of a grain of sand. The printed microbatteries could supply electricity to tiny devices in fields from medicine to communications, including many that have lingered on lab benches for lack of a battery small enough to fit the device, yet provide enough stored energy to power them.

In the last 10 years the study of animal personality has gained ground with behavioral ecologists. Researchers have now found distinct personalities in the grey mouse lemur, the tiny, saucer-eyed primate native to the African island of Madagascar.

A new study confirms directly what scientists previously knew only indirectly -- that poisonous "rotten egg" gas hydrogen sulfide is generated by the body's blood vessel cells. Researchers made the confirmation by developing a chemical probe that lights up in reaction to rotten egg gas. The scientists observed the process in real-time through a microscope.

For less than $100, researchers have designed a computer-interfaced drawing pad that helps scientists see inside the brains of children with learning disabilities while they read and write.

Getting more sleep increases insulin sensitivity and reduces the risk of type 2 diabetes.

Scientists have found that exposure in infancy to nitrogen dioxide (NO2), a component of motor vehicle air pollution, is strongly linked with later development of childhood asthma among African Americans and Latinos.

Researchers conclude in a new report that a global push for small hydropower projects, supported by various nations and also the Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, may cause unanticipated and potentially significant losses of habitat and biodiversity.

The herbal extract of a yellow-flowered mountain plant long used for stress relief was found to increase the lifespan of fruit fly populations by an average of 24 percent, according to researchers.

Taking calcium and vitamin D before exercise may influence how bones adapt to exercise, according to a new study.

A new study explains why tumors with BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations stop responding to PARP inhibitor drugs.

Treating patients with dementia can be viewed as a difficult task for doctors, but researchers say that storytelling may be one way to improve medical students' perceptions of people affected by the condition. Participation in a creative storytelling program called TimeSlips creates a substantial improvement in student attitudes.

Whether a person believes obesity is caused by overeating or by a lack of exercise predicts his or her actual body mass, according to new research.

A study has identified the brain regions and interactions involved in impersonations and accents.

Researchers have identified a biochemical pathway in cancer stem cells that is essential for promoting head and neck cancer. The study shows that a protein called Nanog, which is normally active in embryonic stem cells, promotes the growth of cancer stem cells in head and neck cancer. The findings provide information essential for designing novel targeted drugs that might improve the treatment of head and neck cancer.

Earthquake researchers have now identified a 30 kilometers long and ten kilometers deep area along the North Anatolian fault zone just south of Istanbul that could be the starting point for a strong earthquake. The group of seismologists say that this potential earthquake source is only 15 to 20 kilometers from the historic city center of Istanbul.

Scientists have discovered a drug that cripples tuberculosis bacteria (Mycobacterium tuberculosis) in a novel way, by dissolving the protecting fatty coating of the bacteria. The drug killed the bacterium in culture without the emergence of drug resistance.