Scientific American
Last updated November 1, 2010.

Getting GPS Out of a Jam
October 15, 2010
GPS, the Global Positioning System we rely on for guiding nuclear missiles and steering tourists to Mount Rushmore, has become a ripe target for enemy attack. In response, U.S. scientists are developing new ways to circumvent blocked GPS signals using matter waves to measure acceleration.

There's Wisdom in Those Tweets: Social Science Data Emerges from the Twitterverse
October 7, 2010
Critics have derided the 140-character messages posted daily on Twitter as trivialities. Yet to researchers, the popular social media site presents a rich trove of data.

Space Colonists Could Use Bacteria to Mine Minerals on Mars and the Moon
September 10, 2010
Scientists investigated several bacterium species and found that they not only could thrive on Mars- and moonlike rocks, but could extract elements useful to future extraterrestrial colonists.

Lased and Confused: Off-the-Shelf Infrared Lasers Could Ward Off Missile Attacks on Military Helicopters
September 3, 2010
A newly developed broad-spectrum laser mounted on choppers could effectively dazzle shoulder-launched antiaircraft weapons in flight, and prevent them from finding and destroying their targets.

Simian Solicitude: Like Humans, Chimpanzees Console Victims of Aggression
June 14, 2010
Humans are not the only species capable of empathy. Our closest relatives also show compassion and, like us, are more likely to offer comfort to kin and those socially close to them.

Can People Become Experts without the Experience?
June 18, 2010
The dozen students and scientists spread over an area called Furnace Creek looked like cyborgs in floppy hats scrabbling over the boulders. Before hammering chips off rocks, they inspected them with magnifying lenses held up next to eyeglasses sporting miniature cameras and infrared lights.

Spooky Eyes: Using Human Volunteers to Witness Quantum Entanglement
June 3, 2010
Quantum physicists have a novel plan for an experiment that uses the human eye to detect "spooky action at a distance."

Sugar Within Human Bodies Could Power Future Artificial Organs
May 17, 2010
A new approach to tiny fuel cells implanted in rats enables the devices to generate electricity for months using sugar in the rodents' bodies.

Dark Side of Black Holes: Dark Matter Could Explain the Early Universe's Giant Black Holes
February 15, 2010
Massive black holes should not have existed in a universe less than one billion years old, yet they did.

Cell-Off: Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells Fall Short of Potential Found in Embryonic Version
February 11, 2010
It was hoped using reprogrammed mature cells would be a noncontroversial alternative to embryo-derived stem cells. But problems like low replication rates and early senescence have impeded their efficacy in generating differentiated cells.

Electric Icarus: NASA Designs a One-Man Stealth Plane
January 19, 2010
Could the Puffin, an electric-powered flying suit, change the way we use the sky in war and peace?

Heavy Brows, High Art?: Newly Unearthed Painted Shells Show Neandertals Were Homo sapiens's Mental Equals
January 8, 2010
A discovery of painted shells shows that Neandertals were capable of symbolism, sweeping away age-old thinking that they were stupid

Lost Giants: Did Mammoths Vanish Before, During and After Humans Arrived?
December 14, 2009
Three studies seem to disagree as to when mammoths, saber-toothed cats and other North American megafauna disappeared.

Extreme Monotremes: Why Do Egg-Laying Mammals Still Exist?
December 10, 2009
Ancestors of the duck-billed platypus and the echidna may have survived their live-birthing competitors by taking to the water.

Carbon Nanotubes Turn Office Paper into Batteries
December 7, 2009
Beyond cover sheets and TPS reports–white copy paper could be the basis for lightweight, inexpensive batteries.

Jock the Vote: Election Outcomes Affect Testosterone Levels in Men
October 23, 2009
Man is by nature a political animal, according to Aristotle. Now it appears that political contests can biologically affect the nature of males--namely their testosterone levels.

Breakthrough: Bone Graft Grown in Exact Shape of Complex Skull-Jaw Joint
October 5, 2009
Technique could be a preferred substitute for replacing missing or damaged bones with titanium, donated bones or those harvested from elsewhere in a patient's body.

Evil Ink: A Robot Impersonator Opens a Blog to Post Spam From the Future
September 7, 2009
So I admit I looked for my name online, an egosurfing trip to see how well upstart search engine Bing compared with reigning champ Google. That's when I discovered my evil twin.

Digging Up Valuable Fossils in Suburban New Jersey
August 25, 2009
The water is icy cold and the stone is slippery as I wade in up to my calves. Along the banks of this slow-flowing stream, guarded by prickly brambles, lies one of the richest caches of fossils dating back to the extinction that claimed the dinosaurs.

Prickly Problem: Engineering Mosquitoes to Spread Less Disease without Boosting Virulence
August 21, 2009
Scientists are creating transgenic mosquitoes with reduced ability to carry the devastating diseases that have plagued much of humanity. But will these modifications also generate more virulent infections?

Goody-Goody Hormone Now Linked to Envy, Gloating
August 3, 2009
Snorting oxytocin, shown in recent years to trigger all kinds of feel-good emotions, might also incite envy and gloating.

Organelle Simulated on Microchip for First Time
July 31, 2009
The first artificial organelle may help lead to safer heparin production and, someday, entire artificial cells.

Mindless Collectives Better at Rational Decision-Making Than Brainy Individuals
July 22, 2009
New experiments show how ant colonies don't fall prey to irrational choices as humans sometimes do.

Innovative Blades May Have Led to a Stone Age Population Boom
July 20, 2009
Technological innovations have enabled human cultures to thrive, and now researchers have discovered what might be the oldest example known so far of such an occurrence.

Scientists Flesh Out Fossilized Tissues from Mummified Dinosaur
June 30, 2009
Mineralized skin samples suggest that the plant-eating hadrosaur may have been larger and faster than thought.

Being More Infantile May Have Led to Bigger Brains
July 2009
For decades scientists have noted that mature humans physically resemble immature chimps—we, too, have small jaws, flat faces and sparse body hair. The retention of juvenile features, called neoteny in evolutionary biology, is especially apparent in domesticated animals—thanks to human preferences, many dog breeds have puppy features such as floppy ears, short snouts and large eyes. Now genetic evidence suggests that neoteny could help explain why humans are so radically different from chimpanzees, even though both species share most of the same genes and split apart only about six million years ago, a short time in evolutionary terms.

Scientists Flesh Out Fossilized Tissues from Mummified Dinosaur
June 30, 2009
Earlier this week scientists studying fossilized teeth from a hadrosaur revealed how the duck-billed dinosaur chewed plants for food. Now another team, analyzing what may be the most intact dinosaur mummy discovered yet, report fresh details about the skin of a hadrosaur nicknamed Dakota, which might have been bigger and moved more quickly than previously thought.

Are Midwestern Earthquake Faults Shutting Down?
June 2009
The center of the U.S. saw earthquakes two centuries ago that were powerful enough to briefly reverse the flow of the Mississippi River. But unlike Californians, who must live with the specter of “the big one,” Midwesterners may have already seen the last of them. New research suggests the crack in the earth behind the Mississippi Valley events may actually be shutting down. If so, geoscientists will need to rethink how earthquakes work.

Magic Nano-Bullets
May 19, 2009
Submicroscopic techniques that could kill cancer or mend weak hearts will only be used if they target the right cells and leave others unharmed. After years of development, Robert Langer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his colleagues will soon begin clinical trials of "magic bullets" that employ nanotechnology to deliver drugs only where they are needed.

High Content Is King
May 19, 2009
A yellow robot arm moves with a combination of inhuman speed and delicate grace, loading a microscope with a plate split up into 1,536 wells, each filled with ovary cells from Chinese hamsters. Here the classic image of scientists peering into microscopes to laboriously scan slide after slide is gone. In an instant, the automated microscope at Merck Research Laboratories in North Wales, Penn., digitally images all of the specimens simultaneously.

Does Daylight Saving Time Conserve Energy?
March 5, 2009
Starting this month, roughly one quarter of the world’s population will lose sleep and gain sunlight as they set their clocks ahead for daylight saving. People may think that with the time shift, they are conserving electricity otherwise spent on lighting. But recent studies have cast doubt on the energy argument—some research has even found that it ultimately leads to greater power use.

How Teenagers Find Themselves
February 6, 2009
Teens are notoriously self-conscious. Now brain-imaging experiments are revealing how this adolescent predilection might be the result of changes in brain anatomy linked with the self, and the findings may hint at how the sense of self develops in the brain.

Quantum Entanglement Benefits Exist after Links Are Broken
January 22, 2009
“Spooky action at a distance” is how Albert Einstein famously derided the concept of quantum entanglement—where objects can become linked and instantaneously influence one another regardless of distance. Now researchers suggest that this spooky action in a way might work even beyond the grave, with its effects felt after the link between objects is broken.

Does Dark Matter Encircle Earth?
January 15, 2009
Astronomers only found out about dark matter by inferring its presence from the gravity it exerts—notably, it keeps spinning galaxies from flying apart. Rather than peering at distant galaxies to study it, though, astronomers might want to look closer to home: dark matter could be exerting measurable effects in our own solar system.

Do White Blood Cells Make Cancer Deadly?
January 12, 2009
The leading cause of death in cancer is metastasis—tumors are generally treatable as long as they have not moved to vital organs. So if the research reveals that such hybrids help cancer spread, it could open up new avenues to fighting cancer. As Pawelek puts it: “You have to know how metastasis starts to properly fight it.”

Reaping a Sad Harvest: A "Narcotic Farm" That Tried to Grow Recovery
October 25, 2008
A federal prison in Kentucky was a temporary home for thousands, including Sonny Rollins, Peter Lorre and William S. Burroughs as well as a lab for addiction treatments such as LSD.

Danger in the Forest
September 25, 2008
DEEP IN THE MAYA BIOSPHERE RESERVE, GUATEMALA—Armed men near a stopped white truck face us—one gripping a shotgun, another slashing a nearby branch with a machete. They glare at us menacingly as we drive by. “That was a perfect place to kill someone,” half jokes our guide, Javier.

This story was featured on the Knight Science Journalism Tracker.

Mammoth Sequences: A Hunt for DNA from the Extinct Titans of the Klondike
September 2008
After revving up with a roar, a core drill designed to punch holes in concrete begins digging into ice more than 100,000 years old. Here in the Klondike, the drill serves as a kind of gas-powered, handheld time machine, bringing up frozen earth from the Pleistocene, when mammoths and other megafauna once ruled. In a land where miners still hunt for gold, paleomammalogist Ross Mac–Phee of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City and his colleagues seek a different kind of treasure—DNA from extinct titans.

Go here to read the original blogs from the Yukon.

Go here to see a slideshow of pictures from the Yukon.

Go here to see video clips from the Yukon.

Can the "Amphibian Ark" Save Frogs from Pollution/Extinction?
June 19, 2008
A repopulation plan for endangered amphibians.

Whatever Happened to the Pioneer Spacecraft?
May 8, 2008
The velocities of Pioneer 10 and 11, now speeding out of the solar system, are mysteriously changing, as if an extra force from the sun were tugging at them. Explanations have ranged from gas leaks and observational error to modified theories of gravity. Now Jet Propulsion Laboratory astronomer John Anderson and his colleagues, who helped to uncover the Pioneer anomaly, have found similar unexpected changes with four spacecraft that have flown by Earthï¿1⁄2namely, Galileo, the Near-Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) mission, Cassini and Rosetta.

A Bug's Sex Life: A Q&A with Isabella Rossellini
May 5, 2008
Isabella Rossellini, well known as a supermodel and movie star, is now making short films for mobile devices that illustrate the sex lives of dragonflies, earthworms and other creatures. But they are not like standard nature shows. In these films, which she researched with the help of Wildlife Conservation Society experts, she not only details unusual aspects of the critters' biology but also dresses up as them and mimics sex with paper cutouts.

Go here to listen to an audio clip from this interview.

The abbreviated version of this interview that appeared in print can be found here.

Iron Exposed as High-Temperature Superconductor
April 23, 2008
New class of superconductor may help pin down mysterious physics.

Copy That
April 21, 2008
Identical twins are not genetically identical.

Double-Helix Double Up
March 17, 2008
Talk about spooky action at a distance. Without any other molecules to guide them, double helices of DNA with identical sequences can recognize one another from a distance and even gather together.

Humans Marrying Robots? A Q&A with David Levy
February 19, 2008
Q: If people fall in love with robots, aren't they just falling in love with an algorithm?
A: It's not that people will fall in love with an algorithm, but that people will fall in love with a convincing simulation of a human being, and convincing simulations can have a remarkable effect on people.

Not Tonight, Dear, I Have to Reboot
February 18, 2008
At the Museum of Sex in New York City, artificial-intelligence researcher David Levy projected a mock image on a screen of a smiling bride in a wedding dress holding hands with a short robot groom. ï¿1⁄2Why not marry a robot? Look at this happy couple,ï¿1⁄2 he said to a chuckling crowd.

Eye-Opening Sex
February 18, 2008
Sight returns to cavefish blind for one million years

Arabian Brainpower
January 17, 2008
Can a $10-billion university restore science to the Islamic world?

Monkey See, Monkey Ignore
November 28, 2007
When a personï¿1⁄2s behavior is out of control, people might say he is ï¿1⁄2going ape.ï¿1⁄2 It appears, however, that our closest relatives can behave themselves better than we thought.

Glow for the Dark
November 19, 2007
In 1868 Swedish physicist Anders ï¿1⁄2ngstrï¿1⁄2m discovered that the sky always has a slight glow to it. The light emanates from molecules excited by sunlight or cosmic rays in the upper atmosphere. At night, the amount of airglow is comparable to the light from the full moon spread over the entire sky. But because most of it lies in the short-wave infrared range, the light remains largely invisibleï¿1⁄2at least to human eyes. Researchers have now devised a camera that could effectively detect this glow to see in the dark better than ever before.

New Beginnings
October 2007
Ideas for a time before the big bangï¿1⁄2which might be testable

The Genetics of Politics
October 2007
A study finds that biology strongly governs voter turnout

Big Lab on a Tiny Chip
September 16, 2007
Imagine shrinking the beakers, eyedroppers, chemicals and heaters of a chemistry lab onto a little microchip that could dangle from a key chain.

Speaking in Tones
September 2007
Ni hao or bonjour: do genes drive preference for language type?

Warming to Law
June 17, 2007
After the U.S. Supreme Court ruling, how stiff will greenhouse gas regulations be?

"Memjet" Momentum
June 2007
Stealthily, over more than a decade, a new kind of printer has been under development in Australia. The original vision was to create a printer small enough to fit inside a digital camera. Instead the research has yielded an ink-jet printer, dubbed the Memjet, that can print color photographs up to 30 times faster than any other printer.

Strange but True: When Half a Brain Is Better than a Whole One
May 24, 2007
The operation known as hemispherectomyï¿1⁄2where half the brain is removedï¿1⁄2sounds too radical to ever consider, much less perform. In the last century, however, surgeons have performed it hundreds of times for disorders uncontrollable in any other way. Unbelievably, the surgery has no apparent effect on personality or memory.

Structured Settings
April 15, 2007
Nanoparticles are tantalizing construction blocks for researchers, capable of displaying properties of both tiny atoms and far bulkier conventional materials. They generally behave only like balls, however, which makes it hard to assemble them into solid structures other than those resembling displays of oranges in a grocery store. Now researchers have taken big steps in creating and using nanostructures that have eluded manipulation in the past.

Strange but True: Earth Is Not Round
April 12, 2007
As countless photos from space can attest, Earth is roundï¿1⁄2the "Blue Marble," as astronauts have affectionately dubbed it. Appearances, however, can be deceiving. Planet Earth is not, in fact, perfectly round.

Fact or Fiction?: A Cockroach Can Live without Its Head
March 15, 2007
A nuclear war may not trouble them, but does decapitation?

Pole Positions
February 18, 2007
Arctic sea ice has shrunk to record low levels, and an ice shelf larger than Manhattan, which abruptly broke away from Canada's northernmost shore, could endanger ships and oil platforms this spring. To investigate these and other unprecedented changes occurring around the poles, more than 30 nations are initiating a global campaign to study the Arctic and Antarctic: an International Polar Year (IPY).

National Screening for Mental Illness in Teens Inspires Controversy
January 23, 2007
If mental illness is epidemic among teenagers, why isn't screening for it routine?

A Stroke for Stem Cells
January 14, 2007
The first stem cell therapy targeting a major brain disorder, chronic stroke, could begin clinical trials this year if the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approves the request filed in December by stem cell firm ReNeuron in Guildford, England. This latest treatment suggests stem cell therapies are growing not only in number but in ambition.

Five New Year's Resolutions You Owe Yourself
January 8, 2007
On New Year's day more than a few of us resolved to change our lives, or at least our more self-indulgent habits. On the hunch that all things flow from good health, Scientific American has based this year's list of five resolutions on the advice of health professionals and the scientific literature. Whatever your goals, we'll help you understand why there's hardly anything you could choose to do that could have a bigger impact on your quality of life.

Pollution in Solution
December 16, 2006
DNA that makes germs resistant against medicines may increasingly be polluting water, from rivers all the way to the faucet. Scientists caution these contaminants, if not cleansed, could exacerbate the growing problem of drug resistance among potentially harmful microbes. The genes join a long list of contaminants being found in water, posing a challenge for devising an effective means of treatment.

Human, Sea Slug Brains Share Genes for Alzheimer's and Parkinson's
December 29, 2006
The ancestors of humans and sea slugs diverged more than a half billion years ago, but scientists have now unexpectedly found genes that are remarkably similar in the brains of both. These findings could help shed light on the evolution of the brain in the animal kingdom and the mechanisms of human disorders such as Alzheimer's disease.

Children Took a Toll in Pre-Industrial Societies, May Have Driven Evolution of Menopause
December 29, 2006
Before the advent of birth control, industrialized agriculture and day care, women and men who chose to have very large families faced an early grave when compared to their less fecund peers. In the largest and most comprehensive study of its kind, Dustin Penn of the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Ethology in Austria and Ken Smith of the University of Utah studied the records of 21,684 Mormon couples who wed between 1860 and 1895 in order to examine the trade-off between family size and survival.

Strokes in Young People Could be Due to Meth
December 26, 2006
The drug known on the streets as crystal meth could increase the risk of stroke and major tears in neck arteries, neurologists report.

Single Gene Could Lead to Long Life, Better Mental Function
December 26, 2006
If you live to 100, as roughly one in every 10,000 people do, you will likely want both your mind and body intact. Researchers have now discovered a gene that accomplishes just that, apparently protecting the brain as well as prolonging life.

Special Report: 10 Promising Treatments for World's Biggest Health Threats
December 11, 2006
Treatments for diabetes, smoking, Alzheimer's disease and lung cancer are just a few of the potentially lifesaving cures Scientific American has chosen to highlight in this year's roundup of drugs you've never heard of, despite their potentially huge impact on global health.

Voting with the Heart
November 12, 2006
Citizens thoughtfully weigh the pros and cons of arguments before choosing their leaders--or so political science has traditionally assumed. Now experiments and computer models are challenging this notion, suggesting that voters tend to make emotional decisions that they rationalize afterward.

Blastomere Blowup
October 26, 2006
A method that can generate human embryonic stem cells without harming embryos? In August biotechnology firm Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) in Worcester, Mass., claimed it had developed just such a procedure. The company touted it as a way around the firestorm of controversy surrounding the conventional technique for growing these cells, which destroys human embryos. Most researchers find the method intriguing, because it might lead to new and maybe better stem cell lines. But several also argue that it raises fresh dilemmas.

Old MacDonald's Pharm
September 2006
In the milk of 30 genetically modified goats on GTC Biotherapeutics's farm in Charlton, Mass., is a drug that can literally make your blood flow--the human protein antithrombin, which inhibits clotting. In a dramatic reversal, after European reg-ulators rejected this drug (called ATryn), they now look ready to approve it later this year. The ruling would make ATryn the first human protein made by a transgenic animal for commercial production.

Not So Super
July 2006
The drug's inventors called their creation a "superantibody." They hoped that it would be capable of activating immune cells other antibody drugs could not on their own. The moniker for the compound, targeted at autoimmune disease or leukemia, was TGN1412, made by TeGenero, based in Wï¿1⁄21⁄2rzburg, Germany. On March 13 six previously healthy volunteers given the antibody in a routine test of its safety were sent to intensive care.

Crystal Steer
April 2006
Carbon nanotubes would make ideal connecting wires in advanced circuits if not for the painstaking effort required to line up each tiny, sticky, floppy strand. Now scientists have found that crystalline sapphire can automatically help guide nanotubes into the patterns needed to build transistors and to make flexible electronics.

Going to Bat
March 2006
Bats are creatures of the night that are commonly held in fear. At first glance, those fears might seem to have some medical justification. Long known as vectors for rabies, bats may be the origin of some of the most deadly emerging viruses, including SARS, Ebola, Nipah, Hendra and Marburg. Instead of demonizing bats, however, research shows the real culprit behind these outbreaks could be human error.

Miniaturized Power
February 2006
The transistor, dating from 1947, has shrunk from a kludgy, half-inch-high contraption to a device whose components boast dimensions a few hundreds of atoms in length. Batteries, on the other hand, have improved how much power they deliver at roughly one fiftieth of that pace.

Bell Laboratories, which built the first transistor, has now become involved with the reinvention of the battery. The goal is to apply the techniques used for manufacturing transistors to mass-produce a battery that can be built in with the other circuitry on a chip.

Polar Satellite Freeze
January 22, 2006
The long-range weather forecasts that warned of where Hurricane Katrina would strike depended on data from polar satellites. They capture not only details over the Arctic and Antarctic but also virtually every point on the planet's surface as the world turns under them. Now the replacements for the aging U.S. military and civilian fleet are in jeopardy. The program is as much as $3 billion over budget, and the launch of the first replacement satellite is as many as three years behind schedule.

Un-Killing the Messenger
January 2006
For a cell to make proteins, the nucleus first has to issue instructions. Once these genetic memos outlive their usefulness, they end up deactivated in repositories known as processing bodies. Research now suggests that these P-bodies are less like junkyards and more like office centers, where messages are amassed, silenced and reactivated.

Baby to Brain
October 31, 2005
Mothers could literally always have their kids on their minds. Researchers find that in mice, cells from fetuses can migrate into a mother's brain and apparently develop into nervous system cells.

Transistor Flow Control
October 2005
At the heart of modern electronics are transistors, which act like valves to direct the flow of electrons. Now researchers at the University of California at Berkeley have created the first transistors that electrically control molecules instead. By connecting them to microscopic test tubes and petri dishes, these nanoscale transistors could lead to labs-on-a-chip that work without moving parts.

Chatting Up Cells
September 19, 2005
Stem cells can transform into whatever cell the body tells them to. Unfortunately, scientists have yet to master that particular gift of gab. But investigators at Stanford University may soon crack the language with tiny "chat rooms" for stem cells.

Processing for Science
May 16, 2005
Fans of the spacetime continuum can now uncover gravitational ripples at their desks thanks to the February launch of Einstein@Home. The project is one of the latest of at least 60 "@home" projects now on the Internet, in which personal-computer users can donate spare processor power to help solve scientific problems. And no need to choose one mission over another: @home software can now multitask, and enough microchip muscle exists to handle many more distributed-computing projects.

Qubit Twist
April 18, 2005
Before the advent of electricity, the first computers were mechanical, with the Difference Engine invented by Charles Babbage tackling logarithms and trigonometry 150 years ago. Now advanced quantum computers might go back to mechanical roots, using rows of nanometer-scale bars as moving parts.

Back to Square One
February 28, 2005
After 15 years, cold fusion got a second chance at legitimacy from the U.S. Department of Energy, often seen by cold fusion advocates as their greatest enemy. This rematch, many hoped, would vindicate the field or kill it once and for all. Instead history repeated itself, with a verdict that evidence remained inconclusive.

Hungry for Dino Meat
February 2005
Early mammals conjure up images of rat- or shrew-size creatures that skulked in the shadows of dinosaurs, trying to avoid being ripped limb from limb by the terrible lizards. Now it seems that the hunted sometimes became the hunter. Newfound fossils reveal a baby dinosaur inside a mammal's gut -- the first direct evidence of such predation.

Through Titan's Haze
January 20, 2005
Saturn moon has a surface that is dynamic--and puzzling.

Volcanic Sniffing
November 8, 2004
In A.D. 79 Mount Vesuvius erupted, annihilating the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum and killing thousands who did not evacuate in time. To avert a similar fate for present-day Naples, which lies six miles west of the still active Vesuvius, as well as for the cities near volatile Mount Etna in Sicily, a novel laser system could soon forecast volcanic eruptions up to months in advance.

Nipah's Return
September 2004
In February the Nipah virus reemerged, killing 35 people in Bangladesh in two outbreaks. Although the number of victims is small, the deaths have health officials worried. Unlike its first appearance in Malaysia in September 1998, the virus in Bangladesh may have jumped from person to person, raising concern about its ability to spread farther and faster.

Burning Down to Rock
May 2004
Gas giants might get cooked clean to their solid cores.

Drawing the Lines
March 2004
Is a pre-Columbus map of North America truly a hoax?

Shake, Waddle and Stroll
December 2002
Foot massages could help those who have balance problems.

The Terminator's Back
September 2002
The “terminator” genes appeared to meet their end in 1999 amid a storm of controversy...

The sidebar from this article also appeared in the Seed Savers Exchange's magazine Seed Savers 2002 Harvest Edition.

Multilingual Machines
July 15, 2002
"Gist" translations by commercially available software translate with only 70 to 80 percent accuracy. Will statistical-analysis techniques improve that performance?

Secrets of the Stradivarius: An Interview with Joseph Nagyvary
June 10, 2002
"I remember that taking out the violin from its glass cabinet was almost a religious experience for me," Nagyvary says.

Gamma-Ray Bursts May Illuminate Hidden Galaxies
April 30, 2002
The most powerful explosions in the universe since the big bang could help astronomers find billions of as-yet-undetected stars.

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