Health & Science Audio/Video - NPR

The world's largest atom smasher made another leap forward Monday by circulating beams of protons in opposite directions at the same time in the $10 billion machine after more than a year of repairs, organizers said.

Research shows that over the past several years, Earth's temperature has not been heating up. Climate change skeptics claim this as evidence that global warming is overexaggerated. But the man who did the research, climate and ocean scientist Mojib Latif, says "not so fast." Latif talks to host Guy Raz about the Earth's temperature plateau and what it means for global warming.

Astronaut Randolph Bresnik is a new dad again, after launching into space and taking a spacewalk, all for the first time.

Journalist Charles Sabine watched his father die from the degenerative illness Huntington's disease. After watching his brother struggle with the disease for years, Sabine decided to be tested. "Nothing that I've experienced compares with that test in terms of the terror that it inflicted on me," he says. Sabine says his young daughter does not have the Huntington's gene.

Two fingers and a tooth removed from Galileo Galilei's corpse in a Florentine basilica in the 18th century and given up for lost have been found again, a Florence museum said Friday.

Two Asian carp species that could devastate the Great Lakes ecosystem may be a few miles from Lake Michigan. To halt their migration, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built an underwater electric fence on a canal 20 miles south of the lake. But tests conducted by David Lodge at Notre Dame indicate that they have gotten close to the lake despite the barrier.

The stars of The Big Bang Theory are two fictional Caltech physicists, but the physics problems they study are real. Bill Prady, the program's co-creator and executive producer, talks about including real-world science in the script, from dark matter to magnetic monopoles.

Researchers are hoping to improve solar energy installations by coupling a solar panel to an efficient hydrolysis unit that splits water into oxygen and hydrogen. Daniel Nocera of MIT says the approach could lead to personal solar power units that could get many houses off the grid.

One of the great mysteries about North America is what killed off woolly mammoths and other exotic animals that roamed the land after the last ice age. Ideas have ranged from a comet impact and climate change to human hunters. A study published Friday in Science Magazine provides new clues about this — cleverly deduced from samples of a fungus that grew on the animal's dung.

Certain sounds played while people napped helped them remember information associated with those sounds once they woke up, say researchers at Northwestern University.

Conservationists worried about overfishing on the Pacific island of Kiribati persuaded fishermen to pick coconuts instead. The strategy backfired: Coconut oil production increased, but so did fishing. It turns out, fishermen who earned more money in coconut agriculture had more leisure time — which they spent fishing.

Ancient bristlecone pine trees found in certain parts of California and Nevada have been growing at an unprecedented rate in the last 50 years. According to a recent study, this growth has most likely been caused by warmer temperatures. Malcolm Hughes, one of the study's lead researchers and a professor of dendrochronology at the University of Arizona's Laboratory for Tree-Ring Research, offers his insight.

Two instruments from the Hubble Space Telescope, including the camera that corrected an early flaw in the telescope, are now on exhibit at the Smithsonian. The camera, about the size of a baby grand piano, is responsible for some of Hubble's most astounding photos.

X-ray scans of the arteries of Egyptian mummies show that hardening of the arteries wasn't uncommon among the upper classes in ancient times.

A panel of experts says mammograms are causing women being screened for breast cancer to have too many false alarms and unneeded biopsies. The panel is recommending that women wait until 50 to get mammograms and then only every two years. The American Cancer Society says it stands by its recommendations of regular mammograms beginning at age 40.

NPR wants to see science through your eyes. Whether it's video, photography, animation or a finger-puppet show, we're challenging you to bring sciency stuff to life. We give you a topic, and you show us what you've got. Deadline for entries is Dec. 17, 2009.

A group of executives from more than a dozen auto, transportation and energy companies launched a new coalition Monday to urge the federal government to make a major investment in electric transportation. Their goal is to bring 100 million electric cars to the road by 2030.

New guidelines from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force say women would get almost as much benefit out of having mammograms every two years after they turn 50 as having a mammogram once a year starting at age 40. Dr. Jeffrey Tice, general internist and assistant professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, says the benefits of early screening for women between 40 and 49 are small. He says early testing for these women often results in more false positives , more procedures and more anxiety.

The international commission that regulates fishing of tuna and other large migratory fish in the Atlantic voted to sharply reduce the fishing quota for bluefin tuna at their latest meeting. But some scientists say the new quota is too high to sustain the species.

The shuttle rocketed into orbit with six astronauts and a full load of spare parts for the International Space Station that should keep it humming for years to come. The launch was NASA's first launch "tweetup," attended by about 100 Twittering space enthusiasts.

Where does all that dust under your couch come from? It turns out that most household dust comes from outside — and may contain some pretty harmful stuff. How the toxins in dust get into your body depends on the size of the dust particle.

According to numerous sources on the Internet, three years from now a planet called Nibiru will collide with Earth, resulting in the extinction of the human race. This and other apocalyptic myths have NASA stepping up to soothe our fears.

Warren Buffett's decision to take full control of the nation's second largest railroad, Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp., suggests the billionaire investor sees new potential in freight transport, economists say. Trains often carry coal or containers filled with imported goods.

A rocket set on a collision course with the moon reveals it's not just a dull, dry satellite. Water lurking in its craters could someday provide everything from drinking water to rocket fuel for astronauts exploring the moon.

Moving beyond traditional superheroes, two new graphic novels recount the epic tales of scientists and the research that made them famous. Ira Flatow talks with authors Michael Keller and Apostolos Doxiadis about their graphic novels on natural selection and logic.

Researchers have figured out how to track the facial expressions of one person and map those movements onto a digital image of another person's face in real time. The result is something like a digital video puppet, which psychologists say may reveal something about human nature.

In the vacuum of space, photons — not wind — may someday fill the sails of lightweight spacecraft, propelling them without need for engines or fuel. Louis Friedman, executive director of The Planetary Society, discusses the society's plans for a sailing spaceship prototype.

A NASA rocket slammed into a lunar crater in October. A second spacecraft followed minutes later, taking inventory of kicked-up debris and sending data to Earth. Scientists have now analyzed those data, which may reveal whether the moon harbors significant quantities of water ice.

Scientists have been analyzing a mile-high plume of debris kicked up by the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite last month after it purposely was crashed into a crater near the moon's south pole.

Dr. Cohen's research showed that old age can be a time of creativity.

The space agency announced plans for freeing the rover Spirit, which has been stuck in a Martian sand trap since April. Spirit has six wheels, though one, being inspected here by the rover's robotic arm, stopped working in 2006. NASA engineers will begin transmitting commands to the robot's five working wheels on Monday, but escape efforts could last into early next year.

The tomb of Egypt's Tutankhamen — more commonly referred to as King Tut — needs a little attention. Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities and the U.S.-based Getty Conservation Institute are teaming up to restore the wall paintings that line the tomb's underground chamber. Michele Norris talks to Jeanne Marie Teutonico, who will serve as the project's team leader.

Researchers have successfully used gene therapy to increase monkeys' muscle strength. The team hopes to use the same treatment to help people with muscle-wasting diseases grow back their muscle strength.

The Aardonyx celestae, a 23-foot-long, small-headed herbivore, roamed the Earth about 200 million years ago. Paleontologists say it could fill a gap in understanding how a primarily two-legged animal could evolve into a create that walked on all fours.

Men exposed to high levels of BPA on the job had a much greater chance of sexual problems than men who weren't, a study of Chinese factory workers found.

Researchers who looked at handwriting samples found that children with autism struggle more than their peers to correctly form letters. The findings add to evidence that autism is a brain disorder that isn't limited to behavior, but affects motor skills, too.

Before 1996, when new AIDS drugs were introduced, life expectancy was 18 months post-diagnosis. Now, AIDS patients regularly live for decades with the disease. But as these patients live longer, unanticipated side effects — caused by the disease itself, medications to treat it or both — introduce a new set of maladies.

The Environmental Protection Agency has outlined a new effort to help protect and restore the Chesapeake Bay, the nation's largest estuary. And it targets the root causes of the trouble: runoff.

As the world prepares for crucial climate-change talks in Copenhagen next month, there is a growing rift between the United States and some of the world's poorest nations. The gap grew wider this past week, at the final official pre-Copenhagen talks in Barcelona.