New report which rewrites danger level across the country requires big changes to civil defence readiness.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has released the most comprehensive ever study on global warming, prepared by more than 200 scientists over two years.

A damning international report on mankind's role in climate change should be a wake-up call for urgent action, New Zealand environmentalists say.

Two of Britain's leading scientists have urged the setting up of a world programme to generate solar electricity that is cheaper than fossil fuel power by 2025.

Consumers are not being properly informed when the product they are buying has been processed with genetically modified organisms, the Green Party says.

As key indicators of climate change, penguins serve a crucial role for scientists examining what fluctuations in the white continent mean for the rest of the world.

Gales of up to 100km/h are set to lash the North Island this weekend after a brief respite from this week's heavy rain and gales.

The threat of a huge, landslide-triggered tsunami to Wellington lurks below the water only 10km off the city's coast - but the region's quakes haven't come near what it would take to trigger one.

The Cook Strait Canyon isn't the only underwater chasm that scientists worry could pose a serious threat to the country.

A future where a criminal's genetic make-up affects how long they spend in jail and whether they are released was discussed at a lecture in Dunedin last night.

A Chinese man has had a new nose grown on his forehead. The man, who has only been named as Xiaolian, had the treatment to create a replacement for his original nose which was infected and deformed.

A boy, injured when acid splashed in his eye during a science class, will need up to a year to recover.

Persistent prompting by an Auckland scientist has persuaded the shipping industry to rearrange its schedules, for a whale.

In an emotion-charged ceremony, Rochelle Constantine was one of three inaugural recipients of the Holdaway Awards at the Hauraki Gulf Forum's annual seminar this month.

Life on Earth will continue for at least another 1.75 billion years ... but human life could die out long before.

Human trials of a locally developed Parkinson's disease treatment have begun in New Zealand after the first round yielded promising results.

'Next generation' DNA extraction techniques found no viable material even in samples less than a century old.

When patients have a certain kind of brain surgery to treat epilepsy at Auckland City Hospital is sent over the road to the Auckland University for research.

Some of Britain's finest minds are drawing up a "doomsday list" of catastrophic events that could devastate the world.

The painful end of Stephen Hawking's first marriage, and the bitter acrimony of his second, have been described in detail by the Cambridge cosmologist for the first time in his autobiography.

One of the rarest dinosaur fossils could be lost to science when it is auctioned for private sale in November, scientists warned yesterday.

An 11-year-old put Fonterra's light-proof milk bottles to the test.

British business executives, sports stars, celebrities and anyone else with £38,400 ($75,300) to spare will be able to freeze a backup of their adult selves for potential use decades later.

Within moments of sitting down in his office, Prof Richard Faull whips out a human brain, places it on the desk between us and announces, "Here it is," in the manner of someone displaying their most-prized possession.

Just in case you were wondering what the universe is made of, whether ET exists and if something can be done about global warming, cancer and beating bacteria, here's what scientists know ...

The ozone hole over New Zealand is closing, but it may warm up Antarctica which could then affect the West Coast and Canterbury Plains, a university researcher says.

Australian doctors have achieved a world first by helping a woman become pregnant from ovarian tissue grafted into her abdomen.

Chopping wood has always been seen as one of the more "manly"' endeavours, but now researchers may be able to prove it.

A deep-sea search for giant squid has captured the world's first video footage of the mysterious creature in its habitat.