A start-up company from the Seattle area won $900,000 on Friday in a NASA contest to build a miniature prototype of a machine that could one day climb from Earth to outer space. (Today)

Among the hundreds of current research projects in the Bay Area, some may solve problems crucial to local industries, like clean tech and bio-tech. Others focus on possible disaster, like the collapse of the Sacramento Delta levees in an earthquake. (Yesterday)

NASA spacecraft are measuring record-high levels of cosmic rays, a side effect of the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century. (11/05/2009)

Once upon a time, every tweet had an actual bird attached. If that bird happened to live in southern Brazil, a region whose rich avian life was long undocumented, chances are good that it was stalked repeatedly -- and its tweets, coos and whistles recorded patiently -- by William Belton. (11/05/2009)

LOS ANGELES -- The population of endangered green sea turtles at SeaWorld in San Diego grew by 82 in October when the eggs hatched on Shipwreck Beach without human help. (11/04/2009)