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All NASA spacecraft sent to other planets must undergo meticulous procedures to make sure they don't carry biological contamination from Earth to their destinations .

Diamonds have long been available in pairs--say, mounted in a nice set of earrings. But physicists have now taken that pairing to a new level, linking two diamonds on the quantum level. [More]

As the world negotiates in Durban, climate change continues unabated--and greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise [More]

When the world talks climate change --as is currently under way in Durban, South Africa--the main issue is carbon dioxide emissions. CO2 is emanating from the negotiators' mouths and the power plants and cars of their home countries--and that simple molecule is responsible for the bulk of global warming to date. [More]

The March 2011 Tohoku-Oki earthquake that decimated Japan and its Fukushima nuclear reactors with a monster tsunami altered the seafloor off the country’s eastern coast much more than scientists had thought. Analysis released today in the journal Science indicates the ocean bed moved as much as 50 meters laterally and 16 meters vertically. The magnitude 9.0 quake occurred close to the nearby Japan Trench that runs north to south in the Pacific Ocean (dark blue line on the map below).

Hudson the polar bear is a star attraction at Chicago's Brookfield Zoo, where visitors come to watch him romp and swim in the new "Great Bear Wilderness" exhibit.

John de Lancie and Anna Gunn in the world premiere of Alan Alda's "Radiance: The Passion of Marie Curie" at the Geffen Playhouse. I grew up watching M*A*S*H reruns with my dad, so even early in life, Alan Alda, who played Dr. Hawkeye Pierce throughout the show’s eleven seasons, was a familiar name and face

Key concepts [More]

Editor's Note: This article was originally published in Volume 205, Number 6 of Scientific American in December 1961. [More]

December 1961 Protein Structure [More]

When real brains operate in the real world, it’s a two-way street.

I moved my eyes, and I realized that I was asleep in bed. When I saw the beautiful landscape start to blur, I thought to myself, “This is my dream; I want it to stay!” And the scene reappeared. Then I thought to myself how nice it would be to gallop through this landscape

Losing weight is not always about anticipating swimsuit season or squeezing into skinny jeans--for the clinically obese , losing weight is about fighting serious illness and reclaiming health. But the primal part of the brain that regulates appetite will not place a moratorium on hunger just because someone and their doctor acknowledge the need to lose weight. Researchers at Syracuse University are working toward a unique solution: a stick of chewing gum that suppresses appetite.

A crowd observes the match playing on the main stage at the StarCraft 2 championships in Providence, RI. Credit: Major League Gaming If there is one general rule about the limitations of the human mind, it is that we are terrible at multitasking. The old phrase united we stand, divided we fall applies equally well to the mechanisms of attention as it does to a patriotic cause.

A skywatcher has photographed a troubled Russian Mars probe that remains stuck in Earth orbit three weeks after its launch. [More]