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

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

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.

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.

Scared of looking down more than you used to be?

A breakthrough development in growing skin in labs could mean a lifetime with a full head of 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.

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.

The team tested the two groups of birds using not only associative learning tasks, but innovative problem-solving tasks.

Award-winning science writer Dr Rebecca Priestley's new anthology of Antarctic science, Dispatches from Continent Seven, starts out with her own experience on the ice.

Study finds people more likely to mingle with people with similar physical traits — including levels of attractiveness.

Psychologists reveal why we close our eyes when locking lips.

Kiwi researchers have used an elaborate stadium experiment to show that beautiful people really are the centre of attention when it comes to how we mingle.

The science behind this and five other long-pondered questions.

New findings are being described as a "paradigm shift" in the understanding of diabetes.

A recent breakthrough poses new hope.

We are releasing carbon into the atmosphere at an alarming rate, and we will soon eclipse the only known "thermal maximum".

New Horizons spacecraft has transmitted spectacular images back that reveal surprises. Here's a summary of just a few scientific results to date.

British troops have been testing material so advanced it hides soldiers from infra-red and heat-seeking devices.

COMMENT: UK announced its war against sugary drinks with a 25p (53c) a litre tax on soda. Based on the science available, should we follow suit?