Science News coverage from Reuters.
Red pandas, the bushy-tailed and russet-furred bamboo munchers that dwell in Asian high forests, are not a single species but rather two distinct ones, according to the most comprehensive genetic study to date on these endangered mammals.
JPMorgan Chase & Co <JPM.N> largely maintained its key profit goals for the medium term on Tuesday, signaling steady but slower growth, and raised its financial commitment for clean-energy initiatives after years of pressure from environmental activists.
NASA's robotic InSight lander has for the first time established that Mars is seismically active, but do not call the shaking, rattling and rolling taking place on the Red Planet earthquakes. The proper term, fittingly, is marsquakes.
Katherine Johnson, the black woman whose mathematical genius took her from a behind-the-scenes job in a segregated NASA as portrayed in the film "Hidden Figures" to a key role in sending humans to the moon, died on Monday at the age of 101, NASA said.
Scientists have spotted in rocks from northern China what may be the oldest fossils of a green plant ever found, tiny seaweed that carpeted areas of the seafloor roughly a billion years ago and were part of a primordial revolution among life on Earth.
Newly released data from a Japanese research institute appears to back the government's case that its quarantine strategy for the Diamond Princess cruise ship was successful in stemming contagion of the coronavirus among passengers.
One scientific post suggests links between the new coronavirus and AIDS, a second says it may have passed to people via snakes, while a third claims it is a pathogen from outer space.
A Neanderthal skeleton unearthed in an Iraqi cave already famous for fossils of these extinct cousins of our species is providing fresh evidence that they buried their dead - and intriguing clues that flowers may have been used in such rituals.
A humanoid figure dressed as a maid holds a jug in its right hand and, as hidden gears click and whirr, lifts it and pours wine into a cup a bystander has placed into the palm of its left.
One of the largest turtles that ever lived prowled the lakes and rivers of northern South America from about 13 million years ago to 7 million years ago - and this car-sized freshwater beast was built for battle.
Scientists examining the genomes of West Africans have detected signs that a mysterious extinct human species interbred with our own species tens of thousands of years ago in Africa, the latest evidence of humankind's complicated genetic ancestry.
A vaguely hourglass-shaped icy object called Arrokoth residing in the far reaches of the solar system - the most distant body ever explored by a spacecraft - is giving scientists intriguing clues about the formation of the planets including Earth.
Franco-British biotech company Novacyt says it can offer a coronavirus test that is faster than rival methods by focusing on a narrow sequence of DNA coding, as it fights stiff competition to turn the outbreak into a business opportunity.
The White House on Monday asked Congress for $25.2 billion for NASA in 2021, the agency's biggest budget in decades, calling for steady increases over five years to meet President Donald Trump's goal of landing astronauts on the moon and Mars.
A new probe built by NASA and the European Space Agency set off on a blazing hot journey to the sun on Sunday to take the first close-up look at the star's polar regions, a mission expected to yield insight into how solar radiant energy affects Earth.
A new spacecraft built jointly by U.S. and European space agencies is ready for a blazing journey to the sun to capture an unprecedented view of its two poles, an angle that could help researchers understand how the star’s vast bubble of magnetic energy affects Earth.
The world's last woolly mammoths, sequestered on an Arctic Ocean island outpost, suffered from serious genetic defects caused by generations of inbreeding that may have hampered traits such as sense of smell and male fertility in the doomed population.
Fireflies are under threat globally, with familiar hazards such as habitat loss and pesticides compounded by another peril: humankind's ubiquitous nighttime artificial light that plays havoc with their balletic nocturnal courtship, scientists said.
The UK firm OneWeb launched 34 satellites from Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan early on Friday as part of its effort to provide global high-speed internet access using satellite communications by 2021.
Boeing narrowly missed a "catastrophic failure" during its December flight test of an unmanned space taxi that was cut short by an unrelated problem, a NASA safety review panel said Thursday, recommending that the agency examine Boeing's software verification process before letting it fly humans to space.
Red pandas, the bushy-tailed and russet-furred bamboo munchers that dwell in Asian high forests, are not a single species but rather two distinct ones, according to the most comprehensive genetic study to date on these endangered mammals.
JPMorgan Chase & Co <JPM.N> largely maintained its key profit goals for the medium term on Tuesday, signaling steady but slower growth, and raised its financial commitment for clean-energy initiatives after years of pressure from environmental activists.
NASA's robotic InSight lander has for the first time established that Mars is seismically active, but do not call the shaking, rattling and rolling taking place on the Red Planet earthquakes. The proper term, fittingly, is marsquakes.
Katherine Johnson, the black woman whose mathematical genius took her from a behind-the-scenes job in a segregated NASA as portrayed in the film "Hidden Figures" to a key role in sending humans to the moon, died on Monday at the age of 101, NASA said.
Scientists have spotted in rocks from northern China what may be the oldest fossils of a green plant ever found, tiny seaweed that carpeted areas of the seafloor roughly a billion years ago and were part of a primordial revolution among life on Earth.
Newly released data from a Japanese research institute appears to back the government's case that its quarantine strategy for the Diamond Princess cruise ship was successful in stemming contagion of the coronavirus among passengers.
One scientific post suggests links between the new coronavirus and AIDS, a second says it may have passed to people via snakes, while a third claims it is a pathogen from outer space.
A Neanderthal skeleton unearthed in an Iraqi cave already famous for fossils of these extinct cousins of our species is providing fresh evidence that they buried their dead - and intriguing clues that flowers may have been used in such rituals.
A humanoid figure dressed as a maid holds a jug in its right hand and, as hidden gears click and whirr, lifts it and pours wine into a cup a bystander has placed into the palm of its left.
One of the largest turtles that ever lived prowled the lakes and rivers of northern South America from about 13 million years ago to 7 million years ago - and this car-sized freshwater beast was built for battle.
Scientists examining the genomes of West Africans have detected signs that a mysterious extinct human species interbred with our own species tens of thousands of years ago in Africa, the latest evidence of humankind's complicated genetic ancestry.
A vaguely hourglass-shaped icy object called Arrokoth residing in the far reaches of the solar system - the most distant body ever explored by a spacecraft - is giving scientists intriguing clues about the formation of the planets including Earth.
Franco-British biotech company Novacyt says it can offer a coronavirus test that is faster than rival methods by focusing on a narrow sequence of DNA coding, as it fights stiff competition to turn the outbreak into a business opportunity.
The White House on Monday asked Congress for $25.2 billion for NASA in 2021, the agency's biggest budget in decades, calling for steady increases over five years to meet President Donald Trump's goal of landing astronauts on the moon and Mars.
A new probe built by NASA and the European Space Agency set off on a blazing hot journey to the sun on Sunday to take the first close-up look at the star's polar regions, a mission expected to yield insight into how solar radiant energy affects Earth.
A new spacecraft built jointly by U.S. and European space agencies is ready for a blazing journey to the sun to capture an unprecedented view of its two poles, an angle that could help researchers understand how the star’s vast bubble of magnetic energy affects Earth.
The world's last woolly mammoths, sequestered on an Arctic Ocean island outpost, suffered from serious genetic defects caused by generations of inbreeding that may have hampered traits such as sense of smell and male fertility in the doomed population.
Fireflies are under threat globally, with familiar hazards such as habitat loss and pesticides compounded by another peril: humankind's ubiquitous nighttime artificial light that plays havoc with their balletic nocturnal courtship, scientists said.
The UK firm OneWeb launched 34 satellites from Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan early on Friday as part of its effort to provide global high-speed internet access using satellite communications by 2021.
Boeing narrowly missed a "catastrophic failure" during its December flight test of an unmanned space taxi that was cut short by an unrelated problem, a NASA safety review panel said Thursday, recommending that the agency examine Boeing's software verification process before letting it fly humans to space.
