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(Adds governor's letter to company) By Emilie Ritter [More]

(Chirping sound.) That may not sound like much – but it’s the loudest animal in the world. For its size, that is. The insect called the water boatman is two millimeters long.

Claims about the positive effects of debt warrant a closer look

Here's a great video primer on how auroras form, from Per Byhring and the physics department at the University of Oslo. With wonderful graphics, the nearly five-minute-long video details the origin of the solar storms that trigger the Northern and Southern lights

By Ewen Callaway of Nature magazine A controversial new study is questioning the oft-repeated connection between the consumption of too much salt and the development of cardiovascular disease.

Deep in the Silurian seas, some 420 million years ago, a strange structure had just emerged in the bodies of many new vertebrates. Some fish began developing a defined upper and lower jaw that allowed them to devour large and hard-shelled organisms

By Katharine Sanderson of Nature magazine The most direct evidence yet for ancient photosynthesis has been uncovered in a fossil of a matted carpet of microbes that lived on a beach 3.3 billion years ago. Frances Westall at the Centre for Molecular Biophysics, a laboratory of the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), in Orleans and her colleagues looked at the well-preserved Josefsdal Chert microbial mat--a thin sheet formed by layer upon layer of tiny organisms--from the Barberton Greenstone Belt in South Africa. These layers of ancient microorganisms grew at a time when Earth's atmosphere did not contain oxygen

UNITED NATIONS -- The U.N. Security Council will debate climate change for the second time in four years, its current chair announced yesterday. The July 20 discussion, led by the German government, will be a repeat of a 2007 attempt by the United Kingdom to put climate change on the council's agenda

BOSTON – The world has seen seven global cholera outbreaks since 1817, and the current one seems to have come to stay. Rising temperatures and a stubbornly persistent, toxic bacteria strain appear to have given the disease the upper hand. Public health officials are working on vaccines, struggling to improve sanitation in impoverished nations and grasping for ways to predict the outbreaks

One of astronomy's greatest conceptual revolutions began 100 years ago, when scientists demonstrated that stars follow specific patterns of brightness and color. [More]

The space shuttle era draws to a close with the final launch of shuttle Atlantis, planned for July 8 [More]

As governments and universities around the world take a more active interest in Wikipedia's accuracy and reach, Wales talks about his site's new status. "I'm not sure if we are becoming a default 'official' source of information" he tells us, "but we are certainly the first port of call for hundreds of millions of people already." Wikipedia has evolved from the hobby of amateur enthusiasts to a fully-financed priority of academics and government agencies looking to improve what is quickly becoming the world’s first source of information. Just last month, the United States National Archives announced a "Wikipedian In Residence," a full-time liaison to the Wikipedia community.

* Govt considers conducting new safety tests on atomicplants [More]

Modern astronomy paints a vivid picture of the universe having been born in a cataclysmic bang and filled with exotic stars ranging from gargantuan red supergiants that span the size of a modest solar system to hyperdense white dwarf stars and black holes that are smaller than Earth. These discoveries are all the more remarkable because astronomers infer them from the faintest glimmers of light, sometimes just a handful of photons

This is the third of a three-part series that looks back at the 30-year history of the U.S. space shuttle program