Feature
- Earth
Crisis on Tap?
Because people are becoming ever more dependent on underground aquifers as sources of water, scientists are striving to understand better how groundwater systems interact with the water that flows across Earth's surface.
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- Chemistry
Buckymedicine
Scientists are turning carbon-cage molecules called fullerenes into drug candidates and medical diagnostic tools.
- Astronomy
Let There Be Spin
X-ray outbursts from two different pairs of stars in our Milky Way are providing clues about how the most rapidly rotating stars in the universe got their spin.
- Physics
Double or Nothing
The hunt for a rare, hypothetical nuclear transformation known as neutrinoless double-beta decay may answer one of the most urgent questions in physics today: How much do elementary particles called neutrinos weigh?
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Aphids with Attitude
A few aphid species that live socially in groups raise their own armies of teenage female clones.
- Earth
Pharm Pollution
Antibiotics in sewage sludge and manure have the potential to poison plants or end up in food.
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Evolutionary Shocker?
A specific protein may help plants and animals store genetic variation and release it at times of stress.
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Numbers in Mind
Initial reports of babies' basic counting abilities have inspired a wave of new research and a spirited debate about what infants really know about numbers.
- Earth
Presto, Change-o!
Compared with the snail's-pace processes that normally shape Earth's surface, the impacts of extraterrestrial objects change our planet's geology in a flash.
- Health & Medicine
Standing Up to Gravity
Studies in space can help physicians better understand a disorder in which patients get faint or dizzy while standing.
- Astronomy
Cosmic Dawn
New computer simulations suggest that the first stars in the universe were extremely massive and left behind gamma-ray bursts that may already have been detected by telescopes orbiting Earth.
