Nancy Shute

If I tell you to make your way to NPR's headquarters from the NOMA Metro stop a few blocks away, odds are you'll get yourself here, no problem. But how?

By using two GPS systems in the brain, one that determines the direct distance to the destination, and another that ...

The crowd in a hotel ballroom in Washington, D.C., was rocking on Monday, the 2,000 people shrieking with excitement over federal health-care databases. That could only happen at Health Datapalooza, the annual summit for data geeks, doctors, researchers and patients who want to use data to transform health care — ...

Children who are maltreated are much more likely to have physical and mental health problems later on. They face a higher risk of suicide and of getting in trouble with the law.

But there's a big gap between the number of people who say they were abused or neglected as ...

Shakespeare calls Richard III "rudely stamp'd," with the king's "hunchbacked" form revealing the twisted soul within. Actors have reveled in playing the monarch as a limping, deformed creature with a withered arm.

But when the bones of the 15th century king were unearthed from beneath a British parking lot ...

If you think that teenagers are becoming weaklings, you're right.

Less than half of youths ages 12 to 15 are even close to being aerobically fit, according to data released Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

That's down from 52 percent of youths in 1999 to 2000, ...

Millions of older people have trouble walking a quarter of a mile, which puts them at high risk of losing their mobility, being hospitalized or dying.

But it's hard to get people who are already sedentary to become more active and stay that way.

In an attempt to solve that ...

Diabetes increases a woman's risk of dying from a heart attack or a stroke much more than it does for men, and scientists are trying to figure out why.

Women with diabetes were almost three times more likely to develop heart disease than women without the disease, a relative risk ...

The number of women getting double mastectomies after a breast cancer diagnosis has been rising in the past 10 years, even though most of them don't face a higher risk of getting cancer in the other breast.

That has cancer doctors troubled, because for those women having the other breast ...

Doctors are required to keep current on best medical practices, but those efforts all too often often don't do a thing to improve patient care. But what if the class is a game — one that lets you compete against other doctors and show off your smarts?

Plus you get ...

Minnesota has become the 22nd state to loosen restrictions on use of marijuana, with its legislature approving the sale and use of medical marijuana on May 15. Other states, including Florida, are considering similar measures.

These changes are happening fast, and we were wondering how people feel about this seemingly ...

Suicide remains a leading cause of death in the United States, especially among teenagers and young adults. Anything that could reduce the toll would be good.

But asking everyone who goes to the doctor if he is considering suicide isn't the answer, according to a federal panel that evaluated the ...

If you tell your doctor you'd like to stop drinking, odds are he's not going to give you a pill. That's too bad, a study says, because there are medications that can help people with drinking problems get off the sauce.

And they're not going to make you sick like ...

Women are often told they don't have to get a Pap test for cervical cancer if they're over 65, but the data behind that recommendation might underestimate their cancer risk, researchers say.

That's because many studies don't take into account that many women have had hysterectomies. The surgery removes a ...

Older people face higher risks in surgery, but not all 85-year-olds are alike. One may celebrate his birthday skydiving, like former president George H.W. Bush, while another may be unable to stand without help.

Since half of all surgery in the United States is performed on people 65 and older, ...

If you downloaded a fitness app and didn't become a workout ninja, it may be that the app lacked the scientifically tested motivational techniques that would help get you off the couch.

Instead, most popular fitness apps focus more on teaching you how to do the exercise, according to researchers ...

Just last week a friend told me about a gel polish manicure that stayed flawless through two weeks of mucking out stables and dish washing. Since I'm lucky if I get through a day without ruining polish, this seemed like a technological breakthrough.

Then I saw a report in ...

If you didn't know that spit makes a great spot remover or where prison inmates smuggle cellphones, author Mary Roach can fill you in. There's more than digestion going on down there.

As they say: Everything is bigger in Texas.

Today, the state's biggest power company filed for one of the biggest Chapter 11 bankruptcy filings in corporate history.

The filing also marks the colossal collapse of a heavily-leveraged $45 billion bet taken by Wall Street private equity firms. As The ...

Antidepressants are thought to increase the risk of suicide in young people, but that may be caused by starting them on larger doses of the drugs, a study finds.

Children and young adults who started taking selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor antidepressants in higher-than-average doses were twice as likely to attempt ...

Measles cases in the United States have spiked in the past four months, driven mostly by people traveling from the Philippines, which is in the midst of an explosive outbreak of the highly contagious virus. By April 18, 129 cases have been reported, the most in that time period since ...