RAMON CRATER, Israel (Reuters) – A team of six Israeli researchers on Sunday ended a four-day Mars habitat experiment in Israel’s Negev desert where they simulated living conditions on the Red Planet, Israel’s Science and Technology Ministry said.     The experiment was held near the isolated Israeli township of Mitzpe Ramon, whose surroundings resemble the

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japanese scientists have warned that eating french fries will not cure baldness, after research was published suggesting that chemicals used in cooking fried potatoes could help fight hair loss. A research team at Yokohama National University succeeded in producing clusters of 5,000 hair follicle germs (HFGs), the base organs that produce hair,

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Hunting by people and habitation destruction by oil palm, paper, logging and mining industries helped drive a startling drop of about 50 percent in the orangutan population on the island of Borneo from 1999 to 2015, scientists said on Thursday. The researchers calculated a population decrease of about 148,500 during that 16-year

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Elon Musk’s SpaceX, fresh off the successful launch this month of the world’s most powerful rocket, won an endorsement on Wednesday from the top U.S. communications regulator to build a broadband network using satellites. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai proposed the approval of an application by SpaceX to provide broadband services

OHRID, Macedonia (Reuters) – Macedonian scientists and fishermen have teamed up to start the artificial breeding of a species of trout unique to Lake Ohrid, its tributaries and outlet, the Black Drim river. Poaching and overfishing have driven the Ohrid trout to the verge of extinction, despite conservation efforts, including a 10-year fishing ban imposed

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – An all-female freshwater fish species called the Amazon molly that inhabits rivers and creeks along the Texas-Mexico border is living proof that sexual reproduction may be vastly over-rated. Scientists said on Monday they have deciphered the genome of the Amazon molly, one of the few vertebrate species to rely upon asexual reproduction,

DUNNAE, South Korea (Reuters) – While Alpine skiers fought high winds at the Pyeongchang Games on Monday, there were no such problems for robots competing in their own “Olympics” ski challenge. Robots of all shapes and sizes skied, and in some cases tumbled, down a course at the Welli Hilli ski resort, an hour’s drive

(Reuters) – A recently discovered asteroid was due to zip within 39,000 thousand miles (64,000 km) of Earth on Friday, marking the second space rock to pass within the orbit of the moon this week, according to NASA scientists. Measuring between 50 and 130 feet (15 and 40 meters) across, the asteroid’s trajectory will carry

LONDON, (Reuters) – Scientists have succeeded for the first time in growing human eggs in a laboratory from the earliest stages in ovarian tissue all the way to full maturity – a scientific step that had previously been taken in mice. Publishing their result in the journal Molecular Human Reproduction on Friday, scientists from Britain

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Bats are the longest-lived mammals relative to body size, and a species called the greater mouse-eared bat lives especially long. Researchers now have unlocked some of this bat’s longevity secrets, with hints for fighting the effects of aging in people. Scientists said on Wednesday that unlike in people and most other animals,

LONDON (Reuters) – “Cheddar Man”, Britain’s oldest, nearly complete human skeleton, had dark skin, blue eyes and dark curly hair when he lived in what is now southwest England 10,000 years ago, scientists who read his DNA have discovered. The finding suggests that the lighter skin pigmentation now seen as typical of northern Europeans is

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) – The world’s most powerful rocket, SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, roared into space through clear blue skies on its debut test flight on Tuesday from a Florida launch site in another milestone for billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s private rocket service. The 23-story-tall jumbo rocket, carrying a cherry red Tesla Roadster from the

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) – A scarlet Tesla Roadster from the assembly line of Elon Musk’s pioneering electric automobile business is poised this week to go where no sports car has gone before – outer space. The sleek, battery-powered hot rod is serving as a mock payload for the highly anticipated debut test flight of

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – If you are not a fan of spiders, you may not like the creepy little arachnid scientists found entombed in chunks of amber from northern Myanmar. Unlike its spider cousins alive today, this guy had a tail. Scientists on Monday described four specimens of the arachnid, called Chimerarachne yingi, that inhabited a

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Mars Inc, which makes M&M’s candy and Wrigley’s gum, on Monday published its policies on conducting and funding scientific studies for the first time, as it plans to break ties with an industry-backed organization. Mars, a private company in a particularly secretive industry, has become increasingly outspoken in recent years as