Seattle, Washington - A spark from a lightning bolt, interstellar dust, or a subsea volcano could have triggered the very first life on Earth.

Los Angeles, California - Twitter has not been kind to public transit, a recent USC study shows. The nation’s top agencies earn more ire on the social media site than airlines and evoke as much disdain as police departments.

Cambridge, Massachusetts - Flexible smartphones and color-saturated television displays were some highlights at this year’s Consumer Electronics Showcase, held in January in Las Vegas.

Cambridge, Massachusetts - Some of the most prized violins in the world were crafted in the Italian workshops of Amati, Stradivari, and Guarneri - master violinmaking families from the 17th and 18th centuries who produced increasingly powerful instruments in the renaissance and baroque musical eras. These violins, worth millions of dollars today, represent the Cremonese period - what is now considered the golden age of violinmaking.

Cambridge, Massachusetts - Educational researchers have long held that presenting students with clear outlines of the material covered in lectures improves their retention.

Portland, Oregon - Assistant Attorney General John P. Carlin of the National Security Division and U.S. Attorney S. Amanda Marshall of the District of Oregon announced today that Reaz Qadir Khan, 50, a naturalized U.S. citizen residing in Portland, Oregon, pleaded guilty to the crime of accessory after the fact for providing assistance to individuals connected to the 2009 suicide bomb attack at the headquarters of Pakistan’s intelligence service that killed approximately 30 individuals and injured 300 more.