With gargantuan ears, gleaming brown eyes, a fuzzy white muzzle and a squat, furry body, Leonardo looks like a magical creature from a Harry Potter book. He’s actually a robot powered by an innovative set of silicon innards. Like a typical 6-year-old child, but unlike standard robots that come preprogrammed with inflexible rules for thinking, Leonardo adopts the perspectives of people he meets and then acts on that knowledge. Leonardo’s creators, scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Personal Robots Group and special effects aces at the Stan Winston Stu... (p. 24)

An investigation of a man who received a successful hand transplant suggests that reorganization of sensory maps in the brain following amputation can be reversed in short order.

A new chemical analysis of skeletons at the Inca site of Machu Picchu strengthens the idea that the royal estate was maintained by retainers who had been uprooted from homes throughout the empire.

Excavations in two Gibraltar caves suggest that Neandertals, like modern humans, regularly visited the Mediterranean shore to complement a land-based diet with seafood

Religious believers shown pictures that evoke spiritual responses display brain activity that may contribute to feeling relief from physical pain, a new study finds. (p. 9)

A new study links math achievement with individual differences in the ability to rapidly estimate quantities.

Investigators have discovered the remains of 3,000-year-old beehives in Israel, offering a glimpse of the oldest known beekeeping operation.

New fossil discoveries elevate ancient Pacific islanders, with disputed implications for controversial hobbit remains in Indonesia.