Artemis may look like any other goat, but a little human DNA inserted into her genetic code gives her life-saving potential. This University of California, Davis wonder produces milk rich in the bacteria-busting enzyme lysozyme, a compound that could help prevent some of the hundreds of thousands of deaths from diarrhea worldwide each year. 05.16.13 | more >>

In late 1942, less than a year after Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government began snapping up property in eastern Tennessee. Within a matter of months, approximately 59,000 acres of farms and orchards, homesteads and hovels just south of the Black Oak Ridge hosted immense construction sites that became the home of supersecret facilities used to enrich uranium for the Manhattan Project. Kiernan ... 05.16.13 | more >>

It’s no coincidence that the word “visceral” refers both to entrails and to the sensation one feels on a roller coaster. We humans have a love-hate relationship with our guts, and Roach’s latest book capitalizes on that mix of fascination and repulsion to lure us into reading about the digestive system. 05.03.13 | more >>

Proponents of the paleo diet believe the mismatch between today’s Western lifestyle and that of early humans is making us fat and sick. Our bodies haven’t had time to adapt to our new ways of life, the thinking goes, so eating like our ancestors is the ticket to good health. 05.03.13 | more >>

Poor Brontosaurus. First named in 1879 when a paleontologist mistook an Apatosaurus skeleton for a new type of long-necked sauropod, Brontosaurus may be the most well-known dinosaur that never existed. Though the error was corrected in scientific circles as early as 1903, the iconic behemoth lingered in museums, movies and the public imagination for decades. 04.18.13 | more >>

In the 1970s, most classical musicians were men. Nobody thought much of it until some orchestras started concealing applicants’ gender. As such blind auditions became more common over the next 20 years, the proportion of women hired into major symphony orchestras doubled from 20 percent to 40 percent. 04.18.13 | more >>

Just as a campfire feeds off random wind gusts, well-prepared people and organizations can benefit from volatility and chance events, risk researcher and former derivatives trader Taleb argues. But more often, he says, modern institutions handle unexpected jolts — say, the recent financial crisis — about as well as a candle flame resists a windstorm. 04.04.13 | more >>

Most popular books on physics attempt to explain ideas without equations (the popular dogma says that each equation cuts sales in half). But when the book’s advertised purpose is to provide the (minimum) knowledge needed to actually do physics, equations are a must. And this book is full of them. 04.04.13 | more >>

Armchair naturalists will delight in following Dinerstein as he treks the globe to find uncommon species and figure out why they are rare. Through field investigations and other research, this conservation biologist with the World Wildlife Fund comes to a rather startling conclusion: The majority of Earth’s nonmicroscopic species are rare — and probably always have been. 03.20.13 | more >>

Swiss-born Louis Agassiz was the most famous naturalist in America in the mid-19th century. When he died in 1873, people across the United States mourned the loss of their favorite scientist. 03.20.13 | more >>

The four-color map problem can be understood by a bright fourth-grader (the question: whether four colors are enough to ensure that no two countries with a common border share a color). By junior high, most kids can grasp prime numbers and learn something about their properties and patterns. High school algebra students can comprehend what Fermat’s last theorem means. Yet these topics have ... 03.07.13 | more >>

If the makers of Downton Abbey want to capitalize on the popularity of costume dramas, they might look for their next Lady Mary in Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. Shelley’s life needs no em­bellishment, complete with preposterous plots and love triangles set in an era of intense scientific curiosity about the human body. In this biography, Montillo explores how the science of that ... 03.07.13 | more >>

The first chapter of Fabricated is set a few decades in the future: In your kitchen a 3-D printer outfitted with food cartridges cooks up breakfast, while across the street a giant printing nozzle oozes out the concrete foundation of a new home. At work, you’re investigating the bioprinting black market, wherein counterfeiters sell sloppily printed organs for transplants. The scenario seems ... 02.21.13 | more >>

In the wake of the Manhattan Project and the Apollo program, almost anything seemed possible. And some scientists of the late 20th century went beyond the fanciful notions of futurists and science fiction writers to seriously explore where technology might take humans, society and culture. 02.21.13 | more >>

Who wouldn’t want to think like Sherlock Holmes? Just imagine all the mysteries one could solve: nabbing murderers, foiling villains and locating prize racehorses. 02.07.13 | more >>

There’s a war on in America’s neighborhoods. In the past few decades, a confluence of three trends has brought man and beast into increasing conflict: the rebound of wildlife populations from near-historic lows, human populations’ growing sprawl and the regrowth of forests on abandoned farmlands, especially in the Northeast. 02.07.13 | more >>

While traditional peoples linger at the outskirts of modern society as curious exceptions, Jared Diamond makes a case that they also offer a glimpse of our ancient selves. Their way of life stands in contrast with modern lifestyles, which changed for most humans only “yesterday” in evolutionary terms. 01.24.13 | more >>

On the heels of his previous book Cold, biologist Bill Streever takes the next logical step and sets out to understand what happens, scientifically speaking, when things get hot. 01.24.13 | more >>

There’s no shortage of smart, literate physicists — think Lisa Randall, Steven Weinberg or Brian Greene — whose popular writings bring the universe into sharp focus. But Neil Turok, director of Canada’s Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, also brings humanity into the mix of cosmic questions. 01.10.13 | more >>

Despite a reputation for being worse than damned lies, statistics conquered its enemies during the 20th century and now reigns over science. What happens in a scientific experiment is considered unworthy of serious consideration (that is, you can’t get it published) unless formulas determine that the result is “statistically significant.” 01.10.13 | more >>

Just before a migraine, New York Times blogger Siri Hustvedt had an amiable encounter with a tiny pink man and an equally tiny pink ox. The odd pair wandered around her bedroom a bit before vanishing. “I have often wished they would return,” she writes, “but they never have.” 12.27.12 | more >>

Reading the first book penned by Church, a Harvard biologist and polymath, is like falling down a rabbit hole straight into his fermenting brain. 12.27.12 | more >>

According to one popular notion, everyone has a twin somewhere. Who knows, maybe the same is true for planets. Maybe there’s even a doppelgänger Earth orbiting at just the right distance from a sunlike star to support life. In his latest book, science writer Lemonick provides a behind-the-scenes look at the decades-long search for just such a planet. The endeavor, long considered a ... 12.13.12 | more >>

The world could end any number of ways — and in a sense it already has, many times, in mass extinctions that paved the way for new life. 11.29.12 | more >>

There seems no end to the titles shoved on the unsuspecting Higgs boson. First it was the “God particle.” Now it’s the “particle at the end of the universe.” 11.29.12 | more >>

Human vision is a curious sense, providing the brain with information about the external world, but not interpreting it. Vision provides only raw data; the brain’s innate Photoshop software constructs a visual reality that depends on how the brain has learned to comprehend what it sees. In other words, thinking and seeing are not separate. So when Wells writes about how ancient Europeans ... 11.16.12 | more >>

“My father was a psychopath,” Dutton admits in his introduction. Never violent, Dutton’s dad was charming, ruthless and fearless. He wasn’t Hannibal Lecter, just a very good salesman. 11.16.12 | more >>

It’s what we breathe. On the move, it brings wind and weather. As it vibrates, it communicates sound. It’s hard to imagine a facet of life in which air is not a prime player. That’s Logan’s thesis, and he has constructed a veritable symphony of variations on it. 11.02.12 | more >>

In 1994, an earthquake knocked out electricity in Los Angeles, delivering previously unknown darkness to many residents. Some were alarmed by a silvery light in the black sky. Until then, apparently, the only Milky Way they had ever seen was a candy bar. But perhaps they got some good shut-eye that night. 11.02.12 | more >>

The world would be a better place, it is safe to say, if everybody had a basic understanding of mathematics and an appreciation for its scope and power. Economics, science and medicine, energy and the environment and diverse realms of public policy all depend on math as a guide to factual accuracy, sound judgment and intelligent opinion. 10.19.12 | more >>