Science

Clouds moved in at virtually the last minute and thwarted NASA's effort to bring the space shuttle Endeavour and its crew of seven back to Earth early Wednesday evening.

Mission Control instructed the astronauts to take another swing around the planet and aim for a later, nighttime landing, in hopes that the sky would clear. It will be NASA's second and last shot of the day at bringing Endeavour home.

"Unfortunately, the weather trend did not improve as we had hoped," Mission Control radioed. "We're looking for some improvement," it added.

An artificial muscle that can heal itself and recharge an iPod at the same time? Sounds ludicrous, but researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles have developed an electricity-generating muscle that might one day be to used to create walking robots or advanced prosthetics, according to Discovery News.

People who excessively game and who cannot control their email/text messaging should be included in psychiatry’s official guidebook of psychiatric disorders, this according to American Journal of Psychiatry.

Now that the space station's new robot is fully assembled, astronauts prepared to attach the giant machine directly to the orbiting outpost for the first time on Tuesday.

Astronauts Richard Linnehan and Robert Behnken went on a spacewalk Monday to add a tool belt and two cameras that will serve as the robot's eyes as it helps maintain the station.

The robot, called Dextre, flew in pieces to the station aboard the shuttle Endeavour. It has been assembled over the course of three spacewalks. So far, the 12-foot robot and both of its 11-foot arms have checked out fine.

Scientists have found an Antarctic fish that hibernates to conserve energy during the long southern winters.

The cod Notothenia coriiceps enters a dormant state, similar to hibernation in land animals like hedgehogs, British scientists said on Wednesday.

Researchers already knew Antarctic fish had antifreeze chemicals in their blood and their ability to effectively put themselves "on ice" is another remarkable adaptation to an extreme environment.

A robotic spacecraft circling Mars has snapped the first image of a series of active avalanches near the planet's north pole, scientists said Monday.

The image, taken last month, reveals at least four avalanches of fine ice and dust breaking off from a steep cliff and settling on the slope below. The cascade kicked up massive debris clouds, with some measuring more than 590 feet across.

The landslides were spied by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter during a routine tracking of seasonal changes. The probe arrived at the planet in 2006.

A design for a low-cost spacecraft to rendezvous with and track the potentially Earth-threatening asteroid Apophis has won a $25,000 prize from a non-profit space advocacy organisation. The group hopes the prize will spur the world's space agencies to plan missions to protect the planet from potentially dangerous impacts.

A vast underground vault storing millions of seeds from around the world took delivery of its first shipment Tuesday.

Dubbed the "Doomsday Vault," the seed bank on a remote island near the Arctic Ocean is considered the ultimate safety net for the world's seed collections, protecting them from a wide range of threats including war, natural disasters, lack of funding or simply poor agricultural management.

Two spacewalking astronauts hung science experiments on the outside of the space station's new lab Friday and packed up a broken gyroscope for next week's shuttle ride home.

It was the third and final spacewalk for Atlantis' astronauts, who arrived at the international space station nearly a week ago.

Frequent cell phone users face a 50% greater risk of developing tumors of the parotid gland than those who don't use cell phones, according to a recently published study.

The parotid gland is the largest human salivary gland; it's located near the jaw and ear, where cell phones are typically held.