COMMENT: Any move to reduce the impact of poor quality science and base our decisions on genuine, peer-reviewed information is a positive one for NZ.

The shedding of emotional tears is unique to humans, but our evolutionary, psychological and biological reasons for "crying it out" remain a mystery.

Forget everything you know about binge-watching TV. Alejandro "AJ" Fragoso has you beat.

New findings could explain why failures in the control of bed bug infestations are so common.

A team of Kiwi researchers have won funding to help tackle a mysterious protein that conspires against treatment for some forms of cancer.

COMMENT: We believe that random funding is a fair and transparent way to choose between equally qualified applicants, writes Kath McPherson.

An Internet investor has enlisted famed physicist Stephen Hawking to help him with a futuristic plan for seeking life in outer space. (April 12)

Popular geologist and palaeontologist Hamish Campbell has co-written two of the definitive books on how New Zealand was formed.

With no cause and no cure, autism remains one of the most mind-bogglingly complex disorders for researchers to tackle.

The catastrophic eruption that wiped out the famed Pink and White Terraces may have been triggered by a build-up of magma beneath Lake Rotomahana.

How do you stop cows burping? Or override Parkinson's disease? Jamie Morton celebrates 10 top pieces of Kiwi science and innovation.

Nasa has postponed the launch of its data-gathering balloon from Wanaka because of the weather.

An interactive therapeutic robot, the Food and Drug Administration have categorised them as a class II medical device.

WATCH: They don't look like much, but these tiny trap-jaw spiders found only in NZ and southern South America are the Beauden Barretts of the arachnid world.

Why is it that by the time millions of us are adults, we are subsisting on diets full of saturated fats and processed sugars?

It would take six to eight months' travel by rocket, if the planet is lined up with Earth in the right way.

Here is a list of substances that are more poisonous than their LD50 values might indicate.

Last year, in a lab in Japan, a mouse grew hair.

Food is actually an engineered structure, consisting of water, proteins, carbohydrates and fats that each undergo a series of changes during mixing, whipping and cooking.

US researchers have confirmed a strange link between touching rough surfaces and feeling for others, which could help charities raise more money.

Visitors to an upcoming Mars exhibit at Nasa's Kennedy Space Center will be able to explore several sites on the red planet, reconstructed using real imagery from Nasa's Curiosity Mars Rover.

Is your morning routine feeling like more of a battle lately?

With the touch of a button and a whirring sound, the robot was off.

Work on the Huntly section of the Waikato Expressway unearthed a human skull today, which appears to have been buried in a kumara pit.

Earthquakes are a natural hazard - except when they're man-made.

Food that's only touched the floor for five seconds is okay to eat, isn't it?

Leafy suburbs like Parnell might be seen as Auckland's elite neighbourhoods but more affordable areas have the upper hand in something, it seems.

New study shows challenging the immune systems of kakapo and other endangered species may help bring them back from the brink.

The explosive history of Rangitoto has again been rewritten, after scientists recovered buried clues of ancient blasts deep below the Island.

Bugs capable of everything from curing diseases to mopping up pollution are a step closer after scientists created an artificial lifeform in a lab.