The Discovery Files

Even in the face of a disaster, we remain optimistic about our chances of injury compared to others, according to a study by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.

An international research team led by Oklahoma State University decoded the genetic information in Galdieria to understand how the one-celled alga acquired its flexibility and resilience.

Scientists at Northwestern University have identified conditions and properties that power companies can consider using to keep power generators in a desired synchronized state and help make a self-healing power grid a reality.

Electrical engineers at Oregon State University have discovered a way to use high- frequency sound waves to enhance the magnetic storage of data.

Using underwater video cameras to record fish feeding on South Pacific coral reefs, Georgia Tech scientists found that fish can be picky eaters--a trait that could spell trouble for endangered reef systems.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has granted market approval to an artificial retina technology, the first bionic eye to be approved for patients in the U.S.

Scientists from NCAR, UCSD, Scripps and Florida State concluded that the heat generated by everyday activities in metropolitan areas alters the character of the jet stream and other major atmospheric systems.

Researchers at North Carolina State University have devised a technique to embed needle-like carbon nanofibers in an elastic membrane, creating a flexible "bed of nails" on the nanoscale that opens the door to development of new drug-delivery systems.

Scientists from Michigan State University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences forecast how a changing climate may affect the most common species of bamboo that carpets the forest floors of prime panda habitat in northwestern China.

Researchers at the University of Illinois and UC San Diego have discovered a new compound that restores the health of mice infected with MRSA, an otherwise dangerous bacterial infection.

People are able to detect, within a split second, if a hurtful action they are witnessing is intentional or accidental, new research on the brain at the University of Chicago shows.

Scientists at the University of Utah uncover how insects domesticate bacteria after a man, who was cutting down a tree, cut his hand and then sought medical help.

Researchers at UCLA have developed a lightweight device called the iTube, which attaches to a common cell phone to detect allergens in food samples.

Scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology have found evidence that when corals are under attack by toxic seaweed they do what anyone might do when threatened--they call for help.

Decades of extreme weather crippled, and ultimately decimated, first the political culture and later the human population of the ancient Maya, according to a study by an interdisciplinary team of researchers from UC Davis, Penn State and Switzerland.