The heart of darkness is a metaphor but it is quite literal when it comes to space. Not only is matter as we know it just a fraction of what is out there, it is only a few percent. That means the rest of the universe is truly unknown. Physicists have given what we don't know terms like Dark Matter and Dark Energy and the race is on to find signatures in "near space" (within a few thousand light years of Earth by measuring electrons and gamma rays.

The CALorimetric Electron Telescope (CALET) investigation will track the trajectory of cosmic ray particles and measure their charge and energy and hopefully help to identify dark matter and fit it into standard models of the universe.

Researchers have learned more about what happened to the climate on Mars since it was a warm and watery planet billions of years ago.

The researchers announced on Thursday that NASA's MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) mission has determined the rate at which the Martian atmosphere currently is losing gas to space via stripping by the solar wind. Loss of gas to space appears to have been an important part of why the Martian climate went from an early, warm, wet one that might have been able to support life at the surface to the cold, dry, desert planet we see today.

The opioid addiction for more than half of female methadone clinic patients began with painkillers prescribed by doctors, according to a paper in Biology of Sex Differences.

More than half (52%) of women and a third (38%) of men reported doctor-prescribed painkillers as their first contact with opioid drugs, a family of drugs which include prescription medicines such OxyContin and codeine, as well as illicit drugs such as heroin.

One experimental result doesn't mean much in science. To truly know whether a result is valid, it needs to be reproduced in the same way over and over again. Yet research that may not be reproduced often finds its way into well-regarded journals, due to limited resources, human error or, rarely, outright fraud.

Unreplicable research is especially problematic for drug trials and other clinical research. A recent estimate put the costs associated with irreproducible preclinical research at $28 billion a year in the United States. Short of spending money to run the published experiment again, no mechanisms exist to quickly identify findings that are unlikely to be replicated.

WASHINGTON, D.C., November 5 - Before eating your next meal, pause for a moment to thank the humble honeybee. Farmers of almonds, broccoli, cantaloupe and many other nuts, vegetables and fruits rely heavily on managed honeybees to pollinate their crops each year.

Recently honeybees have been under stress from a mysterious threat called colony collapse disorder, which causes the majority of worker bees to abandon the hive. While scientists are still investigating the causes of the phenomenon, beekeepers could benefit from technologies that help them keep tabs on the health of their hives.

As the American media continues to speculate, analyze and in some cases choose the Republican and Democratic nominations for U.S. President, researchers in the journal Trends in Ecology&Evolution review the nature of leadership - at least in a set of small-scale mammalian societies, including humans and other social mammals such as elephants and meerkats. 

Could a solar eclipse over Europe during the day affect the power generated by Germany's photovoltaic systems or solar panels, thereby challenging the reliability of the electrical supply across the country?

A new analysis based on simulations and data from the partial solar eclipse that occurred over Europe on the morning of March 20th indicates that such shadowing causes a sudden drop in the power gradient, followed by a steep rise. However, during the shadowing on March 20th, the amount of imported power rose and the amount of exported power fell accordingly.

A new study finds that at least 16.8 million Americans could potentially benefit from lowering their systolic blood pressure (SBP) to 120 mmHg, much lower than current guidelines of 140 or 150 mmHg. The collaborative investigation between the University of Utah, University of Alabama at Birmingham, and Columbia University, will be published Nov. 9 online in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC).

Almost all of us have experienced loneliness at some point. It is the pain we have felt following a breakup, perhaps the loss of a loved one, or a move away from home.

We are vulnerable to feeling lonely at any point in our lives.

Loneliness is commonly used to describe a negative emotional state experienced when there is a difference between the relationships one wishes to have and those one perceives one has.

The 2015 growing season was tough on tomato plants at the Boyce Thompson Institute, as bacterial speck disease (Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato) descended on their field.

But it was all done on purpose. Don't go crazy and start calling up donors for more money, Natural Resources Defense Council, scientists are not creating World War Z. It was done on purpose and the bacteria is completely organic - and those infected plants may help science save others from a similar, spotted fate.