Feature
- Planetary Science
A New Flight Plan
President Bush recently unveiled an ambitious plan for a manned mission to Mars, using the moon as a testing area and stepping-stone, but for many planetary scientists the moon is a desirable destination in and of itself.
- Health & Medicine
Born to Heal
The controversial strategy of screening embryos to produce donors for siblings raises hopes and presents new ethical dilemmas.
- Tech
Body Builders
By growing stem cells on three- dimensional polymer scaffolds, tissue engineers hope to mimic natural tissue development and ultimately produce replacement body parts.
- Earth
Killer Waves
Scientists are using sophisticated computer models, field studies of coastal geology, and data from tidal gauges to assess the tsunami risk for coastal residents.
- Health & Medicine
Inflammatory Fat
Immune system cells may underlie much of the disease-provoking injury in obese individuals that has been linked to their excess fat.
- Computing
Straining for Speed
Hitting fundamental limits on how small they can make certain structures within semiconductor transistors, chip makers are deforming the silicon crystals from which those transistors are made to eke out some extra speed.
- Math
Computation’s New Leaf
Plants in which large numbers of simple units interact with one another appear to compute how to coordinate the actions of their cells effectively.
- Astronomy
Bare-Naked Galaxies
A decade's worth of observations is spotlighting how the vast sea of gas surrounding a cluster of galaxies can alter the shape of a galaxy plowing through it.
- Tech
Diagnosing the Developing World
Researchers are learning how to adapt sophisticated technologies to meet the health-care needs of the developing world.
-
Code Breakers
Chemical tags applied to proteins that DNA wraps around regulate genetic activity.
- Animals
Where’d I Put That?
Birds that hide and recover thousands of separate caches of seeds have become a model for investigating how animals' minds work.
-
