Articles from 04/2009
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Will the Future Be Geoengineered?
Five experts debate engineering the climate, how it would be governed, and the ways we're doing it already.
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America + China = The New G2
Why progress on climate change hinges on our relationship with just one nation: China.
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Books to Read Now
May releases on how cooking helped us evolve, the fallout from physics’ greatest fraud, the social science of extremism, and more.
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Energy for Nothing, Carbs for Free
When we push athletes to their limits in the lab, we’re learning that their brains give up before their muscles do. Is fatigue really just all in our heads?
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Breakdown: The New PCAST
With climate change, an obsolete energy policy, technology that's reshaping the economy, and burgeoning health threats, there will be no dull moments for the new science team.
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A Historic Commitment to Science
President Obama announced he will invest in “the largest commitment to scientific research and innovation in American history,” including new energy and science education initiatives.
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Case Study: Troubles in Kenya
On the eastern coast of Kenya, controversy erupts over plans to turn a biodiversity hotspot into farmland for Qatar.
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Hungry for Land
Growing food in foreign lands has a long history. But the 21st century version of outsourced agriculture presages something fundamentally new.
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The Parasite Puzzle
How one of Africa’s deadliest pathogens uses on-the-fly, genetic costume changes to outsmart our immune system.
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Week in Review: April 24
Fire bombings over animal research, Jim Carrey and the anti-vaccine movement, fossil of walking seal discovered, senator proposes science envoys, and transcription mapped.
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The Green Collar Solution?
Will efforts to jumpstart the economy — even ostensibly green ones — collide with efforts to save the planet?
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Once Out of Nature
Isabella Kirkland’s life-size paintings of exotic, recently discovered species capture a world caught between the joys of discovery and the threat of imminent loss.
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First Light
Kepler is looking at the radiant clouds of stars clumped thickly along the plane of the Milky Way, increasing the mission’s chances of detecting planets.
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Climate Change in High Definition
Earth the movie opens today in the US, 7 years since the Planet Earth franchise first started production. Has the footage become a chronicle of an already vanished world?
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Why Environmentalism Needs High Finance
Conservationists may wish money were no object, but if nature is to survive, economic incentives and biological imperatives must align.
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How We Saved the Ozone Layer
Modeling climate in our past, present, and future worlds.
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The Last Experiment
It’s up to social science to make us act in an environmentally conscious way. But can we trick ourselves into saving ourselves?
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Ear to the Ground
Natural quiet is a rapidly disappearing resource. But if you travel far enough, and listen carefully, you can still find it.
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This Is Your Brain on Facebook
Recent studies on the effects of the internet and other new media on brain plasticity raises an open research question: Is Google making us smarter?
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The Achilles’ Heel of Aging
Understanding the biological basis of senescence may allow us to delay or prevent the degenerative declines long accepted as an inevitable part of getting older.
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Week in Review: April 17
The EPA’s carbon dioxide mission, cutbacks in science funding in the UK and Ireland, thoughts on the AlloSphere, and John Maddox, RIP.
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The Synesthesia Census
Author and synesthesia expert David Eagleman on subjective realities, the genes behind mixed sensory experiences, and taking stock of the condition that everyone wants.
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Running on Water
Scientists look to the efficiency of nature to solve one of the biggest challenges in sustainably producing hydrogen fuel.
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The Anthrax Agenda
Eight years into an investigation that has consumed millions of dollars, some scientists and legislators remain unconvinced that the FBI's case is closed.
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The Hive Mind
Is understanding the selfless behavior of ants, bees, and wasps the key to a new evolutionary synthesis?
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The Body Politic
The deep symbiosis between bacteria and their human hosts is forcing scientists to ask: Are we organisms or living ecosystems?
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Banking the Monsoon
In a small village in the center of Gujarat, India, a society grows from clean water and satellite maps.
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Tissue-Engineered Art
MoMA design and architecture curator Paola Antonelli guides us through experimental designs that are both manufactured and living, and which test both our aesthetic and ethical sensibilities.
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Growing the Tangled Bank
Darwin is best known for natural selection, but he saw the power of chance and development, too.
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The Unraveling of Homogeny
Testing mice as individuals instead of one and the same may cut down on experimental errors and lead to significantly cheaper, more efficient drug testing.
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Protein Power
With recent advances in bioengineering, scientists are designing novel proteins from scratch that perform some of biology's most powerful functions.
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How to Reign Indefinitely
An unusual form of asexual reproduction by a Japanese species of termite raises the question: What is the value of sex?
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The Harsh Realities of Energy
There is no faster, easier fix for America’s energy crisis than to simply begin living within rational limits.
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I Am a Rat and So Are You
Humans and the domesticated lab rat share DNA, a history, and increasingly, their fates.
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Half-life
Artist Alexis Rockman’s latest exhibit portrays a psychedelic, posthuman natural world where our failings ultimately inspire us.
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Automatic for the People
A team of British researchers take a robotic approach in rethinking the hypothetico-deductive method.
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After the Fall
Alexis Rockman’s latest exhibit portrays a psychedelic, posthuman natural world where our failings horrify but ultimately inspire us.
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Science Hopes at the G20
Green investment by the G20 as part of an economic stimulus package could create jobs and address the economic and environmental threats of climate change.
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Getting Over It
Forget about erasing bad memories. Researchers have located the receptor that enables our brains to override or “unlearn” traumatic past experiences.
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Wave of Generation
The recent detection of a bizarre, high-energy wave could put to rest one of the most vexing puzzles in astrophysics.
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April Book Picks
New works on the human cost of fear, the paradigm-shifting astronomer Edwin Hubble, and the comic failings of religious fundamentalists.
Now on SEEDMAGAZINE.COM
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Ideas
I Tried Almost Everything Else
John Rinn, snowboarder, skateboarder, and “genomic origamist,” on why we should dumpster-dive in our genomes and the inspiration of a middle-distance runner.
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Ideas
Going, Going, Gone
The second most common element in the universe is increasingly rare on Earth—except, for now, in America.
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Ideas
Earth-like Planets Aren’t Rare
Renowned planetary scientist James Kasting on the odds of finding another Earth-like planet and the power of science fiction.
