How do you stop truckloads of unsaleable food from going to the dump - and turn it into something useful? Put a few thousand piggies in the middle.

There's been plenty of news lately about sinkholes. What exactly are they - and why do so many seem to be opening up around the Earth?

One day in the 1980s, a scientist took a bizarre phone call about a sheep in Canterbury that couldn't stop having triplets.

Most couples will testify that their sex life plummets on the birth of a new baby, with new mothers often worrying that they are no longer attractive

Using advances in genetic science, a small research team are testing whether it is possible to make an evolutionary loophole work to the advantage of pest control.

They call him 007 because he gets the job done - and for this feathered little thinker, doing so was quite the task.

Crisis shows the value of taking a scientific approach to agriculture.

Mark Orams will research mammals on the Blake expedition to the Auckland Islands.

This week we profile five of the expedition's members, starting with Shelley Campbell, CEO of the Sir Peter Blake Trust.

In his last months, Sir Peter Blake spoke of something alarming happening in his familiar Southern Ocean.

The final portion has been raised to build oceanographer Jacques Rougerie's gigantic, solar-powered, floating aquatic observation vessel.

"Bionic man is not far away". That's the assessment of World Anti-Doping Agency director-general David Howman as his organisation.

'Wow, this guy's a whopper,' said experts of a 1.5m monster jellyfish that washed up on a Hobart beach last month. So what does its sting feel like?

Research by an Otago University geology student has uncovered a strange pre-Ice Age world where primitive porpoises and baleen whales roamed the North Pacific alongside comparatively modern marine mammals.

If your body was laid bare to the alien environment of Mars, the vacuum of space would boil every fluid in it, then freeze-dry your remains.

The flight of the bumblebee - once thought to be aerodynamically impossible - has proven to be even more scientifically astounding than previously believed.

Dairy giant Fonterra is calling for government laboratories to be better equipped to identify bugs in food, after finding E.coli bacteria in its fresh cream.

It's taken more than 50 years but the deepest cave system in the Southern Hemisphere has been found - in New Zealand.

NZ researchers have helped to shatter a common assumption about how trees grow, finding that larger, older trees keep bulking up and can be "star players" at sucking carbon from the atmosphere.

Researchers are encouraged by the early findings of a major NZ study to find a better way to treat an aggressive form of breast cancer.

New Zealand scientists have spent six years updating a seminal map of Antarctica completed by colleagues 50 years ago, and they hope it will help to unlock the degree and impacts of climate change.

I marvel at each scientific discovery but what concerns me is the scorn applied to humanities study these developments have induced, writes Bob Jones.

Vitamin D supplements provide little - if any - health benefits, a study shows.

The leader of the ill-fated Australasian Antarctic Expedition has apologised for the inconvenience caused to rescuers, while authorities estimate the bill could reach $2.6m.

Kiwi scientists who helped to pinpoint the 'microchip' in our brain that can control fertility are now working on the next crucial piece in the puzzle - how to influence it.