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Lessons from a lonely tortoise
PUERTO AYORA, ECUADOR — At first glance, the world’s rarest creature looked just like a big boulder. I had scanned a large, plant-filled enclosure several times before locating him: a...
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Seeds of the Future
On an unusual old farm in New York City, workers are stashing away the seeds of the future. In this unlikely place, researchers are putting the seeds from flowering plants and trees in a sleeplike...
View ArticleExplainer: What should I know about HIV and AIDS?
According to government statistics, someone in the United States becomes infected with HIV every 9.5 minutes. Yet one out of five people with HIV does not know he or she has the virus. That means this...
View ArticleExplainer: Where and when did HIV begin?
In 1981, two research groups raised an alarm about a mysterious new infection. They reported that it was killing gay men in California and New York. The more scientists looked, however, the more they...
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HIV: Reversing a death sentence
In 2010, a U.S. family — the Howertons — adopted 5-year-old Duzi from South Africa. At 8, the boy now dances hip-hop and plays so many sports that his mom, Jodie, can hardly keep track. In nearly...
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Autism unlocked
This is the first of a two-part series on autism spectrum disorders. Laura Shumaker first realized that Matthew was different from other toddlers when he was about a year old. During a group play...
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Getting a head start on autism
View the video This is the second of a two-part series on autism spectrum disorders. When Matthew Shumaker was diagnosed with autism in the early 1990s, his parents didn’t know anyone else who had a...
View ArticleExplainer: What is autism?
Autism refers to a group of closely related disorders that affect how the brain develops. Experts use one blanket term —“autism spectrum disorders” —to refer to the whole group. Autism isn’t a disease...
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Cuba: How politics has become a hurdle for its researchers
Imagine you’re a scientist in the Caribbean who studies corals. Your work could help others learn how to protect endangered reefs and the ecosystem of fishes and other creatures that those reefs...
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Cool Jobs: Puzzling over proteins to study life and death
Explainer: How a fossil forms Mary Schweitzer and her research team were studying the fossil of an 80-million-year-old duck-billed dinosaur. Suddenly, they noticed something odd. When they examined...
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Migrating crabs take their eggs to the sea
PLAYA LARGA, Cuba — When Cuba’s dry season ends and the spring rains start, strange creatures begin stirring within the soggy forests of Zapata Swamp. Rain here, along the country’s southern coast,...
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Exploring the mysteries of Cuba’s coral reefs
PLAYA LARGA, Cuba — The Bay of Pigs is surprisingly clear and vividly blue — nothing like its name might suggest. Cuba’s famous bay looks like an artist’s palette — one that stretches toward the...
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Explainer: What are proteins?
DNA supplies nearly each cell of the body with an instruction book on how to make tiny chemical machines. Known as proteins, these itty bitty widgets do all the work needed to help a cell survive....
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Proud to be different in STEM
Grace Williams was 9 when her dad learned he had Alzheimer’s disease. Scientists don’t yet know what causes this incurable brain condition, which makes people more confused and forgetful. By age 12,...
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How an encounter with this odd-looking bird inspired a career
For Kevin Burgio, the journey to becoming a successful scientist wasn’t easy. When he was young, life was hard. Burgio’s father left before he was born. His mother had dropped out of high school, and...
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Weight lifting is this planetary scientist’s pastime
A love of magnetic rocks, old machines and space recently led Beck Strauss to a dream job at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The path to that career wasn’t always clear. Yet it’s...
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