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For the past couple of years, NASA has been using remotely piloted aircraft to study hurricanes. And they are turning up new information about things like how dust from Africa can determine whether weather systems become hurricanes in the Atlantic.

The aging brain may be more flexible than we thought, a study of older adults now suggests. After playing a racing car video game an hour a day, thrice weekly for a month, adults age 60 and over were better at multitasking than untrained 20-year-olds.

Age-related fumbles of memory are often feared as early signs of Alzheimer's dementia, but recent research confirms an important difference. The underlying biology of the two sorts of memory loss aren't the same. And the age-related form may be reversible someday.

From human growth hormone to EPO, many sports doping products these days come from big drug companies, not rogue chemists. Scientists and body builders warn that new drugs being developed to treat muscle wasting disease will also likely be abused by athletes � with little chance of detection.

Mothers with the "sensitive" version of a gene became more likely to strike or scream at their children during the Great Recession, researchers say. But as a complete economic collapse became less likely, the moms relaxed. Those with the "insensitive" version didn't change their behavior.

The case focuses on a line of plastic resins made by Eastman Chemical. The resins don't contain BPA but may indeed act like estrogens, two other chemical companies allege. Eastman is suing.

NASA has a plan to fend off giant asteroids, but what about tsunamis, earthquakes, storms that last 45 days and mammoth floods? Earth scientists say science-based strategies can help communities prepare for the worst of the worst.

Scientists and parents have long been baffled by the fact that children with autism often don't pay attention to human voices. Researchers say that may be because speech doesn't activate a reward system in the brain for those children the way it does for typical children.

For children with epilepsy, doctors now try to prevent seizures altogether. It's a big switch in thinking from the days when seizures weren't considered such a bad thing. That changed due to research showing that seizures can affect learning and memory.

The new version of the DSM, the manual of psychiatric diagnoses, is already sparking criticism. But psychiatrists say it helps make sure they're all on the same page.