Feature
- Health & Medicine
Fixes for Fatty Liver
A slate of experimental treatments, including three established diabetes drugs, could become medicines for nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, an obesity-related cause of cirrhosis.
- Humans
Fractal or Fake?
A physicist who uses fractals to investigate the authenticity of some paintings attributed to Jackson Pollock finds that the works may be fake. But is the flaw in the paintings or in the fractal analysis?
- Astronomy
Studies of Light and Shadow
Two new surveys of the night sky examine the two facets of galaxy formation: the glitter and the gloom.
- Animals
What’s Going on Down There?
In a 10-year, global effort, researchers exploring the unknowns of marine life have found bizarre fish, living-fossil shrimp, giant microbes, and a lot of other new neighbors.
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Net Heads
With a new arsenal of mathematical approaches, neuroscientists are unraveling the surprisingly few steps messages take to traverse the vast networks of brain cells underlying thought and perception.
- Health & Medicine
Vice Vaccines
Vaccines currently in development could give people a novel way to kick their addictions and lose weight.
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Well-Tooled Primates
People may have leaned on ancient primate-brain capacities to begin making stone tools by 2.5 million years ago, a transition that possibly spurred the development of language and other higher mental faculties.
- Materials Science
Savvy Skins
Researchers are developing new coatings that incorporate multiple functions, offer chemical reactivity, or act in response to stimuli in the environment.
- Earth
Sudden Chill
Today's combination of nuclear proliferation, political instability, and urban demographics increases the likelihood that humankind could suffer a devastating nuclear winter.
- Earth
Aquatic Non-Scents
Many common pollutants appear to be jeopardizing the survival of fish and other aquatic species by blunting their sense of smell.
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Perchance to Hibernate
As scientists work to unravel the secrets of mammalian hibernation, they're eyeing medical applications that could aid wounded soldiers, stroke victims, and transplant recipients, among others.
- Earth
Counterintuitive Toxicity
Toxicologists risk missing important health effects, both good and bad, if they don't begin regularly probing the impacts of very low doses of poisons.
