Scientists have uncovered a trio of genes tied to migraine headaches, including one in which the link is exclusive to women, according to a new study.

Migraines are acutely debilitating headaches -- sometimes with an "aura", in which patients have the impression of seeing through frosted glass -- that strike up to 20 percent of the population.

By 2050, the coolest summers in the tropics and parts of the northern hemisphere will still be hotter than the most scorching summers since the mid-20th century if global warming continues apace, according to a new study.

Tropical regions in Africa, Asia and South America could see "the permanent emergence of unprecedented summer heat" even within the next decades, said the study, to be published later this month in the journal Climatic Change Letters.

The U.S. space agency on Friday launched a satellite to observe levels of salt on the surface of the world's oceans and measure how changes in salinity may be linked to future climate.

The $400 million Aquarius/SAC-D spacecraft, a partnership with Argentina, launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at 7:20 am Pacific time (1420 GMT).

After nearly three years, the bloom of a rare flower at a Washington state university finally came up, but it didn't smell like roses.

The University of Washington Biology department says its so-called corpse flower opened after midnight and unleashed its stink of rotting meat on the hundreds waiting.

A pair of NASA probes wandering in deep space discovered that the outer edge of the solar system contains curious magnetic bubbles and is not smooth as previously thought, astronomers said Thursday.

The NASA Voyager twin spacecraft, which launched in 1977, are currently exploring the furthest outlays of the heliosphere, where solar wind is slowed and warped by pressure from other forces in the galaxy, the U.S. space agency said.

They exist for only seconds at most in real life, but they've gained immortality in chemistry: Two new elements have been added to the periodic table.

The elements were recognized by an international committee of chemists and physicists. They're called elements 114 and 116 for now — permanent names and symbols will be chosen later.

A new telescope designed to map the stars in unprecedented detail has delivered astonishing images in its trial run, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) said on Wednesday.

The VLT Survey Telescope, or VST, has been built on a mountain top in northern Chile's Atacama Desert, benefitting from viewing conditions in one of the driest and least light-polluted places on Earth.

An unusual solar flare observed by a NASA space observatory on Tuesday could cause some disruptions to satellite communications and power on Earth over the next day or so, officials said.

The potent blast from the Sun unleashed a firestorm of radiation on a level not witnessed since 2006, and will likely lead to moderate geomagnetic storm activity by Wednesday, according to the National Weather Service.

Cucumbers may be out of favor on earth, but a Japanese astronaut said Monday that he plans to harvest the vegetable on board the International Space Station.

Satoshi Furukawa is set to blast off early Wednesday for a half-year stint in orbit along with Russian cosmonaut Sergei Volkov and NASA astronaut Michael Fossum.

Apple chief executive Steve Jobs is taking a break from medical leave on Monday to preside over the opening of the company's annual conference for software developers.

And in a break from Apple's usual practice of shrouding its events in an air of mystery, the California gadget-maker this time revealed ahead of time what it plans to announce at the event in San Francisco.