Mar 19th, 2010 · Overall, the sounds of most emotions, especially the negative ones, crossed cultural boundaries with ease, according to scientists who tested those of some British and remote African people. But the sounds of love weren't so easily understood.
Mar 19th, 2010 · New Mexico high school student Erika DeBenedictis took first place in this year's Intel Science Talent Search. DeBenedictis discusses how she won $100,000 in prize money by designing a software system to guide spacecraft along the most fuel-efficient route to Venus.
Mar 19th, 2010 · When Vladimir Lenin — leader of the Russian Revolution — died, Stalin hired two scientists to preserve his body. A new play called Lenin's Embalmers explores the story. Stuart Firestein and Vern Thiessen explain how the play brings together science, politics and, strangely enough, humor.
Mar 19th, 2010 · In perhaps the cutest study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, psychologist Marcel Zentner and Tuomas Eerola found that babies will spontaneously groove to music. While babies are not great dancers, they smile more when they do hit the beat.
Mar 18th, 2010 · In the world of atoms, one thing can exist in two places at once. But on a larger scale, that rule usually breaks down. For the first time, scientists have put an object large enough to be seen with the naked eye into a state where it exhibits "weird" quantum behavior.
Mar 18th, 2010 · Until his arrest in 2004, nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan — the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb — ran a vast smuggling network that sent nuclear materiel to Iran and Libya. In his book Peddling Peril: How the Secret Nuclear Trade Arms America's Enemies, weapons expert David Albright explains how Khan's network continues to threaten global security.
Mar 17th, 2010 · Scientists have known that modern dogs are descended from wolves, but the specific ancestry hasn't been clear. Now, after analyzing DNA from 85 dog breeds, researchers say that Middle Eastern gray wolves are the likely predecessor of today's pooch.
Mar 16th, 2010 · President Obama's stem cell policy, announced a year ago this month, opened up federal funding for more stem cell lines created from human embryos. But now, scientists are facing a bitter irony — a few popular stem cell lines that could be studied with federal money under President Bush are suddenly off-limits.