Humans
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Health & Medicine
Microbes clean up mercury
Researchers think a microbe could clean up mercury-laced Native American artifacts.
- Humans
Fostering gains
New studies indicate that abused and neglected kids benefit from living with relatives and from high-quality foster care services.
- Agriculture
Green Living, Chinese-Style
Chinese is developing eco-cities to take their citizens straight from the agricultural to the ecological age.
- Earth
Natural heat
Heat from the decay of radioactive elements deep within the planet could meet Earth’s energy needs almost three times over — if we could harness all of it.
- Health & Medicine
A Faulty Eye Witness: Hallucinations
Treatment for Oliver Sacks' cancer damaged an eye and triggered something he never expected: his brain to display things that simply didn’t exist.
- Health & Medicine
A Faulty Eye Witness, Part I
Oliver Sacks shared observations from his latest journal on how losing sight in one eye changed a man's life. Sacks had intimate knowledge of every detail – because he’s the patient.
- Chemistry
Deciding Who’s First
Oxygen serves as the focus of who to credit with a discovery – and why.
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- Health & Medicine
High doses
Emergency room patients are exposed to high doses of radiation from CT scans and other nuclear medicine.
- Life
Tracing human roots
Using a new method of data analysis, researchers have found that the Americas were peopled in two different migrations.
- Climate
Already feeling the heat
Long-delayed U.S. government summary of climate change science sees effects on energy, transportation, farming, and water.
- Agriculture
Vertical Agriculture
Instead of farming in the country, one Columbia University scientist would do it in the city, spanning floor upon floor of buildings--from basements to the tops of high rise structures.
