A recent discovery that agricultural practices help form clouds could change the way we see New Zealand's environmental performance.

Sam Judd writes that perhaps the biggest environmental problem we currently face is the contamination of our waterways by nutrients.

Brain expert Jenni Ogden was one of handful of specialists granted access to the most studied patient in medical history.

The brain is the most complicated object in the known universe, writes Fred Mendelsohn. Its 100 billion nerve cells (nearly 20 times the number of people on earth) are each connected to thousands of other nerve cells in a bewilderingly complex network.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Kimberley Jane Dark has made it clear that she doesn't want to be kept alive with a feeding tube.

Scientists are preparing to test a potential therapy for Huntington's disease in sheep that have been genetically modified to carry the mutation that causes the disease.

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.