The White House has asked the Supreme Court to uphold its healthcare law, inviting a possible high-stakes legal showdown just before the 2012 election. The administration’s move came after a challenge to the reform from 26 states and small businesses. The justice department asked the Supreme Court to declare the law’s key provision, requiring everyone [...]

In a speech on Sept. 23, President Obama gave a speech linking economic recovery with improved educational standards by proposing additional measures to reform the public school system. “We have to pick up our game,” he said, noting that America has fallen to 16th in the world in terms of percentage of college diplomas earned [...]

People march to the White House during the “Save Our Schools” rally in Washington, D.C., on July 30. Marchers chanted and carried signs expressing their demands after hearing speeches nearby. Teachers and their supporters gathered near the White House on Saturday afternoon to chant, cheer, and march for a variety of changes they hope to [...]

NASA’s chief Charlie Bolden will be at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Tuesday to announce where the space shuttles will spend their retirements. The 30-year-old shuttle program is ending this summer after two final flights to deliver a Hubble-class science instrument, known as the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, and a year’s worth of supplies [...]

The ongoing nuclear threat that followed a 9.0 magnitude earthquake in Japan led MTSU officials on Thursday to request nine undergraduate students studying abroad to return home, according to the university. At least one of the students has returned already. “We are always going to be sensitive to the response and welfare of our students [...]

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is recommending hospitals test living donors for the virus that causes AIDS no more than seven days before their organs are removed and transplanted, following the first documented U.S. case of HIV transmission from a live organ donor in more than two decades. According to an investigation by [...]

Treating Parkinson’s disease with gene therapy has been shown to be successful in clinical trials for the first time, say US researchers. The illness causes uncontrolled shaking, stiffness and slow movement as part of the brain dies. The small study in The Lancet Neurology used a virus to add genes to brain cells, which resulted [...]

Recent additions to the U.S. health-care reform law will provide college students with some minor benefits. Effective Jan. 1, 2012, new regulations will establish more accountability on the behalf of insurance providers. Because University-sponsored insurance is mandatory for students, these new regulations will not affect students’ ability to obtain health insurance coverage. In smaller ways, [...]

They worry that Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposed California budget will mean fewer classes, fewer services and fewer students getting the higher education they need to succeed. Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposals to slash state spending on higher education has triggered anxiety across California’s already budget-battered public colleges and universities about possible new waves of staff and [...]

Kepler-10b is ‘planetary missing link’ NASA has announced it’s nailed the first “bone-fide” [sic] rocky exoplanet, which at 1.4 times the diameter of Earth is the smallest such body spotted to date outside our solar system. As its name suggests, Kepler-10b was identified orbiting star Kepler-10 – at a distance of 560 light years from [...]