Do humans really wear their hearts on their sleeve? An ambitious Australian neuroscience project aiming to translate emotional impulses directly into music is hoping to find out.

Canadian artist Erin Gee describes it as "human voices in electronic bodies", and there is a definite futuristic feel to her collaboration with the University of Western Sydney's medical school.

U.S. astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first person to set foot on the moon, has died, U.S. media reported Saturday. He was 82.

Armstrong underwent cardiac bypass surgery, earlier this month after doctors found blockages in his coronary arteries. He and fellow Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon on July 20, 1969, before the eyes of hundreds of millions of awed television viewers worldwide.

Thunderstorms have ruined NASA's second attempt to launch a pair of science satellites.

For the second day in a row, NASA had to halt the countdown for its Radiation Belt Storm Probes.

NASA has delayed the launch of its newest science satellites.

The countdown proceeded all the way down to the four-minute mark early Friday morning at Cape Canaveral in Florida. But a problem cropped up with the rocket's tracking beacon, a mandatory safety item.

Viewers can now relive the drama of the Curiosity rover's landing on Mars with a new NASA video detailing the final moments of touchdown.

The space agency Thursday posted the video on its website embedded with audio from mission control. It starts with the heat shield falling away. The ground grows larger in view as Curiosity is lowered by cables inside an ancient Martian crater. "Touchdown confirmed" is heard followed by cheers.

A unique species of near-toothless rat that lives off earthworms and doesn't chew or gnaw has been seen in Indonesia.

The shrew-like animal with a long, pointed snout was described online in this week's British journal Biology Letters. Paucidentomys vermidax, which translates loosely to "few-toothed rat" and "worm eater," is the only rodent out of more than 2,200 known species that does not have molars and instead has bicuspid upper incisors, it said.

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity on Wednesday made its first test drive, leaving wheel tracks near its landing spot -- now dubbed "Bradbury Landing" in honor of late science fiction author Ray Bradbury.

"Curiosity today had its first successful drive on Mars. We have a fully functioning mobility system on our rover," said Matt Haverly, the lead rover planner at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.

Italian holidaymakers had more than just a lazy day in the sun Wednesday after a rare visit from a blue shark that came to wallow just 10 meters from a beach outside Rome, said local coastguard.

Swimmers were ordered out of the water as a precaution though the 1.5-meter long shark -- tempted inshore to bathe in hotter-than-usual water temperatures in the Mediterranean as southern Europe swelters under a heatwave -- was thought to be harmless.

An ice core extracted from an Antarctic islet has yielded further evidence of the impact of man-made warming on the frozen continent, fuelling concern for the future of ice shelves, a report said Wednesday.

The 364-meter ice core drilled from James Ross Island on the Antarctic peninsula has been studied in laboratories in Europe for the past four years, for its 15,000-year record of snowfalls holds clues about climate shift.

Taiwanese researchers said Thursday they have developed a strain of rice that cooks particularly soft for elderly people to meet the needs of a rapidly greying society.

The new strain was developed by the Miaoli District Agricultural Research And Extension Station in central Taiwan after a decade-long process and was expected to hit the market next year, they said.