Feature
- Math
Pieces of Numbers
A long-sought proof has forged an intriguing link between numbers expressed as sums and as products.
- Anthropology
Faithful Ancestors
A controversial fossil analysis supports the view that, more than 3 million years ago, human ancestors living in eastern Africa favored long-term mating partnerships.
- Animals
Comeback Bird
Looking for a long-lost woodpecker had its special challenges, including anticipating what would happen if the hunt actually succeeded.
- Tech
Morphing Memory
A promising memory technology for future portable gadgets exploits the same atom-shuffling materials that have already led to rewritable CDs and DVDs.
- Ecosystems
Empty Nets
New research has begun challenging long-held assumptions about the consequences for fish stocks of harvesting the biggest fish first.
- Health & Medicine
Us against Them
New antibiotics may be valuable weapons in the fight against tougher bacteria.
- Planetary Science
Roving on the Red Planet
Scientists review the discoveries made by the Mars rovers after nearly 18 months on the Red Planet.
- Physics
Molecular Anatomy Revealed
Using ever-faster lasers to zap the electron clouds in atoms and molecules, scientists are making major strides toward observing and controlling the elementary quantum transformations that underlie all of chemistry.
- Earth
Muddy Waters
Even though human activities such as agriculture and deforestation are sending more sediment into streams and rivers, less of that material is reaching river deltas, a trend that exacerbates problems such as subsidence and coastal erosion.
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Learning to Listen
Disparate groups of creatures, including bats, toothed whales, and birds, have evolved biological sonar that they use to track prey, but other creatures have evolved ways to detect this sonar and thereby increase their odds of survival.
- Materials Science
Something to Chew On
Researchers are closer than ever to making synthetic enamel to improve dental implants and perhaps to grow a whole tooth from scratch.
- Ecosystems
Decades of Dinner
Sunken whale carcasses support unique marine ecosystems that display stages of succession and change, just as land ecosystems do.
