Science : NPR

Weekend Special: What If Your Fingers Could Create A World?

March 31, 2012 • What if we had the technology to craft entire worlds with just the swish of a finger? What would you make? What would you sculpt? How would you play?

Scientific Journals Plan To Publish Contentious Bird Flu Research

March 30, 2012 • A government advisory committee has reconsidered its advice to keep certain details of bird flu experiments secret. Revised versions of manuscripts that describe two recent studies can be openly published, the committee now says. The decision could help end a debate that has raged within the scientific community for months.

Take Your Dog To The Office And Stress Less

Patch, a Great Dane, has a memo for you. Brian Smith/Flickr hide caption

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Brian Smith/Flickr

Take Your Dog To The Office And Stress Less

March 30, 2012 • Do you think you'd be less stressed out if you took your dog to work with you? Science agrees. Employees with dogs were less stressed out than their coworkers, new research finds. But it works only if the dog is polite.

Stephen Lovekin, Carlos Alvarez, Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Neuroscientists Battle Furiously Over Jennifer Aniston

March 30, 2012 • When researchers showed subjects pictures of Jennifer Aniston, very specific neurons lit up. And these neurons weren't triggered by pictures of other people. This curious finding is one that brain scientists hope to solve by tracing the pathways in the human brain and creating a map called a connectome.

Art, Mind And Brain Intersect In Kandel's Vienna

March 30, 2012 • In The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind and Brain, Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist Eric Kandel writes of turn-of-the-century Vienna, where artists mingled with writers, scientists and physicians, and explains how the brain perceives a work of art.

Half A Century Later, A Return To Challenger Deep

March 30, 2012 • The film director James Cameron has just completed a dive to Challenger Deep, the deepest point on Earth at nearly 36,000 feet under the sea. His manned descent is the first in 52 years, since the oceanographers Don Walsh and Jacques Piccard explored the Mariana Trench in the bathyscaphe Trieste.

Why Don't Spiders Get Stuck In Their Webs?

March 30, 2012 • This mystery has plagued arachnologists for decades. William Eberhard and Daniel Briceno untangle the web question in a paper in the journal Naturwissenschaften. The answer has to do with spiders' oily, hairy legs.

No Joke: Science Is A Laughing Matter

March 30, 2012 • Want to hear a joke about sodium hypobromite? NaBrO! Can science be the butt of a good joke? Ira Flatow and guests test the hypothesis in an annual April Fools' joke-a-thon. They share the best gags in the business. Sidesplitting or groan-worthy? You decide.

Homeopathic Complaints

March 30, 2012 • Homeopathy. A mystery in the guise of the nineteenth-century's apothecary. It's an untrue theory. But might it be an effective practice?

How Much BPA Exposure Is Dangerous?

March 30, 2012 • The FDA has until Saturday to decide whether to ban the plastic additive BPA from food packaging. Some scientists think BPA poses a risk to consumers because it can act like estrogen in the body. But recent studies by government scientists suggest the risk, if any, is minimal.

Policy On High-Risk Biological Research Tightened

March 30, 2012 • The government released a new policy on how to handle legitimate biological research that could be misused in the wrong hands. The move comes as controversy still swirls around recent experiments with lab-altered bird flu.

Studies Show Why Insecticides Are Bad News For Bees

One class of insecticides makes an entire corn plant poisonous to many insects that feed on it, including bees. iStockphoto.com hide caption

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iStockphoto.com

Studies Show Why Insecticides Are Bad News For Bees

March 29, 2012 • Two new studies, published in the prestigious journal Science, suggest that one class of insecticides poses a more serious threat to bees than government regulators realized.

This image shows the grid structure of the major pathways of the brain. It was created using a scanner that's part of the Human Connectome Project, a five-year effort which is studying and mapping the human brain. MGH-UCLA Human Connectome Project hide caption

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MGH-UCLA Human Connectome Project

Shots - Health News

How Your Brain Is Like Manhattan

March 29, 2012 • The human brain may be just three pounds of jelly. But it turns out that jelly is very organized. New scanning techniques show that the brain's communications pathways are laid out in a highly ordered three-dimensional grid that look a bit like a map of Manhattan.

Battling 'Red Tide,' Scientists Map Toxic Algae To Prevent Shellfish Poisoning

An oyster shucker on Samish Island, Wash. on Puget Sound. The state is frequently forced to close beaches to oyster gatherers because of the risks of harmful algae blooms. Ted S. Warren/AP hide caption

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Ted S. Warren/AP

The Salt

Battling 'Red Tide,' Scientists Map Toxic Algae To Prevent Shellfish Poisoning

March 28, 2012 • Scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are working to prevent outbreaks by tracking when and where red tide in Puget Sound will happen next.

Science

Opinion

Krulwich Wonders...

Weekend Special: What If Your Fingers Could Create A World?

Shots - Health News

Scientific Journals Plan To Publish Contentious Bird Flu Research

Shots - Health News

Take Your Dog To The Office And Stress Less

Opinion

Krulwich Wonders...

Neuroscientists Battle Furiously Over Jennifer Aniston

Culture

Art, Mind And Brain Intersect In Kandel's Vienna

Half A Century Later, A Return To Challenger Deep

Animals

Why Don't Spiders Get Stuck In Their Webs?

Games & Humor

No Joke: Science Is A Laughing Matter

Opinion

Homeopathic Complaints

How Much BPA Exposure Is Dangerous?

Policy On High-Risk Biological Research Tightened

The Salt

Studies Show Why Insecticides Are Bad News For Bees

Shots - Health News

How Your Brain Is Like Manhattan

The Salt

Battling 'Red Tide,' Scientists Map Toxic Algae To Prevent Shellfish Poisoning