Stories Written By: Melinda Wenner

• 12.24.07

  Extreme Microbes

  Some Bacteria are Challenging our Understanding of Life Microbes reside in many places we wouldn't normally dream of visiting—take the Gakkel Ridge, for instance, where geologists are deploying robots under the Arctic ice in the hopes of finding ne

• 12.17.07

  Crossing Sensory Boundaries

  Scientists Learn About Other Forms of Brain Plasticity from People with Mixed Senses Some people see colors when they hear music. Others taste strange flavors when they look at letters of the alphabet. And still others visualize numbers as if the digits

• 11.19.07

  Zapping the Brain

  Deep Brain Stimulation might soon Treat a Number of Brain Disorders When something goes even slightly wrong in the brain, a lot of bad things can happen—take depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, chronic pain, Parkinson's disease and epilepsy,

• 11.12.07

  Art Tackles Big Pharma

  A Few Creative-types Raise Awareness About Disease-Mongering Stumble across the Web site for Havidol and you're bound to believe it’s what it says it is: an advertisement for a new drug treating Dysphoric Social Attention Consumption Deficit Anxiet

• 11.5.07

  So Many Samples, So Little Agreement

  Why the US Needs Biobanking Policies There is little argument over the potential benefit of biobanks—most scientists agree that repositories of human blood and tissues could vastly improve how well we understand, treat, and even cure debilitating d

• 10.29.07

  Beyond Blood

  Blood Substitutes May Be Able To Do What Regular Blood Cannot Those who speak of the promise of synthetic blood often focus on its potential use in trauma situations —such as after vehicular accidents, for example, or military combat. But there are

• 10.22.07

  UAVs: A Threat In the Skies?

  Why Pilots are More Scared Than Excited About Unmanned Aircraft To technology geeks, the thought of a sky dotted with Unmanned Aerial Vehicles might seem like the coolest thing in the world. But to a lot of pilots, the prospect is a scary one. When a tin

• 10.20.07

  Destination: Earth

  Will an Asteroid Hit Us? Having the good fortune to uncover a meteorite buried in the ground in Kansas is pretty awesome, but it implies the obvious: At some point, a huge asteroid crashed into Earth. And if it has happened before, occasionally with deva

• 10.15.07

  Listening for Nukes

  How the UN uses Infrasound to Monitor Nuclear Testing Milton Garces is a busy man. When the director of the Infrasound Library at the University of Hawaii is not busy monitoring volcanoes, he's using infrasound to listen for something at least as importa

• 10.15.07

  Cloning: About More Than Just Meat

  Cloning Regulations Could Have Implications for the Economy and Public Health Chances are it won't be long before our Big Macs come from cloned cows or their offspring. While it's unlikely that the beef itself will hurt us, some experts argue the issue o

• 9.27.07

  No Chemistry Set? No Problem

  Long Distance Learning Brings Chem Labs into the Comfort of Homes You may not be able to get your kicks from a chemistry set anymore, but that doesn't mean you can't learn chemistry at home. More than half of all U.S. colleges and degree-granting institu

• 9.23.07

  Botnets for Rent

  What’s the Cost of a Hijacked Computer? Botnets—networks of "zombie” computers that have been hijacked to perform dirty tasks—aren't just for computer whizzes anymore. Today, people who know how to do little more than check t

• 9.21.07

  Death Hits the Whitebark

  Climate Change-Driven Extinction Climate change may spice up a few gardens; who doesn't want an exotic flower blooming within reach?—but it's likely to take its toll on a few, too. Some changes might even devastate entire ecosystems. Take the white