Rae Ellen Bichell

You need some water. You open the faucet. And you wait. And wait.

You twiddle your thumbs. You wait for the first drop to come out of the tap so you can get water for drinking, cooking and cleaning. You wait for hours so that when the water comes, you're ...

He was probably about 40 years old, 155 pounds, white and wearing a suit. And he's the reason why women are shivering at their desks in air-conditioned buildings.

At some point in the 1930s, someone defined "metabolic equivalents" — how much energy a body requires while sitting, walking and running. ...

In Finland, 90 percent of adults take part in sports or exercise at least twice a week. The Nordic nation far outpaces the U.S. in adult sports participation. Free and easy access to facilities helps.

Dorothée Goffin's lab in Belgium is outfitted with 3-D printers and digital milling machines. It's also a kitchen. And, one day a week, the doors open to anyone who feels like walking in to mess around with the equipment. These days, the tech geeks, chefs and curious folk that inhabit ...

In August 1992, Christopher McCandless died in an abandoned bus in the Alaska wilderness after living mostly on squirrels, birds, roots and seeds for 113 days. Hunters found his body months later. Alaska state coroners declared starvation as the cause of death.

But a mystery lingered: What exactly did him ...

There's more than one way to make color, nature tells us. And more than one way to use it to your own advantage.

UNICEF estimates that thousands of children in West Africa have lost parents to Ebola. Convincing communities to accept and care for these children isn't always easy.

Finding the right condom just got a little bit more like finding a good cabbage.

Picky shoppers might notice labels on condom boxes these days that say fair trade, non-GMO and all natural.

Condoms don't just fall off trees, but most of them do start there. The major ingredient in ...

Sierra Leoneans scramble for supplies as a three-day, countrywide lockdown approaches. International medical professionals doubt the move will do much to halt the spread of Ebola.

Go in search of eggs in most foreign countries and you might encounter a strange scene: eggs on a shelf or out in the open air, nowhere near a refrigerator.

Shock and confusion may ensue. What are they doing there? And are they safe to eat?

We Americans, along with ...

By playing with the physics of wing color, scientists get a glimpse into how butterflies get their colors, and how quickly they can evolve from brown to brilliant.

The plague isn't just something you read about in medieval history books.

This past week, five cases were reported: four in Colorado and one in China.

The Colorado residents were diagnosed after coming into contact with an infected dog.

According to Chinese officials, parts of a city in ...

Turns out that for 7,000 years, snacking on nutsedge may have helped people avoid tooth decay. But at some point, the root it lost its charm. By the 1970s, it was branded "the world's worst weed."

At an altitude of nearly 3 miles, the Tibetan plateau is an extreme place to live. It's cold, it's hard to grow food, and there's about 40 percent less oxygen in the air than there is at sea level.

Somehow, though, native Tibetans are adapted to it. Their bodies — ...

Passenger pigeons used to be the most abundant bird in North America. But hunters drove them to extinction, and by 1914, only one was left. A century later, that pigeon, named Martha, is on exhibit.

On Titan, summer is almost three years away. But in a dark, placid ocean of natural gas, scientists have spotted something that could be the first inkling of springtime.

When a saw-scaled viper sinks its fangs into a person, it isn't pretty.

Toxins attack the victim's capillaries. The body launches an immune defense, as it would with an infection. But that takes time — too much time. The venom quickly dissolves the tiny blood vessels, and the body runs ...

Smokers who want to quit have all sorts of tools at their disposal: call lines, nicotine patches, medication, friends, doctors. And now, texts.

Getting counseling through text messages doubled the odds of kicking the habit compared with those who relied on Internet searches and basic information brochures, a ...