Feature
-
Gray Matters
Once believed to be a supporting cast, the brain cells called astrocytes appear to play important roles in many brain scenarios.
- Health & Medicine
Blood Relatives
After decades of research, several companies are about to release the first line of artificial blood products.
- Health & Medicine
Breathing on the Edge
Researchers are exploring how both sea-level lowlanders and high-altitude natives cope with low oxygen levels.
-
Things That Go Thump
There's a whole world of animal communication by vibration that researchers are now exploring.
- Humans
Where’s the Book?
Innovative curricula are moving science education away from a reliance on textbooks.
- Humans
Errant Texts
New studies lambaste popular middle-school science texts for being uninspiring, superficial, and error-ridden.
-
Learning in Waves
Learning plays a largely unappreciated role in mental development, according to researchers who examine the variety of tactics children adopt as they attempt to solve problems in mathematics and other areas.
- Health & Medicine
Making Sense of Centenarians
The number of centenarians is expected to double every ten years, making this formerly rare group one of the fastest-growing in the developed world. Researchers are turning to studies of the oldest old to determine how genes, lifestyle, and social factors contribute to longevity.
- Physics
Jiggling the Cosmic Ooze
Spurred by the first tentative sightings after a decades-old search, physicists seeking the universe's mass-giving particle — the Higgs boson — have fired up the world's highest-energy particle collider to join the pursuit.
-
Why Fly into a Forest Fire?
Scientists puzzle over why some wasps and beetles race to forest fires.
- Health & Medicine
The Good Trans Fat
One arcane family of fats may be tapped to treat or prevent a host of diseases.
- Astronomy
Mining the Sky
A proposed national virtual observatory, a mammoth computer database integrating spectra, images, and other information covering the entire sky, could usher in a new age of discovery in astronomy.
