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Muni bonds used to be the boring, predictable part of your investment portfolio. Not anymore. In January 2011, Greek—I mean, Illinois—politicians had a problem.

In the mid 1990’s, Apple Computers was a dying company.

Six images of the mini-jets taken by Cassini between 2005 and 2008. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/QMUL Objects half a mile in diameter have been spotted punching through Saturn’s outermost ring, the F ring, and leaving glittering trails as they drag icy particles behind them. Scientists are calling these trails mini-jets.

One of the courses I teach regularly at my university is “Ethics in Science,” a course that explores (among other things) what’s involved in being a good scientist in one’s interactions with the phenomena about which one is building knowledge, in one’s interactions with other scientists, and in one’s interactions with the rest of the world.

By Ewen Callaway of Nature magazine Bloodsucking leeches are offering the best hope of finding one of the world's rarest animals. [More]

By Natasha Gilbert of Nature magazine Governments from more than 90 countries have agreed to establish an independent panel of scientists to assess the very latest research on the state of the planet's fragile ecosystems. [More]

It’s easy to to be impressed when you walk the halls of museums by the quality and quantity of specimens on display, but it is only a fraction of what institutions like the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University and other comparable institutions have in their collections. This year, the Academy celebrates its 200th anniversary and to mark the occasion, has created a year-long exhibit titled The Academy at 200: The Nature of Discovery

A galaxy cluster with the distribution of dark matter marked by purple overlay. Credit: NASA, ESA, E. Julio (JPL/LAM), P.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto/adventtr More than 382,000 people with kidney disease in the U.S. are on dialysis, a painful procedure that can wreak havoc on blood vessels due to constant jabs from large needles. During dialysis, a patient’s blood is filtered out of their body and through a machine that performs the work normally done by the kidneys.

A series of graduate student conversations with leading women biologists, at the Women in Science Symposium at Cornell April 2-3.

The surface waters of the Arctic Ocean may be releasing "significant" amounts of methane into the atmosphere, researchers reported yesterday in the journal Nature Geoscience . [More]

Genomes are complicated. Even the concept of a “gene” isn’t as straightforward as you might expect.

In the past few months, you might recall warnings of incoming pieces of the sun. Called coronal mass ejections (CMEs), these energetic solar-storm particles can trigger amazing displays of auroras .

When predicting something that science will never do, it’s wise to recall the French philosopher Auguste Comte. In 1835 he asserted that science will never figure out what stars are made of

How do painkillers buffer against social rejection? [More]