Feature

  1. Health & Medicine

    Inflammatory Ideas

    Researchers are gathering evidence that inflammation precedes and predicts diabetes.

    By Damaris Christensen
  2. Paleontology

    Sea Dragons

    About 235 million years ago, as the earliest dinosaurs stomped about on land, some of their reptilian relatives slipped back into the surf, took on an aquatic lifestyle, and became ichthyosaurs—Greek for fish lizards.

    By Sid Perkins
  3. Health & Medicine

    Cooking Up a Carcinogen

    The discovery that acrylamide—a known animal carcinogen—forms in many foods as they fry or bake has prompted the development of an international research network to investigate whether it poses a threat.

    By Janet Raloff
  4. Chemistry

    Questions of Origin

    Two new studies renew controversy about the authenticity of a map that may be the first depiction of North America.