Robot Uses Lizard Tail to Leap

Science fiction often envisions worlds populated by humanoid robots. In reality, insects, reptiles and nonhuman animals often serve as a more practical template for automatons. The more legs a robot has, the more easily it can navigate tough terrain. Likewise, claws are less challenging to emulate than primate-esque hands, and, as a team of researchers [...]

Carbon Nanotubes Impale Compulsive Cells

Asbestos increases the risk for certain cancers. The fibers are thought to do so by skewering cells, setting off chemical reactions that lead to inflammation, DNA damage and cell death. Some studies have suggested carbon nanotubes might have similar effects–because they’re long and spiky, like asbestos. But why would a cell draw in a nanotube, [...]

10 Unsolved Mysteries in Chemistry (preview)

1 How Did Life Begin? The moment when the first living beings arose from inanimate matter almost four billion years ago is still shrouded in mystery. How did relatively simple molecules in the primordial broth give rise to more and more complex compounds? And how did some of those compounds begin to process energy and [...]

Digging Mars: Mars Science Lab Set to Blast Off (preview)

This month NASA plans to launch its latest and most sophisticated mission ever to the Red Planet: the Mars Science Laboratory. After a dramatic landing in Gale Crater using a skycrane for the final descent, the nuclear-powered rover will drive around one of the richest deposits of clays and sulfates on the planet–the remains of [...]

Lindau Nobel Meeting–Bearing the Fruits of Global Health Research

The panel on global health at the opening ceremony of the 61st Meeting of Nobel Laureates in Lindau well and truly laid the gauntlet down to young researchers from around the world. On the panel was: Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft and co-founder of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Ada Yonath, Noble Laureate in [...]

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