Wire Health & Science

America has a new generation of veterans. More than 1.6 million troops are back from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and they are unlike any other group of veterans the nation has ever seen.

Space station astronauts floated into the Dragon on Saturday, a day after its heralded arrival as the world's first commercial supply ship.

Richard Leakey predicts skepticism over evolution will soon be history.

The World Health Organization says its members are poised to agree to a target of cutting a quarter of premature deaths from chronic diseases by 2025.

Australia and South Africa will share hosting of a giant radio telescope made up of thousands of separate dishes and intended to help scientists figure out the make-up of the universe, the international consortium overseeing the project announced Friday.

The private company SpaceX made history Friday with the docking of its Dragon capsule to the International Space Station, the most impressive feat yet in turning routine spaceflight over to the commercial sector.

Another round of U.N. climate talks closed without resolving how to share the burden of curbing man-made global warming, mainly because countries don't agree on who is rich and who is poor.

Germany's medical association has adopted a declaration apologizing for sadistic experiments and other actions of doctors under the Nazis.

The maker of Tide Pods will create a new double-latch lid to deter children from accessing and eating the brightly colored detergent packets, a company spokesman said Friday.

The advances made in U.N. climate talks last year appeared at risk Thursday as a rift between rich and poor countries reopened in negotiations aimed at crafting a global pact to stop the planet from overheating.

The maker of Tide Pods will create a new double-latch lid to deter children from accessing and eating the brightly colored detergent packets, a company spokesman said Friday.

The same anesthetic that caused the overdose death of pop star Michael Jackson is now the drug of choice for executions in Missouri, causing a stir among critics who question how the state can guarantee a drug untested for lethal injection won't cause pain and suffering for the condemned.

States have spent only about 3 percent of the billions they've received in tobacco taxes and legal settlements over the last decade to fund tobacco prevention programs, making it harder to reduce the death and disease caused by tobacco use, according to a report released Thursday by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

An experimental solar-powered airplane took off from Switzerland on its first transcontinental flight Thursday, aiming to reach North Africa next week.

Global warming is rescuing the once-rare brown Argus butterfly, scientists say.

U.N. climate talks ran into gridlock Thursday as a widening rift between rich and poor countries risked undoing some advances made last year in the decades-long effort to control carbon emissions that scientists say are overheating the planet.

A California judge has refused to release a tuberculosis patient who was jailed and charged after allegedly refusing to take medication to keep his disease from becoming contagious.

A privately bankrolled spacecraft is getting ever closer to the International Space Station for a historic docking Friday.

Dr. Margaret Chan, who has steered the World Health Organization through crises over bird flu and the respiratory SARS bug, has won a second five-year term as its director-general.

A person with an active case of tuberculosis who visited two Northern California neonatal intensive care units had a valid reason to be there and had not been diagnosed at the time, officials said Wednesday.

European researchers are planning to use new techniques to analyze DNA that could help crack the mystery of whether Bigfoot exists.

A privately built space capsule that's zipping its way to the International Space Station has also launched something else: A new for-profit space race.

A year after an earthquake and tsunami triggered the Fukushima disaster, a United Nations agency preparing a report on the health effects says none of the six former reactor workers who have died since the catastrophe perished due to the effects of radiation.

Max Hirsh says he sensed something wasn't quite right when the psychiatrist focused on his failures with sports and teenage girls, as well as his deficient relationships with older men, particularly his father.

A Channel Islands auction house says it's selling a vial that allegedly contains blood residue from Ronald Reagan - a move denounced Tuesday by the late U.S. president's family and his foundation.

The first private spaceship is headed to the International Space Station. Some questions and answers about the cargo mission by Space Exploration Technologies, known as SpaceX:

A powerful health advisory agency says Britain should extend free fertility treatments to women up to age 42 as well as same-sex couples, recommendations likely to be followed by many of the U.K.'s medical centers.

James Doohan, Scotty from "Star Trek," spent his acting career whizzing through the cosmos. Gordon Cooper was one of America's famous Mercury seven astronauts. And Bob Shrake spent his work life anonymously helping send NASA's high-tech spacecraft to other planets.

A decades-old jet fuel spill threatening Albuquerque's water supply could be as large as 24 million gallons, or twice the size of the oil spill from the Exxon Valdez, New Mexico environment officials acknowledged Tuesday.

Opening a new, entrepreneurial era in spaceflight, a ship built by a billionaire businessman sped toward the International Space Station with a load of groceries and other supplies Tuesday after a spectacular middle-of-the-night blastoff.

The mass die-off of nearly 900 dolphins and porpoises along Peru's coast remains unsolved, Peru's government marine research agency says.

Pups in her womb, a large eye visible behind the rib cage, one baby stuck in the birth canal: all fossilized evidence that this ancient marine beast, the Ichthyosaur, died in childbirth.

A simple, cheaper exam of just the lower part of the bowel can cut the risk of developing colon cancer or dying of the disease, a large federal study finds.

A California lettuce grower has expanded a recall of some bagged salads after routine sampling detected listeria contamination. No illnesses have been reported.

Half the nation's overweight teens have unhealthy blood pressure, cholesterol or blood sugar levels that put them at risk for future heart attacks and other cardiac problems, new federal research says.

A first-of-its-kind commercial supply ship rocketed toward the International Space Station following a successful liftoff early Tuesday, opening a new era of dollar-driven spaceflight.

Healthy men shouldn't get routine prostate cancer screenings, says updated advice from a government panel that found the PSA blood tests do more harm than good.

A dinosaur dispute is brewing between the Mongolian government and an American auction house, which sold a fossil of a fearsome T. Rex relative despite a court order not to.

"Pink slime" was almost "pink paste" or "pink goo."

More than a third of the malaria-fighting drugs tested over the past decade in Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa were either fake or bad quality, seriously undermining efforts to fight the disease, a study said Tuesday.

The Food and Drug Administration said Monday that a blood thinner from Johnson & Johnson appears to reduce life-threatening blood clots in high-risk patients, although it also increases the risk of internal bleeding.

Sea Launch AG says its oceangoing rocket pad and command ship have departed their Long Beach, Calif., home port for the equator to launch a communications satellite for Intelsat.

From a park near Albuquerque, to the top of Japan's Mount Fuji, to the California coast the effect was dramatic: The moon nearly blotting out the sun creating a blazing "ring of fire" eclipse.

New lung cancer screening guidelines from three medical groups recommend annual scans but only for an older group of current or former heavy smokers.

Millions of early risers in Asia turned their attention skyward to view a rare "ring of fire" eclipse as it crossed their skies Monday morning.

A new private supply ship for the International Space Station remained stuck on the ground Saturday after rocket engine trouble led to a last-second abort of the historic flight.

Richard Knabb, the tropical weather expert at The Weather Channel, will be the next chief of the U.S. government's hurricane forecasting hub in Florida, federal officials said Friday.

In most developed countries, children with autism are usually sent to school where they get special education classes. But in France, they are more often sent to a psychiatrist where they get talk therapy meant for people with psychological or emotional problems.

A new private supply ship for the International Space Station remained stuck on the ground Saturday after rocket engine trouble led to a last-second abort of the historic flight.