Feature
- Neuroscience
Brain shot
Deciphering how the brain’s circuitry produces thought and behavior is an ambitious and enticing goal on the scale of the Apollo Program or the Human Genome Project. But the neuroscientists involved in a new federal effort have many challenges ahead.
- Climate
Grape expectations
Global warming has delivered long, warm growing seasons and blockbuster vintages to the world’s great wine regions. But by mid-century, excessive heat will push premium wine-making into new territory.
- Earth
Life’s early traces
Tiny tufts, rolls and crinkles in 3.5-billion-year-old rocks add to a growing body of evidence suggesting that cellular life got a relatively quick start on Earth.
- Earth
The long and winding Colorado
The history of the West’s iconic river is written in the dramatic landscapes it has shaped. How to interpret that chronicle has become a contentious issue among geologists.
- Math
Tomorrow’s catch
A biologist who formerly applied his mathematical talents in finance has developed new ways of predicting the ups and downs of fish populations.
- Microbes
Microscopic menagerie
The microbes dwelling in and on multicellular organisms should be viewed as evolutionarily inseparable from their hosts, some biologists argue.
- Humans
Mother lode
Certain sugar molecules in human breast milk do more to foster beneficial microbes, and banish harmful ones, than they do to nourish newborns.
- Microbes
The vast virome
When it comes to the microbiome, bacteria get all the press. But virologists are starting to realize that their subjects also do a lot more than make people sick.
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- Life
Year in Review: Gift of steroids keeps on giving
Mouse muscles stay juiced long after doping ends.
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- Astronomy
Year in Review: Visitor from the Oort cloud
A visitor from the outer solar system flies past the sun.
