Feature
- Health & Medicine
Epidemics have happened before and they’ll happen again. What will we remember?
A century’s worth of science has helped us fend off infectious pathogens. But we have a lot to learn from the people who lived and died during epidemics.
- Animals
Jumping spiders’ remarkable senses capture a world beyond our perception
Clever experiments and new technology are taking scientists deep into the lives of jumping spiders, and opening a portal to their experience of the world.
- Science & Society
How our SN 10 scientists have responded to tumultuous times
COVID-19, social justice movements and the realities of climate change have given our Scientists to Watch new perspective.
- Astronomy
When James Webb launches, it will have a bigger to-do list than 1980s researchers suspected
The James Webb Space Telescope has been in development for so long that space science has changed in the meantime.
- Chemistry
Radiometric dating puts pieces of the past in context. Here’s how
Carbon dating and other techniques answer essential questions about human history, our planet and the solar system.
- Climate
Rice feeds half the world. Climate change’s droughts and floods put it at risk
Rice provides sustenance for billions who have no alternative, and climate change threatens to slash production. Growers will need to innovate to provide an important crop as climate whiplash brings drought and floods to fields worldwide.
- Chemistry
Luis Miramontes helped enable the sexual revolution. Why isn’t he better known?
By synthesizing norethindrone, one of the first active ingredients in birth control pills, Luis Miramontes helped usher in the sexual revolution.
- Health & Medicine
By taking on poliovirus, Marguerite Vogt transformed the study of all viruses
She pioneered the field of molecular virology with her meticulous lab work and “green thumb” for tissue culture.
- Humans
Fossils and ancient DNA paint a vibrant picture of human origins
Paleoanthropologists have sketched a rough timeline of how human evolution played out, centering the early action in Africa.
- Agriculture
Cold plasma could transform the sustainable farms of the future
Physicists have been working on ways to use the power of plasma to boost plant growth and kill pathogens.
- Psychology
Perspective-changing experiences, good or bad, can lead to richer lives
Happiness or meaning have long been seen as keys to the “good life.” Psychologists have now defined a third good life for people leading rich psychological lives.
- Astronomy
How radio astronomy put new eyes on the cosmos
A century ago, radio astronomy didn’t exist. But since the 1930s, it has uncovered cosmic secrets from planets next door and the faint glow of the universe’s beginnings.
