What difference does half a degree Celsius of global warming make?

To many plants and animals, and especially insects, it could mean the difference between life and death, according to a new study.

In a paper published Thursday in Science, researchers report that limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above the average pre-industrial ...Read more

In a distant galaxy more than 13 billion light-years from Earth, astronomers have discovered traces of the oldest known oxygen in the universe, as well as evidence that ancient stars "turned on" as early as 250 million years after the Big Bang.

These findings, published Wednesday in Nature, suggest that star formation at the dawn of the cosmos ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- The FBI appears to have made headway in cracking a cybercrime extortion group that has plagued health and dental clinics, schools, law firms and even Hollywood production companies since 2016.

Serbian authorities, saying they were working with the FBI, arrested a 38-year-old man, believed to be a member of The Dark Overlord, the ...Read more

Q: The hard drive on my wife's computer is almost full, even though she uses it mostly for e-mail. While looking for things to delete, I noticed that the Windows\Temp folder contains 180 gigabytes of data. Can I delete all the files in that folder?

Rick Bloom, Colorado Springs, Colo.

A: The "Temp" in the folder name stands for temporary, so ...Read more

Ride-hail service Lyft is offering select customers a way to save money on their daily trips with a new pre-paid option meant to test the viability of a monthly subscription service.

The company is testing an "All-Access Pass" option in San Diego, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Miami and Sacramento, Calif. Offered on an invitation-only basis, the trial ...Read more

My goal when I bought a new PC was to hit the ground running. I'd used Acronis True Image to back up my old computer and restore the data and applications on my new one.

Actually, this is a two-part tale of woe. Today I'll talk about Acronis; in my next column I'll talk about my new PC.

A few months ago I raved about Acronis. In my limited ...Read more

Location, location, location. Is Google tracking Android users' whereabouts without their permission?

That's the question lawmakers are asking in the United States, and regulators are investigating in Australia.

Sens. Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut, and Ed Markey, D-Massachusetts, wrote the Federal Trade Commission on Monday, urging it to ...Read more

A spacecraft wouldn't know evidence of a Galilean lunar geyser if that geyser hit it in the face. Luckily, the scientists on the ground did.

Researchers using 21-year-old data from NASA's Galileo spacecraft have found evidence of a plume of material coming from the surface of Jupiter's icy moon Europa. The discovery offers a new line of ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- Minnesota's economically critical medical technology sector is battling to extract itself from a potential tariff and trade war with China that it says could hurt state businesses and cost patients relying on medical devices.

Fearing higher material costs and retaliation, state and national trade groups representing virtually all ...Read more

Don't wait for the beep: Voicemail is going the way of the dinosaurs.

Although phone-message technology advanced steadily from cassette recorders attached to landlines to services offered by phone companies to cloud-based message storage for mobile devices, it's now running up against a changing American society that places increasing value on ...Read more

Back before Detroit began to get its act together, the city's property records were a mess. With thousands of parcels in the city vacant, abandoned, foreclosed and often subject to mortgage or title fraud, it could prove frustrating, if not impossible, to even discover who owned a property.

A new technology called blockchain, best known as the ...Read more

In an effort to save half a million lives each year, the World Health Organization on Monday urged developing nations to follow the lead of affluent countries and eliminate man-made trans fatty acids from their food supplies.

By taking six specific steps, officials from the United Nations' health agency said countries could reduce a tidal wave ...Read more

Pop quiz: If you sampled the air in an empty college classroom where smoking is not permitted, what is the last thing you'd expect to find?

If you guessed "cigarette smoke," you're in good company. Peter DeCarlo, an air quality researcher at Drexel University in Philadelphia, would have agreed with you.

But when he examined the air from the ...Read more

Two astronomers from Greece have managed to model the three-dimensional structure of an interstellar gas cloud, and found that it's on the order of 10 times more spacious than it originally appeared.

The shape and structure of Musca, described in the journal Science, could help scientists probe the mysterious origins and evolution of stars -- ...Read more

Roving around Mars is so passe. So NASA is sending a helicopter to the Red Planet.

The aptly named Mars Helicopter will attempt to become the first vehicle to take flight on another planet.

"The idea of a helicopter flying the skies of another planet is thrilling," NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in a statement.

The craft, which looks...Read more

Alexa, hold your horses.

Amazon Dot Echo Kids Edition started shipping this week, but children's advocates and others are asking parents to hold off on buying the $79 version of the company's market-leading smart home speaker. Like the Echo, the Dot Echo Kids Edition is voice-activated and powered by Alexa, the Amazon virtual assistant at the ...Read more