A fingerprint found on The Adoration of the Christ Child may prove it’s the work of Leonardo da Vinci, once and for all. The art minor I once was loves this kind of stuff.

…but the idea of a spinning 100-kilometre-long “fishing line” that hooks onto satellites and flings them to higher orbits is still cool. And unlike the space elevator, we have the technology to make one within five to 10 years.

Is laughter really the best medicine–or has Reader’s Digest been lying to us all these years? Inquiring minds want to know, and so this week I set out to see what recent research into the place of humor in human mental and physical health I might be able to turn up. It looks like Reader’s …

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Margaret Atwood answers this and other pressing questions surrounding her much-talked-about (and occasionally ridiculed) remote book-signing device.

The U.S.? Nope–Canada, at least according to documentary filmmakers whose work isn’t deemed “Canadian” enough.

A U.S.-Japanese team has developed a gene therapy technique that promotes the regrowth of hair cells in the inner ears of guinea pigs. This is the first time anyone has biologically repaired the hearing of animals. (Insert standard disclaimer here stating that what works in animals doesn’t always work in humans.)

NASA’s Cassini and Spitzer Space Telescope missions have a Valentine’s Day card for you in the form of a ring and a flower.

UCLA scientists have successfully transformedHIV into a non-AIDS-causing cancer-fighting missile–in, of course, mice, who by this point shouldn’t have a thing to worry about if they come down with cancer…

…but maybe not as much as I should have, thanks to my parents failure to play rhythmically challenging music for me when I was a child. It’s their fault I’m such a lousy golfer, too.

No, that’s not some really disgusting high school cafeteria recipe–it’s this biotech chip that allows for rapid screening of potential drugs to weed out the ones that could prove toxic.

Wouldn’t it be nice if the doctor could poke and prod a computer simulation of you instead of the real thing–and only do something to you once he had everything figured out?

People overcommit because they always expect to have more time in the future than they do right now, researchers say. Ain’t it the truth?