By DAVID PERLMAN, San Francisco Chronicle

Scientists have decoded the words in the secret chemical language of Argentine ants, a discovery that could lead to an environmentally benign pesticide against the insects.

SAN FRANCISCO - The Hayward Fault is creeping, and that could be a good sign.

Along many segments of the fault, from the hills of Oakland's Montclair Village to the Chapel of the Chimes in Union City, scientists have been busy this week measuring the fault's tiny underground motions to learn more about that most dangerous of all the seismic strands that run through the Bay Area.

Once upon a time in the long evolution of Homo sapiens, a band of our African ancestors learned to use fire for more than cooking meat, lighting the dark or warding off attacking animals.

Astronomers around the world are all agog over an immense scar larger than the Pacific Ocean that has suddenly appeared on the surface of Jupiter.
Some unknown comet or asteroid must have just crashed into the giant planet's upper atmosphere to cause the scar, the astronomers believe.

From time to time, Bill Borucki wanders into a large white structure that looms like a stranded blimp near his office at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., and takes a look at one of the striking exhibits there.

From chaos we all began, and to chaos we'll all return, but not for a very, very long time -- 5 billion years or so, more or less.

California's vast delta, where the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers pour their waters toward the sea, could be in serious danger when the next major earthquake strikes along the Hayward Fault -- or on any of the other faults that make up the San Andreas zone, scientists have long warned.

The rapid spread of the influenza virus called swine flu to the United States and other nations has changed what was a serious epidemic confined to Mexico into a potential "pandemic" -- a disease that threatens to spread around the world before it is stopped.

Scientists at major medical centers in the United States, the drug industry and AIDS advocates are calling for a new research effort to defeat, once and for all, the viral infections that have caused the global AIDS epidemic.
Worldwide more than 2 million people die from AIDS each year, despite the antiviral drugs that are keeping other millions alive..

Scientists at major medical centers in the United States, the drug industry and AIDS advocates are calling for a new research effort to defeat, once and for all, the viral infections that have caused the global AIDS epidemic.
Worldwide more than 2 million people die from AIDS each year, despite the antiviral drugs that are keeping other millions alive..