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DURBAN, South Africa--The roughly 3,000 fossil fuel–fired power plants in North America--Canada, Mexico and the U.S.--emit 6 percent of global greenhouse gases , or nearly as much as all of the European Union. In fact, coal-fired power plants around the globe are the single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions. [More]

As more and more content goes digital, people expect TV shows and movies to stream to their TVs, computers, tablets and smart phones. We want to pay for our entertainment once and then watch it anywhere, on any device.

Cooking is one big science experiment.

NASA has lost or misplaced more than 500 of the moon rocks its Apollo astronauts collected and brought back to Earth, according to a new agency report.

In a first, federal environment officials today scientifically linked underground water pollution with hydraulic fracturing , concluding that contaminants found in central Wyoming were likely caused by the gas drilling process. [More]

Editor's note: The following is an excerpt adapted from the book, People Will Talk: The Surprising Science of Reputation , by John Whitfield (Wiley, 2011). Copyright

By Zo

It’s a rare kind of research that incites a frenzied panic before it’s even published. But it’s flu season, and influenza science has a way of causing a stir this time of year. [More]

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Performance usually improves with practice, but not if training is a rotten time. A new study shows that people’s ability to identify noises declines when the sounds are paired with putrid smells--a phenomenon that may allow our brain to detect danger more quickly

Decades after polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) once commonly used in pesticides, electrical transformers and coolants were banned by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the toxic chemicals continue to linger in our country’s soil and water

The universe has no center and no edge, no special regions tucked in among the galaxies and light. No matter where you look, it’s the same--or so physicists thought. This cosmological principle--one of the foundations of the modern understanding of the universe--has come into question recently as astronomers find evidence, subtle but growing, of a special direction in space.

SAN FRANCISCO -- The United States was battered this year by at least 12 natural disasters that each caused at least $1 billion in damages , the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said yesterday. [More]

Launch $1-billion-worth of spare parts to the International Space Station, and you can keep Earth's orbital outpost going for another decade.

The English language is not especially kind to rats. We say we "smell a rat" when something doesn't feel right, refer to stressful competition as the "rat race," and scorn traitors who "rat on" friends