Feature
- Math
The Mind of the Swarm
Mathematics is helping explain how animals form flocks, swarms, and schools.
- Chemistry
Chemical Pop-Up Books
Chemists and engineers have designed two-dimensional structures that self-fold into functional, three-dimensional objects, such as miniature chemistry laboratories and drug-delivery devices.
- Anthropology
Evolution’s Mystery Woman
A heated debate has broken out among anthropologists over whether a highly publicized partial skeleton initially attributed to a new, tiny species of human cousins actually comes from a pygmy Homo sapiens with a developmental disorder.
- Earth
Dashing Rogues
Rogue waves, which tower over the waves that surround them, are probably more common than scientists had previously suspected.
- Ecosystems
Brave Old World
If one group of conservation biologists has its way, lions, cheetahs, elephants, and other animals that went extinct in the western United States up to 13,000 years ago might be coming home.
- Health & Medicine
The Antibiotic Vitamin
Because vitamin D turns on a major germ killer in the body, a deficiency in the nutrient may leave people especially vulnerable to infections.
- Humans
Ballot Roulette
In the midst of rapid change in voting technology, researchers are finding causes for concern as well as inventing new equipment and schemes to improve the accuracy and integrity of elections.
- Health & Medicine
The Cancer of Dorian Gray
By studying mice that have been engineered to carry mutations in certain tumor-suppressing genes, researchers have identified a link between cancer and aging.
- Planetary Science
Satanic Winds
Dust devils send prodigious amounts of dust into Earth's atmosphere, and on Mars the electric fields generated by the dusty vortices may actually stimulate changes in atmospheric chemistry that sterilize the soil.
- Animals
Why Play Dead?
Common wisdom dictates that playing dead discourages predators, but researchers are now thinking harder about how, or whether, that strategy really works.
- Math
Swirling Seas, Crystal Balls
A remarkable geometric shape made up of a sequence of triangles leads to a host of intriguing forms and mobile structures.
- Physics
Fit to Be Tied
Two new books present scathing critiques of string theory, which holds that the universe has 11 dimensions and that its fundamental building blocks are ultratiny loops of energy known as strings.
