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By Hannah Hoag of Nature magazine An unusual 'help wanted' advertisement arrived in the inboxes of Canadian scientists last week. [More]

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This year is slated to be one of the most charred on record, as wildfires have burned more than 7.5 million U.S. acres to date.

In the wake of massive flooding from Hurricane Irene, consumers may be hit with an unsuspected trick. Several flood-damaged automobiles will be sold without accurate damage reports. This is not a new practice, as flood-damaged vehicles are sold every year in various parts of the U.S., according to New Jersey Business

By Brian Switek of Nature magazine A painstaking search through thousands of chunks of amber has unearthed 11 prehistoric feathers.

Construction of Vogtle units 3 and 4 (on right) in August 2011. [More]

NASA’s plans for human spaceflight, the subject of much hand-wringing since the curtains closed on the agency’s space shuttle program in July, took a big step this week when the agency announced plans for a powerful new rocket to take astronauts into deep space. [More]

Climate deniers are accused of practicing pseudoscience, as are intelligent design creationists, astrologers, UFOlogists, parapsychologists, practitioners of alternative medicine, and often anyone who strays far from the scientific mainstream. The boundary problem between science and pseudoscience, in fact, is notoriously fraught with definitional disagreements because the categories are too broad and fuzzy on the edges, and the term “pseudoscience” is subject to adjectival abuse against any claim one happens to dislike for any reason. In his 2010 book Nonsense on Stilts (University of Chicago Press), philosopher of science Massimo Pigliucci concedes that there is “no litmus test,” because “the boundaries separating science, nonscience, and pseudoscience are much fuzzier and more permeable than Popper (or, for that matter, most scientists) would have us believe.” It was Karl Popper who first identified what he called “the demarcation problem” of finding a criterion to distinguish between empirical science, such as the successful 1919 test of Einstein’s general theory of relativity, and pseudoscience, such as Freud’s theories, whose adherents sought only confirming evidence while ignoring disconfirming cases.

By Emmett Berg SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Rising seas forecast from climate change will likely wash away some of California's most iconic beaches by century's end, along with hundreds of millions of dollars in real estate, roads and tax revenues, a new study found on Wednesday. [More]

By now, you’re probably aware of the hype over a vaccine associated with these three letters: HPV. [More]

Next month, researchers in the U.K. will start to pump water nearly a kilometer up into the atmosphere, by way of a suspended hose.

By Emily Stephenson WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. power plants can comply with new environmental rules without disrupting the supply of electricity if providers and local authorities have time to plan for the changes, energy regulators told congressional Republicans seeking to unwind the rules.

The lovely, familiar swirl of the Milky Way, with its symmetric spiral arms winding outward from a central bulge, may be scars from a smaller galaxy punching above its weight.

By Roberta Kwok of Nature magazine Researchers have equipped yeast cells with semi-synthetic chromosomes. [More]

The risk of death from carbon dioxide leaking from an underground storage site is far less than the risk of getting struck by lightning or killed in a car accident, according to a new study. The research, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, focuses on naturally occurring CO2 seeping through the ground in Italy, but the study authors say their analysis holds broad implications for industrially captured carbon dioxide that would be injected thousands of feet underneath the earth