Science & Society

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We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.

  1. Tech

    Reader favorites of 2013

    For this issue, the editors selected the 25 most important and intriguing science stories of the year. But online readers seemed to point to a different bunch, showing just how subjective such an exercise can be.

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  2. Neuroscience

    Year in Review: Obama unveils brain initiative

    In April, the president announced an ambitious plan to reveal the human brain’s secrets.

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  3. Psychology

    Year in Review: DSM-5’s controversial debut

    The diagnostic manual updates disorder criteria.

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  4. Science & Society

    50 years later, it’s hard to say who named black holes

    In 1964, Science News Letter was the first publication to print the term black hole, but nobody is really sure who used the term first.

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  5. Science & Society

    Year in Review: High court rules against gene patents

    The justices’ decision opens the way for choices in DNA testing.

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  6. Science & Society

    Feedback

    Science policy and sleep get a deeper review.

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  7. Science & Society

    Top 25 stories of 2013, from microbes to meteorites

    This year, careful readers may have noticed a steady accumulation of revelations about the bacterial communities that call the human body home.

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  8. Science & Society

    Best science to see and hear

    Science Studio bills itself as “a collection of the best science multimedia on the web.

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  9. Health & Medicine

    Microbiome emerges as a clear breakthrough

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  10. Science & Society

    Heal thy neighbor

    As antidepressants and other drugs gradually replace psychotherapy in the United States, new forms of the talking cure are growing in popularity in developing countries ravaged by civil war and poverty.

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  11. Cosmology

    For proposals that challenge paradigms, peruse arXiv.org

    The online physics archive offers crazy ideas to confront cosmological challenges.

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  12. Science & Society

    Science slowdown

    The recent federal government shutdown, which furloughed more than 800,000 government workers and may have cost the nation as much as $24 billion, has sent ripples through the nation’s scientific research enterprise.

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