When people think of osteoporosis, they usually think of women, but men can get osteoporosis, too. Osteoporosis literally means “porous bones.” Normal bones look somewhat like honeycombs. But with osteoporosis, the bones become so thin in places that even a simple stretch can result in a bone fracture. Risk factors …

The number of people with osteoporosis is expected to grow dramatically. Weight lifting, resistance training is part of the answer. VOA’s Carol Pearson reports on a study about men and bone health at the University of Missouri. …

Russia is open to extending its partnership in the International Space Station with the United States, Europe, Japan and Canada beyond the currently planned end of the program in 2024, the head of the Russian space agency said on Tuesday. “We are ready to discuss it,” Igor Komarov, general director …

Providing formal land ownership titles to indigenous communities is one of the most effective ways to preserve endangered rainforest in Peru’s Amazon, said a study published on Monday. Forest destruction dropped 75 percent on land once it was formally granted to indigenous communities, said the study by American researchers published …

About one in 10 pregnant women with confirmed Zika infections had a fetus or baby with birth defects, offering the clearest picture yet of the risk of Zika infection during pregnancy, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday. The report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is the first to …

Most young Americans want any health care overhaul under President Donald Trump to look a lot like the Affordable Care Act signed into law by his predecessor, President Barack Obama. But there’s one big exception: A majority of young Americans dislike “Obamacare’s” requirement that all Americans buy insurance or pay …

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s largest oceanographic research vessel has returned to its home port after the longest deployment of any ship in the agency’s history.   NOAA Ship Robert H. Brown spent almost 800 days at sea during the three-year deployment. NOAA says the ship traveled almost 130,000 …

Researchers are studying people they call “super-agers” — those 80 and older whose thicker-than-average brains at that age still make them as “sharp as a tack.” Writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers at Northwestern University in Chicago say the memory skills of “super-agers” are on a …

Nigeria is launching a mass vaccination campaign as part of its emergency response to an outbreak of meningitis in its northwestern states, as the death toll climbed to 336, the Nigeria Center for Disease Control said Tuesday. The number of suspected cases has hit 2,997, over 1,000 more than at …

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is now halfway between Pluto and its next much, much smaller stop. New Horizons — which reached the milestone this week — is bound for an even more remote object called 2014 MU69. Like Pluto, the object orbits in our solar system’s twilight zone known as …

The Trump administration said Monday it was cutting off U.S. funding to the United Nations agency for reproductive health, accusing the agency of supporting population control programs in China that include coercive abortion. By halting assistance to the U.N. Population Fund, the Trump administration is following through on promises to …

Babies cry more in Britain, Canada, Italy and Netherlands than in other countries, while newborns in Denmark, Germany and Japan cry and fuss the least, researchers said on Monday. In research looking at how much babies around the world cry in their first three months, psychologists from Britain have created …

Cereals such as wheat and barley are important food plants, grown almost everywhere in the world. But they are susceptible to diseases and one of the most damaging is a fungal pathogen that causes the dreaded “wheat head blight” or “wheat scab.” Using modern gene editing technique scientists have discovered …

It sounds like science fiction, but a cap-like device that makes electric fields to fight cancer improved survival for the first time in more than a decade for people with deadly brain tumors, final results of a large study suggest.   Many doctors are skeptical of the therapy, called tumor …

Humans have always wondered why certain animals, such as tigers or pandas, have such unusual color patterns. Folklore usually explained it as a consequence of some dramatic event. But scientists say it has to do with the animal’s natural habitat, which is also the answer for panda’s black and white …

Scientists working at Cambridge University in England have coaxed a collection of mouse stem cells to turn into a mouse embryo. This breakthrough could change the way scientists study early development and how it can go wrong early in a pregnancy. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports. …

If you were a casual observer watching Argonne National Laboratory scientist Seth Darling work, it would be easy to miss the low-tech but groundbreaking invention he’s concocted in his brightly lit workspace.  It doesn’t have wires or circuitry, it doesn’t move, it doesn’t do much of anything. It is in …

Elon Musk’s SpaceX on Thursday salvaged half of the $6 million nosecone of its rocket, in what the space entrepreneur deemed an important feat in the drive to recover more of its launch hardware and cut the cost of space flights. Shortly after the main section of SpaceX’s first recycled …

U.S. researchers have begun enrolling people in the next phase of testing for a vaccine to protect against Zika, the mosquito-borne virus that can cause birth defects in pregnant women. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), told reporters Friday that the Zika …

When Ebola struck Liberia, consumption of bushmeat dropped dramatically. But in an odd twist, poorer households cut their consumption much more than well-to-do households. The findings have implications for public health, as well as wildlife conservation. Education campaigns about the risks and consequences of bushmeat hunting have focused on rural …

Vice President Mike Pence took the rare step of breaking a tie in the U.S. Senate on Thursday, casting the deciding vote to roll back protections for reproductive health funds. Using the Congressional Review Act, which allows lawmakers to repeal recently minted regulations, senators killed a rule intended to keep …

SpaceX launched its first recycled rocket Thursday, the biggest leap yet in its bid to drive down costs and speed up flights.   The Falcon 9 blasted off from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center, hoisting a broadcasting satellite into the early evening clear sky on the historic rocket reflight. It was …

Particles blasting out from the sun stripped away what was once a thick, Earth-like atmosphere on Mars, leaving behind a dry and cold world inhospitable to life, researchers said in a study released Thursday. About 4 billion years ago when life was starting on Earth, Mars also had a dense …

A 5-foot (1.5-meter) debris shield being installed on the International Space Station floated away Thursday during a spacewalk by two veteran U.S. astronauts, a NASA TV broadcast showed. Peggy Whitson, who became the world’s most experienced female spacewalker during the outing, told ground control teams that a bag containing the …

Zika, like dengue fever and West Nile virus, is in a family of mosquito-borne viruses called flaviviruses. A new study suggests that Zika can be much worse for people previously infected with another flavivirus. In pregnant women, it may put their babies at higher risk for serious birth defects, including …