The Discovery Files

Researchers at Princeton University and NYU find that for economic stimuli to be more productive, payments should extend beyond the poorest households.

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have developed a computer model that can help plant scientists breed better soybean crops.

A joint study by researchers at the University of California, San Diego, the University at Buffalo, and the University of Toronto has found that a computer vision system can distinguish between real or faked expressions of pain more accurately than can humans.

Psychologists at Vanderbilt University have shown that it is possible to selectively manipulate our ability to learn through the application of a mild electrical current to the brain.

A field test conducted by scientists at UC Davis has demonstrated that elevated levels of carbon dioxide inhibit plants' assimilation of nitrate into proteins, indicating that the nutritional quality of food crops is at risk as climate change intensifies.

A team of environmental engineers at The University of Texas at Austin found that infants are exposed to high levels of chemical emissions from crib mattresses while they sleep.

Once believed to be manufactured only by marine bacteria, a University of Washington research team has shown that a whole different class of organism can supply vitamin B-12 to the ocean.

Exposing leafy vegetables grown during spaceflight to a few bright pulses of light daily could increase the amount of eye-protecting nutrients produced by the plants, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Aggression-causing genes appeared early in animal evolution and have maintained their roles for millions of years and across many species, according to researchers from Iowa State University, Penn State and Grand Valley State University.

Research from the University of Washington and the University of Connecticut shows that what spurs early language development isn't so much the quantity of words a baby hears as the style of speech and social context in which speech occurs.

A team led by the University of Colorado Boulder has sequenced the internal bacterial makeup of the three major life stages of a butterfly species, a project that showed some surprising events occur during metamorphosis.

An infant cognition study conducted by the University of Chicago offers evidence that babies are able to make inferences about social relationships.

A team of Harvard scientists and engineers has demonstrated a new type of battery that could fundamentally transform the way electricity is stored on the grid, making power from renewable energy sources such as wind and solar far more economical and reliable.

Much of the naturally occurring radioactivity in fracking wastewater might be removed by blending it with another wastewater from acid mine drainage, according to a Duke University-led study.

The consumption of caffeine is the energy boost of choice for millions to wake up or stay up, but now researchers at the Johns Hopkins University have found another use for the stimulant: Memory enhancer.