Past Stories by Title

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

Of Mice and Memory - June 2008
Mice placed in enriched environments can recover lost memories, giving hope to those who study Alzheimer's.

Obesity - October 2006
Examine the biology behind the compulsion to eat.

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

Personal DNA Testing - July 2008
Genetic testing to assess risk factors for a handful of serious illnesses is now commercially available. But is it a good idea?

Phoenix Mars Lander - July 2008
NASA's latest robot has already found frozen water and is looking for more signs that the Red Planet could support life.

Profile: Bonnie Bassler - January 2007
Her insight into how bacteria "talk" has launched a revolution in biological and medical research.

Profile: Hany Farid - June 2008
This self-proclaimed "accidental scientist" is a digital detective inventing new ways to tell if photos have been faked.

Profile: Judah Folkman - July 2008
Once scorned for his ideas about how cancer grows, the late Judah Folkman is now hailed as a visionary.

Profile: Karl Iagnemma - October 2006
An innovative MIT roboticist is also an acclaimed fiction writer.

Profile: Arlie Petters - July 2007
A boy from a rural village in Belize grows up to become a world-class mathematician and cosmologist.

Profile: Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa - July 2008
He jumped the fence from Mexico to work as a farmhand and ended up a leading brain surgeon.

Profile: Pardis Sabeti - July 2008
By night she's a rocker. By day, she's a Harvard geneticist tracking the evolution of the human genome.

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.

Saving Hubble - July 2008
Two teams of spacewalkers take on the risky mission of reviving the ailing Space Telescope.

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

Smart Bridges - July 2008
Can we engineer bridges that tell us what's wrong with them before it's too late?

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

Stem Cells Breakthrough - July 2008
Three separate teams overcome a biomedical hurdle—creating stem cells without the use of human embryos.

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