Feature
- Computing
What a Flake
New ways to simulate ice-crystal growth yield patterns remarkably similar to the beautiful and intricate shapes of snowflakes and may shed light on how those real-life shapes come about.
- Health & Medicine
Salad Doubts
Researchers are looking into new ways to sanitize harvested produce and prevent foodborne pathogens from infecting people.
- Humans
Peer Review under the Microscope
The traditional method for communicating results of scientific research could get its biggest facelift in hundreds of years.
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The Predator’s Gaze
A new wave of research is trying to untangle the origins and nature of psychopathy, a personality style characterized by a lack of conscience, empathy, or guilt that attracts intense interest from the legal system.
- Health & Medicine
Milk Therapy
Breast milk has long been known to be the best food for babies, but compounds in breast milk promise to be a tonic for many adult ills as well.
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Inherit the Warmer Wind
The genetic makeup of organisms ranging from fruit flies to birds appears to be changing in response to global warming.
- Astronomy
What’s a Planet?
Recent observations have blurred distinctions among stars, brown dwarfs, and planets.
- Math
The Mind of the Swarm
Mathematics is helping explain how animals form flocks, swarms, and schools.
- Chemistry
Chemical Pop-Up Books
Chemists and engineers have designed two-dimensional structures that self-fold into functional, three-dimensional objects, such as miniature chemistry laboratories and drug-delivery devices.
- Anthropology
Evolution’s Mystery Woman
A heated debate has broken out among anthropologists over whether a highly publicized partial skeleton initially attributed to a new, tiny species of human cousins actually comes from a pygmy Homo sapiens with a developmental disorder.
- Earth
Dashing Rogues
Rogue waves, which tower over the waves that surround them, are probably more common than scientists had previously suspected.
- Ecosystems
Brave Old World
If one group of conservation biologists has its way, lions, cheetahs, elephants, and other animals that went extinct in the western United States up to 13,000 years ago might be coming home.
