A year and a half after President Obama loosened restrictions on government funding of human-embryonic-stem-cell research, a federal judge on Monday, Aug. 23, declared all such studies temporarily off-limits for taxpayer dollars, on the grounds that they violate a 1996 law. The decision could be a devastating step backward for a promising new science that has the potential to generate new treatments and possibly even cures for diseases such as diabetes and Parkinson's — and the reaction ...

Daedalus warned his son Icarus not to fly too high, or the sun would melt his waxen wings. But the boy, intoxicated with flight, soared above his cautious father. In the clear blue sky, the warmth of the sun dissolved his delicate wings, causing him to plunge to his death in the green sea below. The myth of Icarus is used to illustrate the ancient Greek word hubris, a term for the overweening human pride and vanity that often result ...

Every fall the professors at Beloit College publish their Mindset List, a dictionary of all the deeply ingrained cultural references that will make no sense to the bright-eyed students of the incoming class. It's a kind of time travel, to remind us how far we've come. This year's freshmen were typically born in 1991. That means, the authors explain, they have never used a card catalog to find a book; salsa has always outsold ketchup; women have always outnumbered men ...

In the swarm of artistically minded boomers who matured in the 1970s, there were thousands who hoped to become filmmakers or photographers. Many of the photographers--working with sophisticated cameras that can produce an occasional striking image almost without human intervention--won a brief success. But three successive decades have drastically winnowed their numbers, and only a few now stand in the ranks of mastery that include such predecessors as Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans. Tall among them is Sally Mann. After ...

Nothing raises eyebrows faster than the idea that science can find "laws" of human behavior. Human differences are too vast for generalizations that apply with any exactitude to individuals. Yet hard and useful evidence about the way most people are most likely to act most of the time is slowly being gathered by the young "behavioral sciences" —anthropology, psychology, sociology and related fields. Unhappily, much of the evidence is shrouded in jargon. Happily, nonscholars may turn this week to Human ...

Although supercomputers are dazzling in their power and engineering virtuosity, hardware alone will only partly achieve the eventual goal of computer scientists: the creation of systems that can mimic the decision- making powers of human beings. This goal is called AI, for artificial intelligence, and it has eluded computer programmers for decades. Now, however, even as supercomputers open up new worlds of possibility, researchers are taking major strides toward making their machines both smarter and more versatile. Their work has ...

What was your first reaction to the news? Relief. Nobody knew why the President was going to be addressing the country. You imagined maybe a possible terrorist attack. Then there was a sense of satisfaction, then a sense of revenge. So how much does revenge play into people's feelings about the killing of bin Laden? People are human. When you take away their loved ones in a brutal way like that, the person who did it is someone you want ...

For months residents sensed that all was not right at the Oxford Apartments, a 49-unit low-rise building on Milwaukee's crime-infested west side. A power saw buzzed at odd hours. The putrid odor of rotting meat flooded the corridors. Occasionally, a tenant would hear a cry or the thump of a falling object on the second floor. When police entered Apartment 213 last week, they were shocked to find a freezer covered with Polaroid photographs of mutilated men. Inside they discovered ...

Human failure is inevitable. Mechanical failure is unexpected. What makes Tiger Woods' story so compelling is that it's a case of both. Nowhere was that clearer than in his press conference on Friday. Woods' brand and golf game were built on his machine-like qualities. He was the guy who delivered the same result over and over. At his sport and in his business dealings, he was flawless, unfailing, programmable. So when his private behavior proved that he had ...

Not a week goes by without news of a lab breakthrough using rats or mice. But of all the promising medical interventions that make it to animal trials, only a fraction seem to translate into major breakthroughs for humans. Frankie Trull, president of the non-profit Foundation for Biomedical Research , explains the promise and the pitfalls of pre-clinical trials. Q: What do animal trials really tell us about humans? A: Animals are surrogates for humans. The basic reason for ...