Jonathan Shaw

Features | January-February 2010

Amy Wagers seeks to reawaken stem cells

Amy Wagers seeks to reawaken stem cells.

Right Now | November-December 2009

How cooking made us human

A Harvard anthropologist argues that cooking, a cultural practice, crucially shaped human evolution.

Orchid bees navigate turbulence by extending their massive hind legs to prevent rolling.

Right Now | November-December 2009

Orchid bees and flight turbulence

Orchid bees in flight extend their hind legs for stability.

Gas jets punch out of the collapsing star and blast into space, producing gamma rays that can be detected billions of light years away.

Right Now | September-October 2009

Gamma-ray bursts reveal the oldest star yet discovered

A star more than 13 billion years old

Features | September-October 2009

The erosion of privacy in the Internet era

Tyler Moore, left, with Allan Friedman, a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Research on Computation and Society

| September-October 2009

Tyler Moore explains how the bad guys take over personal computers

Phishing pits an organized criminal ecosystem against a jumbled array of private "takedown" firms, domain-name registrars, and ISPs.

Features | July-August 2009

Sexual apartheid in medieval England

Cutting-edge science helps historians push further and more fully into the past.

Particulate matter that is 2.5 microns or less in diameter (PM2.5), the kind emitted from smokestacks and tailpipes, is known to be especially harmful. Reductions in such pollution lead to increased life expectancy. In Boston between 1980 and 2000, for example, as PM2.5 concentrations dropped from 18 to 11 micrograms per cubic meter, local average life expectancy climbed four years. Of that increase, four-tenths of a year—or 10 percent of the total gain—was attributable to improved air quality.

Right Now | May-June 2009

Clean Air, Longer Life

Controls on fine particle pollution extended average lifespan in the United States by five months between 1980 and 2000.

Right Now | March-April 2009

The Internet: Foe of Democracy?

The Internet, by allowing like-minded individuals to self-segregate, has had a polarizing effect on democracy, suggests Harvard Law School’s Cass Sunstein..

Features | January-February 2009

Habeas Corpus and the War on Terrorism

In the fight against terrorists, habeas corpus has played a key role in efforts to balance civil liberties against national security.

Jane Kamensky and Jill Lepore, <em><a href="http://www.powells.com/partner/30264/biblio/9780385526197">Blindspot</a></em>, (Random House, $24.95)

Montage | November-December 2008

Blindspot: A Novel

History professor Jill Lepore is the coauthor, with Jane Kamensky, of the historical novel Blindspot, set in colonial Boston.

One form of the Rocky Mountain monkey flower has a long trumpet suited to pollination by hummingbirds; the other is pollinated by bumblebees. Their hybrid offspring don’t do well in the wild, however, because they are not easily fertilized by the birds or the bees.

Right Now | July-August 2008

What Stress Reveals

Biologist Susan Lindquist investigates how HSP90 (heat-shock protein 90), a protein chaperone, provides a molecular mechanism that may help explain punctuated equilibrium in evolution...