Converting corn to ethanol in Iowa not only leads to clearing more of the Amazonian rainforest, researchers report, but also would do little to slow global warming.
Trash from China's satellite-killing missile test has spread widely in space, creating a debris cloud that could jeopardize spy satellites and commercial imagery satellites in low orbits around Earth.
Users of online worlds such as Second Life and World of Warcraft transact millions of dollars worth of virtual goods and services every day, and these virtual economies are beginning to draw the attention of real-world authorities.
Advanced computer simulations let epidemiologists unleash virtual plagues in real cities to see which interventions could best quell outbreaks of disease.
Richard L. Garwin argues that instead of rushing to deploy a flawed and untested missile defense system, "military contractors, technologists and politicians should pay more attention to evaluating the relative magnitudes of the threats" and shift scarce resources to the "development of alternative systems that would have a real chance of stopping ICBMs."
The author surveys his team's research on the possibility of moderating or deflecting hurricanes through a variety of means, including using an array of space-based solar power satellites.
Plant-made pharmaceuticals are inherently safer than those from animal cell cultures, which carry a risk of spreading animal pathogens. They also provide a much cheaper means of production. But fears that these "pharma crops" will contaminate the food supply are casting shadows on the promise of the technology.
Unleashed viruses, environmental disaster, gray goo--astronomer Sir Martin Rees calculates that civilization has only a 50-50 chance of making it to the 22nd century.
Biologists are crafting libraries of interchangeable DNA parts and assembling them inside microbes to create programmable, living machines
The international high-energy physics community is campaigning for a 30-kilometer long, internationally funded, particle accelerator that could "offer a precise tool to explore some of the most important unanswered questions in physics."