A new study shows doctors work 1.7 hours less per week when medical liability risk increases by 10 percent. Such a decline in hours is the equivalent of one of every 35 physicians retiring without a replacement. Doctors age 55 and older and those with their own practice are more influenced by liability risk.

To what extent does what's happening in the stratosphere, tens of kilometers above Earth, influence the weather in the troposphere, the layer of atmosphere that touches Earth? Researchers performed a series of forecast experiments using a general circulation model to study the role of the stratosphere in influencing tropospheric weather following sudden stratospheric warming events.

Physical activity appears to be associated with a reduced risk or slower progression of several age-related conditions as well as improvements in overall health in older age, according to several new studies.

After six years of unprecedented exploration of the Red Planet, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit no longer will be a fully mobile robot. NASA has designated the once-roving scientific explorer a stationary science platform after efforts during the past several months to free it from a sand trap have been unsuccessful.

Scientists have determined how a normal protein can be converted into a prion, an infectious agent that causes fatal brain diseases in humans and mammals. The finding, in mice, is expected to advance the understanding of transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, or TSEs, a family of neurodegenerative diseases that include Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, kuru and fatal familial insomnia in humans, scrapie in sheep, and bovine spongiform encephalopathy in cattle, also known as "mad cow disease."

A new experiment that reproduces the magnetic fields of the Earth and other planets has yielded its first significant results. The findings confirm that its unique approach has some potential to be developed as a new way of creating a power-producing plant based on nuclear fusion -- the process that generates the sun's prodigious output of energy.

Your facial expression may tell the world what you are thinking or feeling. But it also affects your ability to understand written language related to emotions, according to new research.

Internal tides, waves below the ocean's surface that propagate at tidal frequencies, play an important role in ocean mixing but can be difficult to detect and study. Researchers find they can detect these waves with seismic imaging.

Anesthetists have designed three prototype low-cost ventilators that could provide vital support during major health care emergencies involving large numbers of patients, such as pandemics, and where resources are limited, such as in developing countries, remote locations or by the military. The team says it is possible to make simple ventilators that could be mass-produced for crises where there is an overwhelming demand for mechanical ventilation and a limited oxygen supply.

Bill and Melinda Gates announced that their foundation will commit $10 billion over the next 10 years to help research, develop and deliver vaccines for the world's poorest countries. The Gateses said that increased investment in vaccines by governments and the private sector could help developing countries dramatically reduce child mortality by the end of the decade, and they called for others to help fill critical financing gaps in both research funding and childhood immunization programs.