NASA engineers have finished testing a new ion-propulsion system for earth-orbiting and interplanetary spacecraft. The system is more powerful and fuel-efficient than its predecessors, enabling it to travel farther than ever before.

The cost of a personal genome has dropped from about the price of a luxury sedan to, well, the price of a slightly less luxurious nice car. Illumina, a genomics technology company headquartered in San Diego, announced the launch of a $48,000...

Last year, researchers announced one of the most promising methods yet for creating ethically neutral stem cells: reprogramming adult human cells to act like embryonic stem cells.

Clinical tests for identifying and counting normal and bacterial cells in blood and other samples can tell doctors the source of a bacterial infection or help them monitor the immune health of people with HIV.

It's every schoolboy's dream: an easy way of looking through walls to spy on neighbors, monitor siblings, and keep tabs on the sweet jar. And now a dream no longer... Researchers at the University of Utah say that the way radio signals vary in a...

The best of the rest from the Physics arXiv this week:

A new approach to nanoparticle detection can measure the number of particles, their mass, and even their size.

New design does away with the need for a complex gearbox.

A new drug suppresses the virus in chimps without generating resistance.

Using nickel as a catalyst rather than platinum could also mean less-expensive fuels cells.