News Feature in 2013

When a single genetic mutation first let ancient Europeans drink milk, it set the stage for a continental upheaval.

Microbiologists are trying to work out whether use of antibiotics on farms is fuelling the human epidemic of drug-resistant bacteria.

Health officials are watching in horror as bacteria become resistant to powerful carbapenem antibiotics — one of the last drugs on the shelf.

Confronted with the explosive popularity of online learning, researchers are seeking new ways to teach the practical skills of science.

The United States and Europe are both planning billion-dollar investments to understand how the brain works. But the technological challenges are vast.

Fiona Fox and her Science Media Centre are determined to improve Britain's press. Now the model is spreading around the world.

Efforts to predict the near-term climate are taking off, but their record so far has been patchy.

With thousands of people in need of heart transplants, researchers are trying to grow new organs.

In 1962, Leonard Hayflick created a cell strain from an aborted fetus. More than 50 years later, WI-38 remains a crucial, but controversial, source of cells.

D-Wave is pioneering a novel way of making quantum computers — but it is also courting controversy.

With earthquake death tolls rising, Ross Stein is building a global risk model to mitigate future disasters.

Unmanned aerial vehicles are poised to take off as popular tools for scientific research.

The launch of several science mega-prizes is making some researchers millionaires — but others question whether such awards are the best way to promote their field.

One hundred years after Niels Bohr published his model of the atom, a special issue of Nature explores its legacy — and how much there is still to learn about atomic structure.

Physicists are stretching, stripping and contorting atoms to new and bizarre limits.

The Hubble Space Telescope is giving astronomers a glimpse of the Universe's first, tumultuous era of galaxy formation.

Karl Deisseroth is leaving his mark on brain science one technique at a time.

Ed Stone has spent 36 years guiding the twin Voyager spacecraft through the Solar System. Next stop, interstellar space.

More and more studies show that being overweight does not always shorten life — but some public-health researchers would rather not talk about them.

Ecuador has successfully eradicated invasive pigs and goats from most of the Galapagos archipelago. Now it is taking on the rats.