Articles from 10/2009
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Pushing a Power Portfolio
As alternative energy funding plans are rolled out, a long-running debate over nuclear rages on Earth and in space.
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Lo and Behold: the Internet
On the 40th anniversary of the first internet connection, a look back on how a flash of insight and a 20-minute meeting got it all started.
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Overhyped Placebos of Doom?
Despite centuries of investigation, scientists still have much to learn about the origins and meaning of the placebo effect.
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The Environmental Revival
Which modern enviro concepts are throwbacks to the past? Four experts discuss the technologies, laws, and states of mind that have their roots in the first wave of the environmental movement.
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A Natural Obsession
Organic foods are exploding in popularity. But fears of biotechnology—and a widespread mistrust of science—won’t help efforts to create a truly sustainable agriculture.
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Brains and Storms
A pair of elegant experiments delve deep into the brains of animals, while a pair of authors stir up a storm over their take on global warming.
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Traveling Through Time and Stars
In Far Out, stunning astronomical images and lyrical essays on the nature of light and space explore the universe’s past.
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Saturn’s Strange Children
Spacecraft observations of giant tenuous rings, two-toned moons, and methane fogs are showing Saturn’s moons to be even more alien than previously believed.
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A Writing Revolution
Nearly universal literacy is a defining characteristic of today’s modern civilization; nearly universal authorship will shape tomorrow's.
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Up the Cosmic Distance Ladder
The development of astronomy can be seen as a millennia-long quest to measure and know the true scale of the natural world.
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Back From the Future
A crazy theory about the Higgs-Boson sparks debate in the physics community, and the perils of cloud computing becomes all too real.
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At the Edge of Perception
Artist Luke Jerram's work explores the limits of science and art, challenging the boundaries of both.
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Awkward Beauty
The Science Creative Quarterly editor on the complicated relationship between science and art.
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Luke Jerram: Objectively Inspired
The stunning work of an enigmatic artist. "We’re imposing our culture on scientific data whether we like it or not."
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Evolved for Extinction?
Could the novel evolutionary adaptations of animals like the Galapagos tortoise and the Komodo dragon actually leave these species more vulnerable to extinction?
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Catching the Wind in Rural Malawi
With a tinkerer’s imagination and farmer’s grit, William Kamkwamba transformed junk into the beginning of one small town’s green energy revolution.
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Folding Our Way to a Revolution
With a few strands of nucleic acids and some ingenious programming, DNA origami is remaking nanotechnology, from drug delivery to chip design.
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Heads Up
As the Nobels are awarded, President Obama and friends grab their telescopes and head injuries to athletes go under the microscope.
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Hello, You’ve Won the Nobel
The man who delivers the news to Nobel laureates on tradition, joy, and voicemail.
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Microbial Warfare
Antibiotic resistance is more than just a medical scourge; it’s also a window into a war microbes have been waging against each other for hundreds of millions of years.
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Our Shifting Urban Landscape
Urban ecologist James Danoff-Burg takes us into the field to demonstrate the tools of analyzing the biodiversity of human-altered ecosystems.
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Uncovering Ardi
Anthropologist John Hawks explains why Ardi, the oldest known skeleton of a human-like primate, matters so much to the science of human origins.
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Futurity Imperfect
The science journalism community weighs in as a new website blurs the line between reporting and public relations.
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Books to Read Now
October releases on the culture of consumption, the Golden Age of General Relativity, and how rumors spread on the internet.
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.
