Back in the 1960s, government scientists thought it was a good idea to make artificial hearts powered by the radioactive element plutonium-238. This isotope of plutonium is the same one that NASA has used to power its space instruments — all the way from the experiments for the Apollo missions to Pluto’s probe, New Horizons.…

Diet crazes come and go, but the science of how to eat healthy hasn’t actually changed that much in recent years. We hear a lot of conflicting advice on whether the latest diet is better than the last, yet there’s at least one sentence that nutrition experts agree on. It’s from the scientific report of…

A landslide just outside of Los Angeles caused Vasquez Canyon Road to buckle and break last week. By the time the land stopped shifting, the road looked more like a rollercoaster. READ MORE

Cyborg roses could become the first “smart” plant. Scientists at Linköping University in Sweden created the first electronic rose in a lab, theyreported Nov. 20 in the journal Science Advances. This technology could create plants that light up to signal what they need, though the researchers admit that’s a bit far off. READ MORE

Paper calendars were due for an update. The Hungarian design studio Anagraphic has created a beautiful way to visualize all of the celestial information that the traditional boxes just can’t accommodate. Ok, so it’s not as simple as your average wall calendar. But this year’s version — a new take on the first one made in 2009…

The Ebola outbreak that infected 28,000 people, killed 11,000, andis not quite over today has been devastating, but it also revealed something troubling: The global health system is broken. By the time the world responded to the Ebola crisis, it was too late to contain it, and thousands of deaths occurred that experts say could…

Are you unsure what to get the science-lovers in your life? Or maybe you’re one yourself who always gets stuck with unsophisticated gifts? Good news! The science team at Tech Insider has compiled a 2015 gift guide for science-lovers by scouring the web for stuff we’d add to our own lists, plus some help from the science-themed products site…

More than 100 women who say they got pregnant after taking incorrectly packaged birth control are now suing the companies that made and sold the products. Qualitest Pharmaceuticals, now a subsidiary of Endo International, issued a voluntary recall for the birth control back in 2011because of a packaging error.   “As a result of the…

For women without a uterus, because they were born that way or because they had surgery to remove it, getting pregnant may soon be an option in the US. The Cleveland Clinic is planningto perform the first uterus transplants in the US on 10 women, as part of an upcomingclinical trial that is now recruiting participants.…

Back in 1982, Barney Clarkbecame the first person to live without a human heartbeat when he had the Jarvik 7 artificial heart implanted in his chest. Since then, thousands of others have joined him, but none have been able to permanently live with an artificial heart. But someday (possibly soon), science will develop artificial hearts…