Past Stories by Subject

Bird Brains - July 2008
Clues to the origins of human language are turning up in the brains of birds.

Capturing Carbon - July 2008
An 8th-grader's science project prompts her scientist father to develop a new way to pull excess CO₂ out of the atmosphere.

Emergence - July 2007
How does the "intelligence" of an ant colony or the stock market arise out of the simple actions of its members?

First Primates - July 2008
Our most distant primate ancestors, which took the stage shortly after the dinosaurs left it, were tree-dwellers the size of mice.

Leeches - July 2008
A century after falling out of favor among doctors, medicinal leeches are back in hospitals, sucking away on patients' wounds.

Mammoth Mystery - July 2008
A pair of mammoth skeletons is found locked together by their tusks. What happened?

Papyrus - November 2006
Scraps of writings from a garbage dump in ancient Egypt reveal what life was like 2,000 years ago.

Profile: Julie Schablitsky - July 2007
Meet an archeologist who is helping to rewrite the history of the Old West.

Profile: Edith Widder - July 2008
Meet a marine biologist and explorer who has engineered new ways to spy on deep-sea creatures.

The Search for ET - July 2008
Astronomers have their radio telescopes tuned to receive signals from alien worlds. But is anybody out there?

Space Storms - July 2008
Behind the dazzling display of the aurora borealis are space storms that could turn the lights off here on Earth.

T. Rex Blood? - July 2007
Preserved soft tissue, including possible blood vessels and red blood cells, are turning up in dinosaur fossils.