Geoff Brumfiel

Why and when tickling makes us laugh is still mysterious. But researchers who studied what happens in rat brains when they're tickled say they emit ultrasonic giggles, too — when in the mood for fun.

A new analysis of debris found from the plane suggests it was not attempting an emergency landing.

The remains of two titanosaur species discovered in Australia provide clues about how ancient plant-eaters proliferated.

It can be hard for different animals to get along, but Pea and Jotto have figured it out.

The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to David Thouless, who gets half the prize, and Duncan Haldane and Michael Kosterlitz, who share the other half.

An L-shaped machine in Louisiana is hunting for some of the most powerful waves in existence: gravitational waves. This wave detector acts like a giant tape measure to capture bends in space and time.

Scientists are worried about how Britain's departure from the European Union would hurt the continent's mega-projects and its researchers. Scientific collaboration "should know no borders," says one.

Two individuals have been flown out of the South Pole in the dead of Antarctic winter. It's only the third such evacuation ever conducted.

A sick worker at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station must be evacuated by plane at the height of the Antarctic winter. The current temperature is -70 degrees Fahrenheit.

For the second time in recent months, scientists say they have picked up distortions in space and time. The find suggests smaller-sized black holes may be more numerous than many scientists thought.

If it passes, the compromise bill would be the first update to the Toxic Substances Control Act in more than four decades. Supporters say it gives the EPA more power to ensure chemical safety.

Researchers have created tiny robots that can perch on surfaces, which could someday make them useful for communications and surveillance.

In India, there is money to be made fighting air pollution. NPR examines one product geared towards the bad air: a negative ion necklace.

Following a string of safety lapses, the National Institutes of Health is making changes at its Clinical Center, the world's largest research hospital.

Scientists drilling beneath the Gulf of Mexico have hit the layer deposited when an asteroid the size of Staten Island, N.Y., hit Earth. Samples might contain details from that fateful day.

The Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland is offline, following a run-in with a small mammal that munched on a power cord.

Brain maps constructed by MRI show that language meaning is distributed throughout the brain's outer layer. And it turns out that different people organize language in similar ways.

The theoretical physicist is part of a team that wants to send postage-stamp-size probes to our closest star system, Alpha Centauri. But can they get the proper permits?

Internet Billionaire Yuri Milner on Tuesday announced plans to travel to the nearest star system, Alpha Centauri. A trip would take thousands of years with existing technology.

SpaceX successfully launched a rocket to resupply the International Space Station and landed the rocket on a drone ship at sea on Friday.