A lightweight solar-powered UK plane smashes the official world record for the longest duration unmanned flight.

Man's ability to digest starchy foods may explain our success on the planet, genetic work suggests.

Teams scouring the Nevada desert find no trace of US adventurer Steve Fossett but several other crashed planes.

Reuters - The average retail price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States cost about 6.5 cents more last week, rising for the first time since early July on the back of higher crude oil prices, an industry analyst said on...

Bacteria that thrive in oxygen starved environments have been used successfully to target cancer tumours, delivering gene therapy based anti-cancer treatments. For about half of cancer sufferers our traditional treatments such as radiotherapy and chemotherapy are ineffective, so alternative techniques are being developed to target their tumours.

Cell phones should come no closer than one meter to hospital beds and equipment, according Dutch research. Scientists demonstrated that incidents of electromagnetic interference from certain cell phones occurred even at distance of three meters.

AP - Under threat from Romans ransacking Jerusalem 2,000 years ago, many of the city's Jewish residents crowded into an underground drainage channel to hide and later flee the chaos through Jerusalem's southern end...

AP - The bargaining that produced a climate change agreement is only the beginning for Pacific Rim leaders if they want to stick to their declaration to chart a new international course on global...

Recent findings from study of incentives, decision-making, and influenza epidemics may offer guidance on public health policy. Researchers have found that while family-based vaccination incentives fail to prevent severe epidemics, program that allows individuals three free annual vaccinations once they pay for the first may prove effective.

Reuters - Large swathes of Bangladesh were underwater again on Sunday after heavy rains, adding to the misery of millions hit by flooding that has killed more than 830 people since late July.

AP - An injured California gray whale was swimming out to sea Saturday after being shot with a machine gun off the western tip of Washington state, officials...

Leaders of 21 Pacific Rim nations, including the U.S. and China, agreed on Saturday to a “long-term aspirational goal” of reducing greenhouse gas emissions — but without binding targets.

AP - Tropical Storm Gabrielle began to shower North Carolina's Outer Banks with rain and batter them with high winds Sunday as the storm slogged slowly toward the...

Every president issues “midnight regulations” in the twilight of their time in office. In the waning days of the Bush administration expect a wave of them.

Long used by farmers as a guard against grazing animals and erosion, a plant called jatropha is now being hailed as a potentially ideal source of biofuel.

AP - Pacific Rim leaders agreed Saturday to curb global warming by improving energy use and expanding forests, laying out a plan they hope will influence future climate change talks but that critics dismissed as too...

Ecologists have at last got to the bottom of why bears rub trees -- and it's not because they have itchy backs. Adult male grizzly bears use so-called "rub trees" as a way to communicate with each other while looking for breeding females, and that this behaviour could help reduce battles between the bears.

To think that world domination could have begun in the cheeks. That's one interpretation of a recent discovery which indicates that humans carry extra copies of the salivary amylase gene. Humans have many more copies of this gene than any of their ape relatives, the study found, and they use the copies to flood their mouths with amylase, an enzyme that digests starch. The finding bolsters the idea...

Female animals that mate with multiple partners may be doing so to ensure the optimum health of their grandchildren, according to researchers. Despite mating being a risky business for females -- not least with the threat of injury, sexually transmitted diseases and vulnerability to predators - polyandry (females taking multiple mates) is widespread in the animal kingdom.

Is the navigation system too complex? Does it distract the driver's attention from the traffic? To test electronic assistants, their developers have to build numerous prototypes -- an expensive and time-consuming business. Tests in a virtual world make prototypes unnecessary. The engineer stares intently at the display on the virtual dashboard. His task is to test the new driver assistance system...

Heading a soccer ball correctly does not cause brain damage, at least not any damage that can be traced in the spinal fluid of soccer players, according to a small study. Researchers looked for brain damage through analysis of biochemical markers in amateur soccer players.

The Marburg virus, like its fearsome cousin Ebola, belongs to the Filoviridae family. It carries the name of the German town where it was first detected in 1967, after a mysterious epidemic had hit employees of the Behring laboratory. The workers had been contaminated as they took organ samples from green monkeys imported from Uganda. Up to the end of the 20th Century, rare cases of violent...

Researchers have developed a molecular probe that sets aglow tumor cells within living animals. Their goal is to use the probe to improve the diagnosis and treatment of cancer and other diseases.

Shaking and tapping is often the only way to get the last drop of ketchup out of the bottle. But in future, even this final drop will slide out easily onto the barbecued steak -- thanks to a special coating on the packaging. We all know the problem with ketchup or mayonnaise: No matter how we shake or tap the bottle, some of the content refuses to come out. In some cases, up to 20 percent is left...