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First Responders, Rescuers Come Forward With PTSD

Michael Ferrara with his German shepherd, Lhotse, at the top of Colorado's Independence Pass Paolo Marchesi/Outside hide caption

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Paolo Marchesi/Outside

Mental Health

First Responders, Rescuers Come Forward With PTSD

Post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, is usually associated with the battlefield. But it's also turning up in civilian first responders -- search-and-rescue personnel, paramedics and firefighters. Now those communities are trying to destigmatize the disorder and get help to those in need.

The Year In Fear: Fright Or Fallacy?

Fear The Prius? A Toyota Prius hybrid model car waits for customers at a Toyota dealer in Hollywood, Calif., on March 10. Concerns about the cars suddenly accelerating dogged the company earlier this year. Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

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Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images

The Year In Fear: Fright Or Fallacy?

From runaway Toyotas and toxic oil dispersants to "Frankenfish" and tainted eggs, 2010 was a year of big fears -- and some big overreactions. But what kind of risk was actually involved in some of the news stories that scared us the most?

NASA Spacecraft Finds Its 2,000th Comet

In the 15 years since its December 1995 launch, the SOHO spacecraft has doubled the number of comets sighted in the previous 300 years. Alex Lutkus/NASA/ESA hide caption

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Alex Lutkus/NASA/ESA

Space

NASA Spacecraft Finds Its 2,000th Comet

A satellite orbiting the sun detected its 2,000th comet after 15 years in space. But the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, known as SOHO, wasn't designed as a comet-hunting spacecraft; its primary research goal is to study the outer atmosphere of the sun.

Sci-Fi To Fact: Planet Hunters Find Worlds Like Earth

The inner four planets of the Gliese 581 system orbit the host star, a red dwarf 20 light-years from Earth, in this rendering from a National Science Foundation artist. The planet in the foreground has a 37-day orbit and, like Earth, is far enough from the star for liquid water to exist. Lynette Cook/via NASA hide caption

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Lynette Cook/via NASA

Space

Sci-Fi To Fact: Planet Hunters Find Worlds Like Earth

As recently as 20 years ago, no one knew if planets outside our solar system existed. But now we know of more than 500. The biggest astronomy headlines in 2010 came from the quest for planets far outside our solar system that are similar to Earth.

The Hunt Is On: Massive Collider Churning Out Data

One of the goals of the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider is to search for the Higgs boson, a particle that scientists say gives everything in the universe mass. For scale, note the workers toward the bottom of the image. Maximilien Brice/CERN hide caption

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Maximilien Brice/CERN

The Hunt Is On: Massive Collider Churning Out Data

The world's largest science experiment, the Large Hadron Collider, roared to life this year beneath the French-Swiss border. It's now churning out mountains of data from high-speed collisions that researchers will scour, trying to find the elusive Higgs Boson, a particle long pursued by scientists.