This article was reported by Robert Roy Britt, Jeanna Bryner and Clara Moskowitz. Given the nation's dismal financial situation this week, not to mention this year, many people are pondering a present and future with less money in the bank. Does that mean that as a nation we'll be less...

Maybe its the fear of turning 40. Maybe its the feeling of unfinished business. Maybe its the fire in the belly that has not quite extinguished. For retired elite athletes, the itch is always there to make a return after experiencing life after sport. For some, it becomes too strong...

When Charles Darwin boarded the H.M.S. Beagle in 1831 as the ship's naturalist, he had only one challenge — to keep himself entertained for the next five years. His scientific assignment was to collect anything that crawled, swam or flew, and to keep track of all sorts of biological measures...

Scientists have taken another step toward the goal of rendering objects invisible using high-tech cloaks that redirect light. Researchers for the first time demonstrated that a new material can bend visible light the wrong way in three dimensional tests. It builds on research that cloaks objects in the microwave wavelength....

Update Friday, 8/15, 8:05 p.m. ET: Bigfoot Turns Out to Be an Opossum (the story below remains as originally written). Two Georgia men claim to have found in the northern woods of that state something that has been often reported but never proven to exist: a Bigfoot. They say they...

The way people recognize faces might say a lot about what culture they come from, scientists now reveal. These new findings may reflect a Western focus on the individual and an Eastern leaning toward the group. The capability to routinely and effortlessly recognize faces is so universal across the globe...

Before his body froze and mummified, a now-famous Neolithic guy dubbed the Iceman took his last steps while donned in a coat and leggings made of sheep's fur and moccasins made of cattle leather. That was more than 5,000 years ago. The 45-year-old man apparently trekked up the Schnalstal glacier...

Scientists set off this week to study the wrecks of three German submarines sunk by U.S. forces in 1942 off the coast of North Carolina during the Battle of the Atlantic. This expedition is the first part of a larger multi-year project to research and document a number of historically...

Many people go to psychics for a handful of typical reasons. They want to know if they will get their dream job soon, or make a big move, or end up with the hunky new guy who seems shy but might just be The One. Most of the subjects are...

Hillary Rodham Clinton came close, but failed. Beyond the wrong turns pointed out by strategists, her political path this year was rooted in social biases, some scholars say. Gender stereotypes, for instance, put Clinton in a no-win situation, said Caroline Keating, a psychologist at Colgate University in New York. When...

Technology doesn't just advance on its own. Somebody has to try new things, experiment, innovate, and test it all again and again. The same was true 1,500 years ago when the bow and arrow was introduced to North America, a new study suggests. University of Missouri archaeologists have discovered that...

Everyone knows the face of fear. Upon beholding the chainsaw-wielding ax-murderer in a slasher movie, the damsel in distress usually widens her eyes and flares her nostrils in horror. It turns out this expression isn't merely for cinematic effect, but actually serves a biological function, scientists have found, by altering...

Some people point to 1906 as the year of the Great San Francisco Earthquake, but, for anthropologists who study American Indians, it is the year that split the Hopi community of Orayvi, the longest continually occupied settlement in North America. The break-up — which came two mornings after the last...

Boomers are tired, overworked, strapped, bummed out and don't expect to get a break. More than young people or seniors, Baby Boomers (aged 44 to 62 now) are gloomy about their lives and the prospects for improvement, a new survey finds. The Pew Research Center Social and Demographic Trends survey,...

Individuals with conservative ideologies are happier than liberal-leaners, and new research pinpoints the reason: Conservatives rationalize social and economic inequalities. Regardless of marital status, income or church attendance, right-wing individuals reported greater life satisfaction and well-being than left-wingers, the new study found. Conservatives also scored highest on measures of rationalization,...