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The World’s Most Reviled Genius
Jeneen Interlandi 10/9/2009 12:00:00 AM
He wasn't always. In the past three decades, Duesberg has been described as a genius, a martyr, and a genocidal lunatic—often by the same person, usually amid the fierce debates and international headlines that come with major scientific breakthroughs. In 1971, at the age of 33, he became the first scientist to identify a cancer-causing gene—a biological holy grail that secured his place among an elite group of the country's top researchers. Tenure at Berkeley and a coveted spot in the National Academy of Sciences followed. So did rumors of a Nobel and millions in grant money from the National Cancer Institute.
On Top of the World
Daniel Stone 10/9/2009 12:00:00 AM
Every 101 minutes or so, a Department of Defense imaging satellite circles the Earth, capturing images from the equator to the polar ice caps. It's that DOD drone (colorfully named the DMSPF-17) that monitors geologic changes, such as the decreasing size of the Arctic and Antarctic ice covers. The images it snaps are the ones most people see of the Earth's two white domes, which have been steadily diminishing for the past decade.
Unexpected and Beautiful
Claudia Kalb 10/8/2009 12:00:00 AM
They are shades of the rainbow—blues, yellows, reds, and greens—arranged in a luminous pattern of imperfect rectangles. They look like swatches of silk fabric. Or the tops of paintbrushes, one next to the other, dipped in multiple pots of color. Amazing to think that the glorious shapes in this digital photograph are actually the scales of a moth's wing. Magnified 100 times under a microscope, they are far more intricate than the shimmering wing you'd see with your naked eye. Charles Krebs, the photographer who took the image, is positively joyful when he talks about the drama of nature seen up close. "It's just absolutely stunning to peel off layer upon layer," he says. "Instead of getting simpler and simpler, it gets more complex."
Autism Is on the Rise (Or Is it?)
Mary Carmichael 10/6/2009 12:00:00 AM
For years the autism community's most powerful public-relations weapon has been a striking statistic: an estimated 1 in 150 children have the diagnosis. Now it appears that estimate is actually too small. According to two new studies, the number of kids diagnosed with autism or a related disorder in the U.S. is closer to 1 in 100.
An SOS for Science
Daniel Lyons 10/1/2009 12:00:00 AM
Two weeks ago I spent time with some of the top scientists in the field of alternative energy, including John Holdren, the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, a.k.a. our national "science czar." We were attending a conference in Washington, D.C., that drew CEOs of Fortune 100 companies, as well as entrepreneurs and investors. I came away convinced that the United States, which for decades has been the world leader in science and technology, will soon be eclipsed by China and other countries. Alternative energy is the next tidal wave in tech innovation. If we miss it, we will not only weaken our economy and harm our national security—we will turn ourselves into a second-rate nation. And as I sat there listening to the experts speak, all I could think was, we're doomed. (Click here to follow Daniel Lyons)
Fact Impact
Lisa Miller 10/1/2009 12:00:00 AM
What Harris, his fellow researcher Jonas Kaplan, and the other authors of the study want to address is the idea, which has been floating around in both scientific and religious circles, that our brains are doing something special when we believe in God—that religious belief is, neurologically speaking, an entirely different process from believing in things that are empirically and verifiably true (things that Harris endearingly refers to as "tables and chairs"). He says his results "cut against the quite prevalent notion that there's something else entirely going on in the case of religious belief." Our believing brains make no qualitative distinctions between the kinds of things you learn in a math textbook and the kinds of things you learn in Sunday school. Though the existence of God will never be proved—or disproved—by an fMRI scan, science can study a thing or two about the neurological mechanisms of belief. What Harris's study shows is that when a conservative Christian says he believes in the Second Coming as an undeniable fact, he isn't lying or exaggerating or employing any other rhetorical maneuver. If a believer's brain regards the Second Coming the way it does every other fact, then debates about the veracity of faith would seem—to the committed believer, at least—to be rather pointless.