Sperm are the cheetahs of the microscopic world: Made of little more than molecular muscle and batteries, tipped with a payload of genetic information, they are optimized for speed.…

Five World War II bombers took off from a Florida airfield on Oct. 5, 1967 to bomb the American South. An article that ran that morning in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune said that three…

In 2007, on a fine summer day in rural Austria, a flock of northern bald ibises followed two paraplanes, gondolas with prop engines, held aloft by yellow and blue parachutes. Although…

If anyone living in the village of Möggingen, Germany, had taken a close look at a bumblebee in the summer of 2009, they might have noticed something a little strange. Some of the…

Back in January, science news was abuzz with reports that the lowly dung-beetle—shellacked trundler of balled-up excreta, stuck with one of nature’s least glamorous jobs—used…

There’s no doubt that the climate in many parts of the planet is changing quickly. The planet is getting hotter, sea levels are rising, storms are intensifying, many lands are drying…

In 2008, my 19-year-old daughter, Danielle, took the same type of DNA test for breast and ovarian cancer that actress Angelina Jolie took recently.Jolie, 38, came out positive and…

Take a look at a butterfly’s wing, and you can learn a lesson about life. Not that it’s beautiful, or fragile, or too easily appreciated only when it’s fading—though all that…

When looking at the “Nutrition Facts” label on a package of food, the familiar Helvetica text laid out according to the FDA’s exacting specifications, you could easily…

It’s easy to think of our cells’ inner workings as parts in a well-oiled machine—like tiny crankshafts and gears they chug along in their endless task of transcribing information…