Wire Health & Science

A Soyuz capsule carrying three astronauts successfully docked Friday with the International Space Station, bringing the size of the crew at the orbiting lab to six.

Several footprints believed to be from critically endangered Sumatran rhino have been found on Indonesia's Borneo island, raising hopes for the existence of an animal long thought to be extinct in that area, a conservation group said Thursday.

New York City is asking appeals judges to reinstate a ban on supersized sodas and other sugary drinks, which was struck down by a Manhattan judge the day before it was to go into effect.

A Russian spacecraft carrying a three-man crew blasted off Friday from a launch pad in the steppes of Kazakhstan, for the first time taking a shorter path to the International Space Station.

It's the land where Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier, where the space shuttle fleet rolled off the assembly line and where the first private manned rocketship climbed to space.

Brazil's health ministry says a doctor is suspected of killing seven terminally ill patients in a southern Brazilian hospital.

A company planning to channel the power of the ocean off the Oregon coast into the electrical grid inland says it faces a new regulatory hurdle and needs more money for what has been billed as the nation's first commercial wave energy operation.

In a story March 27 about a new multiple sclerosis drug, The Associated Press reported erroneously that Novartis' drug Gilenya was launched in March 2011. The drug was launched in October 2010.

Surveys show most Americans would rather die at home than in a hospital. Now, a new government study suggests more and more people getting their wish.

A huge international effort involving more than 100 institutions and genetic tests on 200,000 people has uncovered dozens of signposts in DNA that can help reveal further a person's risk for breast, ovarian or prostate cancer, scientists reported Wednesday.

Western environmental groups say they're alarmed that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is considering a plan to end federal protections for gray wolves in vast areas where the animals no longer exist.

The University of New Mexico is talking to several private companies about the possibility of collaborating on a bid to manage the $2.4 billion Sandia National Laboratories.

An unusual and widely felt 5.6-magnitude quake in Oklahoma in 2011 was probably caused when oil drilling waste was pushed deep underground, a team of university and federal scientists concluded.

The SpaceX Dragon capsule returned to Earth on Tuesday with a full science load from the International Space Station - and a bunch of well-used children's Legos.

The harsh spending cuts introduced by European governments to tackle their crippling debt problems have not only pitched the region into recession - they are also being partly blamed for outbreaks of diseases not normally seen in Europe and a spike in suicides, according to new research.

A new study finds that insurance companies will have to pay out an average of 32 percent more for medical claims on individual health policies under President Barack Obama's health care overhaul.

A man from the United Arab Emirates who was infected with a new SARS-related virus has died in Munich, German authorities said Tuesday.

The multibillion-dollar trade in illegal wildlife - clandestine trafficking that has driven iconic creatures like the tiger to near-extinction - is also threatening the survival of great apes, a new U.N. report says.

The issue:

Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca has settled a patent dispute with Watson Laboratories, Inc., removing a threat against its top-selling cholesterol-control drug, Crestor.

We know a lot about how babies learn to talk, and youngsters learn to read. Now scientists are unraveling the earliest building blocks of math - and what children know about numbers as they begin first grade seems to play a big role in how well they do everyday calculations later on.

A Massachusetts pharmacy issued a voluntary recall Monday of some of its sterile compounding products after "foreign matter" was found in drug vials during an unannounced inspection by state and federal officials.

The Mars rover Curiosity is humming again after being sidelined by back-to-back computer problems.

Health products giant Johnson & Johnson on Monday issued yet another product recall, this one for OneTouch VerioIQ blood glucose meters sold in the U.S. and other countries.

The neighborhood looks exceedingly normal: single-family homes and apartment buildings packed together, dogs barking from postage-stamp-size lawns, parents hustling down narrow sidewalks to fetch their children from school. But something with very dangerous potential lies below the surface, officials say.

Have a heart problem? If it's fixable, there's a good chance it can be done without surgery, using tiny tools and devices that are pushed through tubes into blood vessels.