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  1. Letters

    Early puberty’s cause Regarding “Early Arrival” (SN: 12/1/12, p. 26): In 1960 I left the Ohio Valley of grass- and corn-fed cows to teach in the Los Angeles area. When I arrived, I found that eighth- and ninth-grade girls looked physically like 25-year-old women in Ohio. I asked the other teachers what was going on. […]

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  2. Neuroscience

    Hallucinations

    by Oliver Sacks.

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  3. BOOK REVIEW: Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves by George Church and Ed Regis

    Review by Alexandra Witze.

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  4. The Scientists: An Epic of Discovery by Andrew Robinson, ed.

    Short biographies of scientists through the ages, from Copernicus to Watson and Crick, illustrate where new ideas and discoveries come from. Thames & Hudson, 2012, 304 p., $45

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  5. Human No More: Digital Subjectivities, Unhuman Subjects, and the End of Anthropology by Neil L. Whitehead and Michael Wesch, eds.

    Online worlds are re­defining what it means to be human, according to the authors of these anthropological essays on digital culture. Univ. Press of Colorado, 2012, 243 p., $75

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  6. Space

    The Real Story of Risk: Adventures in a Hazardous World by Glenn Croston

    A biologist explores why humans are poor at judging risk — fearing rare shark attacks, for example, more than common heart attacks. Prometheus, 2012, 276 p., $19

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  7. Darwin: Portrait of a Genius by Paul Johnson

    A historian celebrates Charles Darwin’s triumphs and analyzes his weaknesses in the latest biography of the naturalist. Viking, 2012, 164 p., $25.95

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  8. The Universal Sense: How Hearing Shapes the Mind by Seth S. Horowitz

    This review of the science of hearing considers how people have learned to create and control music, sonic weapons and other noises. Bloomsbury, 2012, 305 p., $25

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  9. Genetics

    Factory of Life

    Synthetic biologists reinvent nature with parts, circuits.

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  10. Space

    Light in the Dark

    Scientists may be on the brink of identifying a mysterious form of matter.

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  11. Earth

    West Antarctica warming fast

    A reconstructed temperature record from a high-altitude station shows an unexpectedly rapid rise since 1958.

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  12. Humans

    Hitting streaks in baseball may be contagious

    Teammates of a batter on a streak hit better than their average, a review of baseball records finds.

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