In an encouraging development for consumers worried about antibiotics in their milk, a new Food and Drug Administration study showed little evidence of drug contamination after surveying almost 2,000 dairy farms. In response to concerns, the agency in 2012 took samples of raw milk from the farms and tested them for 31 drugs, almost all of them antibiotics. Results released by the agency...

Ignore anyone who tells you snow is free. Every work day lost during New England's historic winter has meant millions of dollars taken out of the regional economy. IHS Global Insight, an economic analysis firm, estimates Massachusetts alone suffered roughly $1 billion in lost wages and profits, as storm after storm pummeled the region, delivering over eight feet of snow in roughly a month....

A geologist who took part in the excavation of the ancient burial mound in Amphipolis in northern Greece says the ancient tomb found together with a series of vaulted rooms wasn't built at the same time, but somewhat later than the rooms themselves. Geologist Evangelos Kambouroglou also said Saturday that the mound inside which the rooms and the tomb were found is not man-made, as...

A sleek glass and metal body, no removable battery or waterproof capabilities, fixed storage space, and a new mobile payment service. No, not the iPhone. It's the newest Samsung smartphone. The South Korean electronics giant introduced its redesigned smartphones, the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge, at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, over the weekend with an emphasis on design...

No, it's not always a room filled with wires and glowing blue lights. It's probably not even the size of your furnace. The personal email server used by Hillary Rodham Clinton during her time as secretary of state was probably about the size of your office desktop computer and could have been tucked quietly in a corner somewhere. She's come a long way since 1997, when Clinton's staff bought the...

An exploding star goes supernova only once -- but if you're really, really lucky, you might just get to see it happen four times. An international team has discovered four separate images of the same distant supernova arranged in the shape of a cross -- and this unusual trick of the light could help scientists test the structure of the cosmos. The formation of the four supernova images, in the...

Does Homer Simpson deserve a share of the 2013 Nobel Prize in physics? Did the European Organization for Nuclear Research and its scientific partners waste $10 billion constructing the Large Hadron Collider? In short, could particle physicists have saved themselves a lot of trouble and simply watched a 1998 episode of "The Simpsons" to figure out the mass of the Higgs boson? In the episode,...

Virtual reality enthusiasts can expect a full consumer version of the Samsung/Oculus Gear VR later this year, according to Oculus Chief Technology Officer John Carmack. Speaking at the Game Developers Conference that ran March 2-6 in San Francisco, Carmack announced that a market-ready edition of the mobile virtual reality headset would roll out with Samsung's next major product release....

No one can argue that many Apple devices have changed the way people live their lives. The company's iTunes, iPhone and iPad have shaken up music, phone and computer markets worldwide. Is the Apple Watch going to be able to do the same? The stakes are big for Apple CEO Tim Cook: the watch is the first brand-new Apple product to be launched without legendary co-founder Steve Jobs. But the market...

Google is helping California drivers shop for car insurance as part of a new service that could foreshadow the Internet company's latest attempt to shake up a long-established industry. The feature unveiled Thursday compares vehicle insurance quotes from up to 14 carriers that are participating in the comparisons. The policies can then be bought online or through an agent. Google will receive a...

At the Game Developers Conference [which ran March 2-6 in San Francisco], it was easy to imagine what virtual reality will look like when it eventually hits the marketplace. What it will feel like, however, is an entirely different matter. From wand-shaped controllers to motion-detecting sensors, VR creators are trying out all sorts of input methods on the road to bringing the immersive...

A sex discrimination trial against one of Silicon Valley's most prestigious venture capital firms is providing a rare peek into the elite investment companies vying to fund the next Google and Amazon. Their partnership rosters are stacked with some of the nation's most accomplished graduates -- multiple-degree holders from schools such as Harvard and Stanford universities who are competing...

Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg has enlisted NBA stars LeBron James, Stephen Curry and some of the basketball league's other top players to convince more men to join the fight for women's rights at home and at work. The players will deliver the message in public service announcements aired during NBA games on major TV networks over the next few months. Sandberg (shown here) is hoping to...

Microsoft on Thursday confirmed that Windows is indeed vulnerable to the dreaded FREAK attacks that were reported earlier this week. Microsoft said it was aware of a security feature bypass vulnerability in Secure Channel, or Schannel, that affects all supported versions of Microsoft Windows. Information security firm IANS has determined the FREAK flaw, which stands for Factoring RSA-Export...

Mac users who install Oracle's Java are finding it comes with unwanted baggage: the Ask Search toolbar that many call adware, bloatware or worse. The toolbar has long appeared as a sponsor offering with Java for Windows, but it's recently started appearing in the Mac version as well. MalwareTips describes the Ask toolbar's search function as a "browser hijacker" that can reset a user's browser...

Alibaba continues to make inroads in the U.S. In a move that directly competes with Amazon.com, the Chinese Internet juggernaut announced Wednesday that Aliyun, its 5-year-old cloud-computing business, will open its first overseas cloud-computing data center in Silicon Valley. Alibaba did not specify which city would house the center, when the facility would open or how much the company would...

Microsoft is attempting to break down the walls surrounding console gaming. Phil Spencer, head of the company's video game division, detailed Microsoft's plan for game makers to create universal apps that can run on both Xbox One consoles and PCs with Windows 10, as well as smartphones, tablets and other devices running the forthcoming version of Windows. That includes HoloLens, Microsoft's...

First, we learn that the "love hormone" oxytocin makes men more trusting, nurturing and sociable. Then, we learn that a shot of the stuff makes partnered men less likely to stray or even flirt with other women. Now, we learn that a puff of oxytocin up the nose makes men eat less, and choose foods that are less fatty. If there were a scientific conspiracy to turn men into cuddly, highly evolved...

Glaciologist Erin Pettit began a research project to find out what humpback whales heard when a big piece of ice falls from a glacier and crashes into the ocean. But the sound generated by ice drifting in the water turned out to be just as interesting. Acoustic research in Alaska's Icy Bay and other glacier ice-filled waters found that the fizz created by the release of pressurized air bubbles...

Archaeologists have uncovered a stone tool at an ancient rock shelter in the high desert of eastern Oregon that could turn out to be older than any known site of human occupation in western North America. The find was announced Thursday by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which controls the land on which the site was found. University of Oregon archaeologist Patrick O'Grady, who...

A NASA spacecraft for the first time has arrived at a dwarf planet to begin a 16-month exploration. The space agency on Friday confirmed that the Dawn craft entered orbit around Ceres in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. "It went exactly the way we expected. Dawn gently, elegantly slid into Ceres' gravitational embrace," said mission chief engineer Marc Rayman at NASA's Jet Propulsion...

Apple topped Samsung in smartphone sales for the first time since 2012, selling 74.8 million units in the fourth quarter of last year, surpassing Samsung as the No. 1 smartphone maker globally. Apple's success was driven by huge demand for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus in the U.S. and in China, according to research firm Gartner. "Samsung's performance in the smartphone market deteriorated further...

Over a giddy four-year period, from 1997 through 2000, investors in the United States who purchased stocks in Internet-related businesses saw rapid and profound growth in the value of their portfolios. There was tremendous enthusiasm for companies poised to take advantage of the new communication and marketing network, and dot-com fever swept the land. Things came to a crashing halt almost...

The next nightstand or coffee table you buy from Ikea could also charge your cell phone and tablet. The Swedish furniture retailer announced Monday that it will be launching a new line of products capable of charging all of your devices wirelessly using the Qi wireless power standard, with the first pieces expected to be made available in Europe and North America in April, to be followed by a...

Calling its design "entirely redefined," Samsung Electronics has unveiled its latest smartphones: the Galaxy S6 and the Galaxy S6 Edge. Among the phones' most notable features are bodies made of Corning's Gorilla Glass, wireless charging technology and batteries that you can't remove. Samsung unveiled the new devices in Barcelona on Sunday, one day ahead of the kickoff to the Mobile World...

With an eye to expanding its reach into mobile services, HP has announced it will acquire Aruba Networks, which provides networking equipment, software and services for IT departments and end-users. The $3 billion transaction is expected to close later this year. HP said combining its wired switching portfolio with Aruba's mobility software and WLAN hardware will create a "potent combination"...

Spacewalking astronauts successfully completed a three-day cable job outside the International Space Station on Sunday, routing several-hundred feet of power and data lines for new crew capsules commissioned by NASA. It was the third spacewalk in just over a week for Americans Terry Virts and Butch Wilmore, and the quickest succession of spacewalks since NASA's former shuttle days. The...

With smart gadgets already flooding the market and thousands more expected in coming years, the Internet of Things is emerging amid a regulatory wilderness. The breakneck pace of this technology has far outpaced the legal system's ability to keep up with it, many experts contend. Because of legal loopholes, consumers often lack any right to control how long their data is kept, who it is shared...

Australia, Indonesia and Malaysia will lead a trial of an enhanced method of tracking aircraft over remote oceans to allow planes to be more easily found should they vanish like Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, Australia's transport minister said Sunday. The announcement comes one week ahead of the anniversary of the disappearance of Flight 370, which vanished last year during a flight from Kuala...