Christen Brownlee

All Stories by Christen Brownlee

  1. Tech

    Is Anybody out There?

    To speed the search for extraterrestrial life, researchers are using extreme conditions on Earth to develop a flotilla of detection devices to tease out signs of life in unlikely places.

  2. Ecosystems

    Life Underfoot: Microbial biodiversity takes surprising twist

    When it comes to numbers of bacterial species, rainforest dirt is virtually a desert, but desert dirt bursts with biodiversity.

  3. Pumping Out Hope: Stem cells secrete brain-preserving protein

    Researchers have turned stem cells into living drug pumps that could eventually treat Parkinson's disease.

  4. Shades of Flesh Tone: Tests reveal gene for people’s skin color

    Researchers have identified a gene that they propose plays a major role in determining a person's skin color.

  5. The Sum of the Parts

    Some researchers are breaking genomes into a collection of parts and precisely reassembling them to do a scientist's bidding.

  6. Arbiter of Taste: Energy molecule transmits flavor to brain

    The energy molecule ATP may play a pivotal role in conveying information about foods' taste to the brain.

  7. Cognition down in apple-shaped seniors

    Weight gain around the waist could go hand in hand with decreasing cognitive function as people age.

  8. Health & Medicine

    Pomegranate juice could fight Alzheimer’s

    Drinking pomegranate juice, already linked to a host of positive health effects, may also slow the progression of Alzheimer's disease.

  9. Spurned lovers’ brains reflect risk evaluation, pain

    Using scanning technology, scientists can see the feelings of hurt, longing, and craving associated with a bad breakup reflected in the brains of recently rejected lovers.

  10. Insomniac brains are both asleep and awake

    Brains affected by sleep-induced insomnia function as if both asleep and awake.

  11. Danger Mouse: Deleting a gene transforms timid rodents into daredevils

    By removing one gene from a mouse's standard repertoire, scientists have turned a timid animal into an intrepid one.

  12. Health & Medicine

    Monthly cycle changes women’s brains

    Activity in a brain region that regulates emotions fluctuates over the course of a woman's menstrual cycle.