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Byline: Dan Vergano, USA TODAY Stephen Hawking, one of the world's foremost theoretical physicists, has died at age 76. On the cover of the Oxford Dictionary of Scientists, Hawking appeared [...]

Byline: Dan Vergano, @dvergano, USA TODAY Mummies and myths go together, but modern science is shedding a little light on some of our more musty ideas about ancient Egypt's dead. [...]

Byline: Dan Vergano, USA TODAY, The winds that steered Superstorm Sandy straight into the East Coast look less likely to return in the future, suggests a climate forecast out Monday. [...]

Byline: Dan Vergano, @dvergano, USA TODAY Just being broke, in and of itself, damages people's abilities to make good decisions in a way roughly equivalent to losing 13 IQ points, [...]

Byline: Dan Vergano, @dvergano, USA TODAY The flattening over the past 15 years of a rise in the world's average surface temperature springs from a natural cooling pattern in the [...]

Byline: Dan Vergano, @dvergano, USA TODAY Shades of Darth Vader and demonic possession? Brain researchers say that for the first time, one person has remotely triggered another person's movement, a [...]

Byline: Dan Vergano, @dvergano, USA TODAY What's the matter with Kansas? The farm state is running out of water over the long term, reports a water study released Monday, which [...]

Byline: Dan Vergano, @dvergano, USA TODAY Put out the lawn chair, set the alarm and maybe bring something to wet your whistle while you gaze into the nighttime sky -- [...]

Byline: Dan Vergano, @dvergano, USA TODAY Bottlenose dolphins are dying from Virginia to New York, with at least 124 strandings reported since July, federal wildlife officials said Thursday. That's a [...]

Byline: Dan Vergano, @dvergano, USA TODAY An international archaeology team on Wednesday reported the discovery of a 'stunning' stucco wall sculpture, its colors intact, unearthed in Guatemala beneath a Maya [...]

Byline: Dan Vergano, @dvergano, USA TODAY Relatives of unknowing cell-donor Henrietta Lacks, the subject of the best seller The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, now being made into a movie [...]

Byline: Dan Vergano, @dvergano, USA TODAY Pelicans and pickups roam the beach, where the waves roll in and return, lapping over the open water of the Gulf of Mexico. The [...]

Byline: Dan Vergano Beachgoers in the USA have had an active summer, but this season has been a snoozer for storms. (Not that we're complaining.) That's despite predictions of an [...]

Byline: Dan Vergano, @dvergano, USA TODAY The gold glinting on your wedding band and all that gold in Fort Knox probably came out of an explosive collision of rare stars [...]

Byline: Dan Vergano, @dvergano, USA TODAY An effort to create the world's largest marine reserve off Antarctica as a haven for seals, whales, penguins and diminishing fish populations comes up [...]

Byline: Dan Vergano, USA TODAY, Data from the Hubble Space Telescope has helped determine that a planet orbiting a nearby star likely shares Earth's deep-blue tones, but the similarities stop [...]

Byline: Dan Vergano, @dvergano, USATODAY After months of secret digging, antiquity officials in Peru announced Thursday the discovery of an ancient tomb filled with golden treasure, three queens and the [...]

Byline: Dan Vergano, @dvergano, USA TODAY Researchers said Wednesday that they have been able to unravel the genetic blueprint of a prehistoric horse that lived in Canada about 700,000 years [...]

Byline: Dan Vergano, @dvergano, USA TODAY Drinking water wells near natural gas 'fracking' sites were six times more likely to be contaminated than others, finds a new study of New [...]

Byline: Dan Vergano, @dvergano, USA TODAY Pocahontas, Capt. John Smith and Chief Powhatan get their due today in a dedication ceremony that preserves the village site that made them famous. [...]

Byline: Dan Vergano, @dvergano, USA TODAY Al Capone. Elliott Ness. The St. Valentine's Day Massacre. Lots of myths surround the colorful names and events in the world of organized crime. [...]

Byline: Dan Vergano, @dvergano, USA TODAY Vikings. Attila the Hun. Cavemen. Meet the in-laws, or rather, those genetic relatives you didn't expect to find on your family tree. Amid the [...]

Byline: Dan Vergano, @dvergano, USA TODAY I'm not even much of a Neanderthal. Only 1.5% of my genes are traceable to the doughty cavemen who ruled Europe for hundreds of [...]

Byline: Dan Vergano, @dvergano, USA TODAY Federal officials on Tuesday proposed declaring captive chimpanzees as endangered, a status accorded to wild chimps. Released by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, [...]

Byline: Dan Vergano, @dvergano, USATODAY Federal managers are taking the wrong approach on wild horse populations and should focus more on contraception rather than rounding up and removing the herds [...]

Byline: Dan Vergano, @dvergano, USATODAY You know that it would be untrue, you know that it would be a lie, if we were to say to you that paleontologists don't [...]

Byline: Dan Vergano, @dvergano, USA TODAY Diving deep and living to tell the tale, James Cameron sees no divide between his life as a deep-sea explorer and an award-winning filmmaker. [...]

Byline: Dan Vergano, @dvergano, USATODAY A journey to Mars would pose significant radiation risks to astronauts -- akin to a full-body CT scan almost every week, says a NASA Curiosity [...]

Byline: Dan Vergano, @dvergano, USA TODAY washington Antique books by Isaac Newton and other historical figures, lifted from an Italian church by a G.I. during World War II, were returned [...]

Byline: Dan Vergano, @dvergano, USA TODAY Reigniting the cloning debate, researchers have achieved a first: cloning human embryos to create embryonic stem cells that may be key to future treatments [...]

Byline: Dan Vergano, @dvergano, USA TODAY Pass the cicadas -- a United Nations report calls for bringing bugs to your next picnic. On the menu, that is. Along with providing [...]

Byline: Dan Vergano, @dvergano, USA TODAY Archaeologists presented physical evidence Wednesday confirming what had long been suspected: that colonists of Jamestown, Va., resorted to cannibalism during the 'starving time' winter [...]

Byline: Dan Vergano, @dvergano, USA TODAY 'I'd never seen the river that high,' says Susan Hammond. 'But I was pretty certain the bridge wasn't going anywhere.' She was wrong. On [...]

Byline: Dan Vergano, @dvergano, USA TODAY 'Big Blue' is exploring the small screen. And movies don't get any smaller than A Boy And His Atom, an atomic-scale flick released by [...]

Byline: Dan Vergano, @dvergano, USA TODAY A newly discovered mouse hormone may open the door to better treatment for diabetes, researchers suggested Thursday. The hormone, called betatrophin, triggers the growth [...]

Byline: Dan Vergano, @dvergano, USA TODAY The ancient Maya started building their storied cities as early as 1000 B.C., two centuries earlier than suspected, archaeologists reported Thursday. The city development [...]

Byline: Dan Vergano, @dvergano, USA TODAY Earth is looking a little less lonely after NASA astronomers reported Thursday the discovery of three more Earth-size worlds orbiting nearby stars in ocean-friendly [...]

Byline: Dan Vergano, @dvergano, USA TODAY Which came first, the dinosaur or the egg? The discovery of 190-million-year-old fossilized dinosaur eggshells and bones suggests that whichever it was, it grew [...]

Byline: Dan Vergano, @dvergano, USA TODAY So much for that nice smile and neat haircut -- women are indeed looking for a well-endowed guy, suggests a study of male attractiveness. [...]