Articles from 11/2009
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Taming Carbon’s Wild Side
Highly reactive molecules known as carbenes have gone from unstable intermediates with nanosecond lifetimes to powerful tools in synthetic chemistry.
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Portfolio: Library of Lungs
Using electron microcopy to find the evolutionary history of so-called "book lungs" in scorpions took Carsten Kamenz across an alien landscape of miniature caverns, canyons, and beaches.
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Benign by Design
With toxic compounds turning up in animals, food, and people all over the world, scientists are calling for green chemistry: a sustainable ethos of product design.
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Rethinking Light and Sound
The director of the Census of Marine Life on broadening the scope of global change to include illumination and noise.
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Hair Raiser
Malcolm Gladwell and Steven Pinker duel over balancing scientific rigor with relatable narrative, while the future of personal genomics goes under the microscope.
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Our Adapting Future
Current developments in autonomous, biological, and evolutionary robotics will have a profound impact on the future of interactive and dynamic architectural space.
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Industrial-Strength Bias
The pharmaceutical industry spends millions of dollars developing drugs and millions more swaying the opinions of physicians and the public. Can this imperfect system be reformed?
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Let There Be Light
Astronomers will soon find scores of Earth-sized exoplanets, but imaging them may be decades away. That is, unless NASA decides to build a starshade.
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Perfect Strangers
The eerie emotional response brought on by near-duplicates of our selves raises interesting questions about perception and expectations.
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Into the Uncanny Valley
New findings shed light on a century’s worth of bizarre explanations for the eerie feeling we get around lifelike robots.
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Signs from Above
The release of an apocalyptic movie prompts NASA to debunk planetary rumors, fowl play shuts down the LHC, and the Catholic Church discusses alien life.
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Fire, Water, Acid, and Stone
In Bernhard Edmaier’s photographs, rivers of lava and scarred volcanic plains share the stage with more obscure tectonic markers: eerily hued lakes and pools of bubbling mud.
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Probing into Depression
Deep brain stimulation, already established as a treatment for stubborn Parkinson’s disease, may also be useful as a therapy for drug-resistant clinical depression.
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Bioplastics Man
Biochemist Oliver Peoples explains how his polymer-producing microbes could transform the plastics industry and why both oceans and landfills will benefit.
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Mars: A Teeming Past?
Questions of extraterrestrial life rest on theories of Martian history.
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What Life Leaves Behind
The search for life beyond our pale blue dot is fraught with dashed hopes. Will the chemical and mineral fingerprints of Earthly organisms apply on other worlds?
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Sad Sacks
As a UK adviser is fired over politically unpalatable advice and an English teacher is suspended over an article about animal sexuality, the fate of facts is on the line.
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A Miniature Miscellany
In their newest collaboration, Felice Frankel and George Whitesides explore the nanoscale world, from molecules to quantum dots.
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Sweet Obesity
As obesity rates soar, Americans are consuming more low-calorie artificial sweeteners. But do artificial sweeteners actually help people lose weight?
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A Man on the Edge
A new biography explores Jacques Cousteau’s strange and colorful life but struggles to uncover why he has been so quickly forgotten.
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Books to Read Now
November releases feature the mysteries of Grigori Perelman, the evolutionary origins of reading, and strategies for containing strains of flu.
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.
