All Stories
- Math
Father-son mathematicians fold math into fonts
MIT’s Erik and Martin Demaine create puzzle typefaces to test new ideas.
- Neuroscience
Music soothes the aging brain in film ‘Alive Inside’
A social worker highlighted in a new documentary goes on a quest to bring tunes to nursing homes.
- Health & Medicine
Rat moms’ behavior reflected in their babies’ brains
Grooming, nursing and other maternal behaviors cause brain signal changes in offspring, a study in rats finds.
- Astronomy
The craziest NASA mission ever proposed
In this issue, Meghan Rosen provides an in-depth report on that mission, but without the erroneous conclusion that the Asteroid Redirect Mission has much to do with asteroid defense.
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- Planetary Science
NASA bets on asteroid mission as best path to Mars
NASA wants to bag an asteroid using robotic arms or an enormous sack and place the rock in the moon’s orbit for study. This may keep astronauts working but not, as NASA claims, get them Mars-ready.
- Oceans
Mercury at ocean surface may have tripled since preindustrial times
Questions remain over dangers of toxic metal in environment.
- Neuroscience
For neurons, birthday matters
How brain cells make their connections during development still isn’t well understood. A new study shows that in the eye, a neuron’s birthday makes a difference in how it finds its targets.
- Psychology
Bilingual homes may give babies a learning lift
Hearing two languages during the first six months of life linked to an early mental advantage.
- Computing
Brain-inspired computer chip mimics 1 million neurons
By processing data in parallel, computer chips modeled after the human brain could perform certain tasks, such as pattern recognition, faster and more energy-efficiently than traditional computers.
- Animals
Here’s your chance to see the last passenger pigeon
On display for the 100th anniversary of her species’ extinction, the final passenger pigeon specimen looks pretty good.
- Earth
Cloud seeding fueled fire about weather modification
Experiments in 1964 resulted in “exploding” clouds.
