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Features and Background
Weird sex is all around us. Protozoa, arthropods, fish, and flowers maintain their evolutionary status by bending the rules of gender ... [more]
Even as the Pentagon struggles with the low-tech reality of war in Iraq, it looks to increasingly bizarre-sounding technology for next-gen fighting systems ... [more]
Drowning your sleepiness an oversized mug of coffee may not be the best strategy for staying alert: a little bit of caffeine, often, is more likely to do the trick ... [more]
Waste not: NASA-supported researchers are working to develop a microbial fuel cell that can extract electricity from human waste ... [more]
The quest to rid the world of polio is back on track, with anti-vaccine rumours having been convincingly laid to rest ... [more]
Researchers have built a computer model that can reproduce an important aspect of the human brain's short-term memory: small-world networks ... [more]
The universe just keeps getting more impressive. Astrophysicists say it may be a billion years older than they thought ... [more], and cosmologists report that it's at least a hefty 78 billion light years across ... [more]
A tiny protein called ADDL could be the key to Alzheimer's ... [more]
Researchers continue to struggle with the enormity of obesity, in the search for a chemical cure for the seriously overweight (registration required) ... [more]
The surface of the Earth is seeing less sunlight than it did 50 years ago -- though things may be brightening up as pollution levels drop ... [more]
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GM food could feed the world's poor, says a UN report -- but the developing world is missing out as the biotech industry concentrates on developing lucrative cash crops rather than low-profit staples ... [more]
When future astronauts pack for a long trip through space, they may want to toss in some strawberries and spinach for the ride, to help ward off radiation-induced brain damage ... [more]
There is no strong evidence that cannabis use directly causes psychological or social problems in young people, according to a major review of 48 long-term studies ... [more]
Geological time has been given its first new period in 120 years: the Ediacaran Period, which is part of the Neoproterozoic, when multi-celled life forms started to take hold on Earth ... [more]
For years, climate researchers have struggled with an apparent discrepancy in the data on global warming, but a new atmospheric study has turned up the solution to the puzzle ... [more]
Micro-sculptures give metal the Velcro touch: Carving delicate projections on sheet metal gives it ultra-strong bonding properties, which could produce tougher joints in cars and aircraft -- and humans ... [more]
A genetically engineered low-sugar, high-protein maize could supplement protein-deficient diets in Africa and South America -- and prove popular with low-carb dieters ... [more]
Noise pollution is not just a problem for humans: urban nightingales have to shout to be heard , while other birds fall silent. And killer whales are changing the way they sing, in order to compete with the the din from whalewatchers' boats ... [more]
The secrets of sleep still elude researchers, but one thing we know for certain: inadequate sleep comes at a high price ... [more]
Technology companies are trying to stay ahead of changing environmental regulations by getting serious about recycling e-waste ... [more]
Some of the world's largest and most spectacular caves were created by the tiniest builders imaginable: sulphuric-acid secreting bacteria ... [more]
Archaeologists have found what they believe to be the site of the Library of Alexandria, often described as the world's first major seat of learning ... [more]
Psychologists who specialise in trauma treatment say that the nature of the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by US forces indicates it was not the action of rogue operators ... [more]
At a juncture when the global pharmaceutical industry is under siege for the prices it charges, a new drug company, OneWorld Health, is attacking the diseases of the developing world by making drugs, not profits ... [more]
West Nile's new world: Researchers are working to understand how an Old World virus is spreading through the New World. Their efforts began at the US National Zoo ... [more]
NASA's Mars rovers have begun a marathon trek, entering a new phase of their mission that is more about endurance than scientific discovery ... [more]
The doctor will freeze you now : Could low-temperature surgery kick-start the cryo game? ... [more]
UK psychologists say pets should be available on prescription, and allowed into hospital wards, to speed up patients' recoveries ... [more]
Beauty may be only skin-deep, but the price of beautifying cosmetics extends clear to the bone, some health advocates say ... [more]
Biologists have tinkered with the genes inside organisms for decades. Now, with "circuits" of interacting DNA, they are beginning to create programmable living machines ... [more]
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Books and Media
Professors, Inc.: Sheldon Krimsky worries in Science in the Private Interest that the pursuit of private profit will spell the demise of public-interest science ... [more]
Science coverage in the media is growing, but there's an inherent bias: stories with the "wow!" factor generally win out over more important but duller options (registration required) ... [more]
Equations for traffic and marriage: Human behaviour en masse follows the laws of physics in surprising ways, says Philip Ball in Critical Mass ... [more]
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Boy gets girl with the aid of a cyber Cyrano in Turing, Christos Papadimitriou's pedagogical novel about computation ... [more]
A tightwad's guide to ad blockers Sick of obnoxious ads hogging bandwidth? Switching browsers or employing a few simple hacks can keep annoying marketing pitches at bay ... [more]
In Locust, entomologist Jeffrey A. Lockwood probes the mystery of the scourge of the West: massive hordes of locusts that swarmed across the western US in the 1870s, before disappearing with hardly a trace ... [more]
When it comes to communication and the media, weblogs are the new black, and getting more and more stylish by the day -- and now some bloggers are even gaining coveted journalistic credentials ... [more]
It's getting crowded at Troy! Brad Pitt isn't the only Achilles on the block: there are a few on television these days, too. So how is The Iliad holding up on screen? ... [more]
Scouring the internet to compile lists involves visiting many different web pages -- but the next step in search engine technology could do all the work with a single mouse click ... [more]
Reeling from information overload, fueled by our ubiquitous email, TV and cellphones, info-environmentalists argue that we need to take positive action to reclaim mental greenspace ... [more]
Sol searching: JB Zirker's Sunquakes demonstrates how much has been accomplished in just a few decades by the relatively new discipline of helioseismology ... [more]
If the corporation were a person, would that person be a psychopath? This is the provocative question at the centre of an award-winning documentary film ... [more]
The kingmaker: Walt Mossberg makes or breaks tech products from his pundit perch at a little rag called The Wall Street Journal ... [more]
A 25th-anniversary edition of Pamela McCorduck's AI classic, Machines Who Think, chronicles the heady early days of the fledgling science of artificial intelligence, and takes a look at where we are headed now ... [more]
It has always been hard to get people to take global warming seriously because it happens too slowly. But The Day After Tomorrow has put global warming on the fast track ... [more]
The film Godsend arrives at a time when the politics and science of cloning remain unresolved. Will the movie help bury US cloning efforts for good? ... [more]
Turn off the TV: By age 65, the average person in the US will have watched nine years of television. What grand dreams might have been chased with those hours instead? ... [more]
Products should be designed around their users' emotions, says Don Norman in Emotional Design. Martyn Perks worries that emotional appeal could too easily become a substitute for good design ... [more]
In Everything's Relative, Tony Rothman corrects misattributions and debunks legends about a score of well-known discoveries and inventions (registration required) ... [more]
This is your TV on steroids: So long, analog broadcasting! Why the dawn of the digital era may spell good news for viewers -- and plenty of it ... [more]
A fish out of water: Snakehead author Eric Jay Dolin explains how an ecological nightmare became a media darling ... [more]
The big fat con story: Size really doesn't matter. You can be just as healthy if you're fat as you can if you're slender. And don't let the obesity 'experts' persuade you otherwise, argues Paul Campos in The Obesity Myth ... [more]
Dungeons and dragons: In China the internet is not only censored, it is increasingly being used as a tool for persecution and surveillance ... [more]
The secret of personal and professional success is simple, according to Russell Foster's Rhythms of Life: pay attention to your body clock ... [more]
Libraries wired, and reborn: Public libraries have been transformed over the last decade as internet-connected computers have increased their traffic -- and, in some cases, even their book budgets (registration required) ... [more]
It's time to lay our techno-utopian fantasies to rest, says Alexander Galloway in Protocol ... [more]
If the Darwinian theory of sexual selection is valid, non-procreative sexual behaviours such as homosexuality are abberations that should die off. Darwin was wrong, says evolutionary ecologist Joan Roughgarden in Evolution's Rainbow ... [more]
Bioethicist Arlene Klotzko wants us to stop worrying and learn to love the clone -- after all, there will never be another you ... [more]
Where archaeology cannot tread, Hollywood has always been keen to rush in, as in the case of Mel Gibson's controversial The Passion of the Christ. Despite all of the much-touted and soon forgotten "stupendous" finds, says Sandra Scham, the archaeological evidence for Jesus's life just isn't there ...[more] But acknowledging uncertainty about important historical events requires a braver heart than denying it, argues John Allen Paulos ... [more]
Adam and Eve, beware: Scientists at UC Berkeley are taking the offensive against the modern-day foes of Charles Darwin, by creating a web site to help teachers ward off anti-evolutionist attacks ... [more]
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Analysis and Opinion
They were meant to show that gender was determined by nurture, not nature: one identical twin raised as a boy and the other as a girl. But Brian Reimer and David (formerly Brenda) Reimer have written the final chapter in the tragic story of Dr Money's sex experiment ... [more]
Up in the air! The explosion of the Hindenburg gave airships a bad name, but Hokan Colting plans to change all that ... [more]
Science and self-government: Wilfred McClay discusses why biotechnology is not a subject for experts alone, and why the greatest challenge in the years ahead may be "choosing limits" ... [more]
Researchers have yet to develop a foolproof lie-detection technology. That hasn't stopped interrogators from relying on their old, flawed standby: the polygraph ... [more]
The multi-billion-dollar US ballistic missile shield won't work, warns an independent scientists' group ... [more]
A way with whales: After years of studying sperm whales, Hal Whitehead believes these huge mammals have cultures and sophisticated patterns of cooperation ... [more]
US science is on the brink of becoming another victim of 9-11, warns Albert H Teich, as new policies cause long-term damage to science and technology efforts (registration required) ... [more]
The mystery of the Permian extinction has been solved. Or has it? ... [more]
The rise of the cyberbully demands new rules, says Mark Franek. Big Brother may not be watching, but parents, teachers, and decisionmakers in the technology industry should be ... [more]
The world has a historic chance to halt the Aids epidemic, with an initiative to put 3 million Aids sufferers on anti-retroviral drugs by the end of 2005, says the director-general of the World Health Organisation ... [more]
Hydrogen hopes: Can hydrogen live up to its promise as the clean fuel of the future? ... [more]
It's crunch time for Korea's cloners: A moment of triumph for South Korean science appears to have been marred by doubts about ethical lab practice ... [more]
The Stewart inquiry into mobile phones shows the danger of taking public fears over science too seriously, says Dick Taverne ... [more]
After 30 years of pursuing its Sisyphean task of quantifying the biological basis of human social behavior, evolutionary psychology is trying to shed its just-so story stigma (registration required) ... [more]
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Calculating doom: Is catastrophe on the cards? A mathematical assessment of overall risk looks at eternity as a lottery, says John Allen Paulos ... [more]
Dance of life and death: Reptile expert Harry Greene's fascination with snakes stemmed from an interest in death -- but they can tell us plenty about life too ... [more]
String theory suggests that the big bang was not the origin of the universe but simply the outcome of a preexisting state. Gabriele Veneziano considers the myth of the beginning of time ... [more]
The enchanted glass: Francis Bacon and experimental psychologists show why the facts in science never just speak for themselves, says Michael Shermer ... [more]
Once shunned for his AIDS theories, Peter Duesberg is back in the spotlight, with a contrarian view of cancer ... [more]
William John Hoyt, Jr considers how anti-vaccination fever fanned the fires created by questionable research to produce worldwide epidemics of a nearly-eliminated disease: whooping cough ... [more]
If not pills, what? In the wake of new data on kids and antidepressants, the focus is shifting to talk therapies ... [more]
Women don't need to see videos of destroyed fetuses to understand the reality of abortion, says Ann Furedi. Women know that abortion stops a beating heart and ends a life that would become a child. That is, after all, the point of the procedure ... [more]
Our incessant demand for increasingly powerful communications technology is pushing us toward a future as a "techlepathic" species -- and that's an exciting prospect, says George Dvorsky ... [more]
We hold these freedoms to be self-evident: Mind control is getting smarter by the minute, warns Richard Glen Boire, co-founder of the Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics ... [more]
Toward a more child-like science: Steve Talbott considers the uses of biotechnology to produce "better children," and how the wonder of the child may in fact redeem science ... [more]
NASA's fear of flying: If NASA is unable to return the shuttle to flight, will the public question how the same agency could ever be capable of transporting people back to the Moon, on to Mars and beyond? ... [more]
The solution for saving the rain forest may be more development, not less, say Brian Kelly and Mark London (registration required) ... [more]
Inventive minds: The inventors behind the implantable pacemaker, recumbent bikes and X-ray crytallography reveal what keeps their ideas coming ... [more]
To care for our pets properly requires first and foremost that we understand that they are not humans in fur suits, says Jon Katz ... [more]
Clearing the air: When it comes to environmental issues, it seems there are always two sets of facts, says David Brooks (registration required) ... [more]
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