Scientists on Wednesday unveiled a DNA map for barley that could spur improvements in yields and stress tolerance in one of the world's most important crops.

One of the first domesticated grains, with its origins in the Fertile Crescent more than 10,000 years ago, barley is the fourth biggest cereal in terms of area and tonnage harvested.

You glimpse a stranger standing in the street. The light is hazy and the person's face and clothing are indistinct. Who is it?

Chances are you will think it is a man -- and the reason for this is a survival reflex, according to an unusual study published on Wednesday.

European astronomers on Wednesday reported they had detected a planet with about the mass of Earth which orbits the closest star to the Sun.

The observation breaks new ground in the hunt for exoplanets -- worlds that exist in other solar systems -- although the planet itself is not "another Earth" as it is located in a scorchingly hot zone.

A German woman who feared the Earth would be sucked into oblivion in a black hole failed Tuesday in her court bid to stop the work of the world's most powerful atom smasher.

The higher administrative court in Muenster, western Germany, rejected her claims, ruling there was no evidence the work of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) posed a danger to public safety.

Two American scholars won the Nobel economics prize Monday for work on match-making — how to pair doctors with hospitals, students with schools, kidneys with transplant recipients and even men with women in marriage.

Lloyd Shapley of UCLA and Alvin Roth, a Harvard University professor currently visiting at Stanford University, found ways to make markets work when traditional economic tools fail.

Daredevil Felix Baumgartner's record-breaking jump raises hopes that pilots and even astronauts can be saved from accidents in the stratosphere, experts said on Monday.

Michel Viso, an expert in exobiology at France's National Center of Scientific Research (CNRS), said Baumgartner's leap from 39,045 meters (128,100 feet) "has operational potential" for manned flight at extreme heights.

An international team of amateur and professional astronomers on Monday announced the discovery of a planet whose skies are lit up by four suns -- the first reported case of such a phenomenon.

The planet, located about 5,000 light years from Earth, has been dubbed PH1 in honor of Planet Hunters, a program led by Yale University in the United States which enlists volunteers to look for signs of new planets.

China's beloved national symbol — the panda — may have been seen quite differently by ancient humans: as food.

Scientist Wei Guangbiao says prehistoric man ate pandas in an area that is now part of the city of Chongqing in southwest China.

Wildlife researchers say 25 species of monkeys, langurs, lemurs and gorillas are on the brink of extinction and need global action to protect them from increasing deforestation and illegal trafficking.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature said Monday that primates from Asia and Africa are severely threatened. Six of the species live on the island nation of Madagascar.

Eben Alexander's quick trip to heaven started with a headache.

It was November 2008 and a rare bacterial meningitis was fast on its way to shutting down the University of Virginia neurosurgeon's neocortex -- the part of the brain that deals with sensory perception and conscious thought.