THE ELECTION:

The 2008 U.S. presidential election culminated the longest and one of the most contentious campaigns ever. When the primaries whittled the crowded race to two, the candidates and their running mates tangled over a number of issues, including those of energy and environmental policy ....[More]

THE ELECTION:

The 2008 U.S. presidential election culminated the longest and one of the most contentious campaigns ever. When the primaries whittled the crowded race to two, the candidates and their running mates tangled over a number of issues, including those of energy and environmental policy. As Election Day approached, residual concerns over the robustness of electronic voting systems resurfaced. But a relatively wide electoral college margin of victory for Democrat Barack Obama doused claims of foul play. The "cartogram" depicted here, by physics professor Mark Newman of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, shades each county by its preference for Obama (bluer) or John McCain (redder) in the election. The counties are also resized to reflect their populations.  [Less] [Link to this slide]

Mark Newman/University of Michigan at Ann Arbor

MARS:

The Red Planet captivated our attention this past year, as the massively popular Phoenix lander outlived its original mission, digging up water ice , spotting falling snow , Twittering its feelings, and ultimately perishing as it passed into Martian winter....[More]

MARS:

The Red Planet captivated our attention this past year, as the massively popular Phoenix lander outlived its original mission, digging up water ice, spotting falling snow, Twittering its feelings, and ultimately perishing as it passed into Martian winter. Meanwhile, observations from an orbiting spacecraft allowed a group of researchers to verify that massive bodies in the southern mid-latitudes of Mars are in fact ice glaciers--potentially the largest stores of water outside the poles.  [Less] [Link to this slide]

NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

THE LARGE HADRON COLLIDER:

The world's biggest science experiment got off to a rocky start, but it nonetheless dazzled with what it might accomplish in 2009 . The LHC, a gargantuan particle collider at CERN, the European lab for particle physics near Geneva, had just been fired up when a catastrophic electrical malfunction put the kibosh on its activities in September ....[More]

THE LARGE HADRON COLLIDER:

The world's biggest science experiment got off to a rocky start, but it nonetheless dazzled with what it might accomplish in 2009. The LHC, a gargantuan particle collider at CERN, the European lab for particle physics near Geneva, had just been fired up when a catastrophic electrical malfunction put the kibosh on its activities in September. But repairs are under way and the collider should be good to go in 2009. Unless, that is, critics who hypothesize that the LHC could create world-gobbling black holes have a say in the matter.  [Less] [Link to this slide]

© Martial Trezzini/epa/Corbis

CHINA:

The world's eyes turned to China with the arrival of the summer Olympics in Beijing. Amid a building boom (as evidenced here by the new China Central Television Headquarters) and facing a mounting pollution problem , the nation took some aggressive steps to rein in its environmental troubles and put forth a greener profile in the glare of the spotlight....[More]

CHINA:

The world's eyes turned to China with the arrival of the summer Olympics in Beijing. Amid a building boom (as evidenced here by the new China Central Television Headquarters) and facing a mounting pollution problem, the nation took some aggressive steps to rein in its environmental troubles and put forth a greener profile in the glare of the spotlight. But scandals took their toll, as Chinese milk and infant formula were found to be tainted with melamine and contaminated shipments of the blood thinner heparin were recalled.  [Less] [Link to this slide]

David Biello

BISPHENOL A:

What began the year as a fringe environmental concern went mainstream in 2008: Bisphenol A (BPA), a common ingredient in household plastics, came under suspicion as a potential health risk....[More]

BISPHENOL A:

What began the year as a fringe environmental concern went mainstream in 2008: Bisphenol A (BPA), a common ingredient in household plastics, came under suspicion as a potential health risk. BPA, studies showed, could be especially harmful to the development of the nervous and hormonal systems of babies and youngsters. Canada went so far as to ban BPA from baby bottles. In April, Canadian Minister of the Environment John Baird presented five-month-old Georgia Symonds with a BPA-free baby bottle (pictured here). And manufacturers such as Nalgene dropped BPA plastics from their product lines. But despite growing evidence of its ill effects, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration continued to assert it was safe to use in ordinary applications, drawing the ire of enviros and consumer advocates.  [Less] [Link to this slide]

Tom Hanson/AP

FOOD CRISIS:

A convergence of factors--surging fuel prices, an agricultural shift toward biofuels , increased demand for meat in newly prosperous nations, crop-straining droughts--drove food prices to dangerous highs in 2008....[More]

FOOD CRISIS:

A convergence of factors--surging fuel prices, an agricultural shift toward biofuels, increased demand for meat in newly prosperous nations, crop-straining droughts--drove food prices to dangerous highs in 2008. Hardest hit were poor countries with already strained food supplies such as Somalia, pictured here. The global financial crisis in the latter half of the year relieved part of the pressure by easing prices somewhat, but the long-term outlook for the world's food security remains cloudy.  [Less] [Link to this slide]

© Badri Media/epa/Corbis

HIV AT 25:

2008 marked 25 years since the virus that causes AIDS was first identified . For that discovery, virologists Luc Montagnier (pictured here) and Françoise Barré-Sinoussi shared half of this year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine....[More]

HIV AT 25:

2008 marked 25 years since the virus that causes AIDS was first identified. For that discovery, virologists Luc Montagnier (pictured here) and Françoise Barré-Sinoussi shared half of this year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. (Another prominent early contributor, Robert Gallo, was not recognized.) Meanwhile, we took a look back at PEPFAR, the Bush administration's massive global AIDS initiative, five years on. Whereas researchers continue to strive for a solution, whether a vaccine or a cure, it is clear that HIV/AIDS is a much tougher foe than anyone could have predicted 25 years ago.  [Less] [Link to this slide]

AP

GENE TESTING GOES MAINSTREAM:

DNA tests dropped in price significantly in 2008 , generating a flurry of excitement, skepticism and worry. For a few hundred dollars, proponents claim, anyone can trace their genealogical roots, their predisposition to certain diseases , and even their potential for athletic greatness --all with a mere swab of the mouth....[More]

GENE TESTING GOES MAINSTREAM:

DNA tests dropped in price significantly in 2008, generating a flurry of excitement, skepticism and worry. For a few hundred dollars, proponents claim, anyone can trace their genealogical roots, their predisposition to certain diseases, and even their potential for athletic greatness--all with a mere swab of the mouth. But the validity of these tests has been called into question, and their prevalence raises an even more important issue of privacy and discrimination.  [Less] [Link to this slide]

© iStockphoto/Jonathan Parry

2001 ANTHRAX ATTACKS: CASE CLOSED?

The saga of the 2001 postal anthrax attacks that killed five people appeared to have reached its conclusion in July with the apparent suicide of Bruce Ivins (pictured), an army biodefense researcher and the federal authorities' prime suspect in the plot....[More]

2001 ANTHRAX ATTACKS: CASE CLOSED?

The saga of the 2001 postal anthrax attacks that killed five people appeared to have reached its conclusion in July with the apparent suicide of Bruce Ivins (pictured), an army biodefense researcher and the federal authorities' prime suspect in the plot. But the aftershocks of the attacks are still being felt: In October, the feds announced emergency protocols to protect postal workers in future such situations. And court documents unsealed in November helped illuminate why it took the FBI so long to close in on Ivins. Meanwhile, some posed the question: Did the increase in funding for biodefense labs that followed the anthrax attacks make us safer or more vulnerable?  [Less] [Link to this slide]

© USAMRIID/Handout/Reuters/Corbis

EXOPLANETS:

The eyes of the world turned to other worlds as astronomers made huge strides in the study of planets outside our solar system . The biggest coup came in November when two teams simultaneously published the first photographs of such planets (one of them, Fomalhaut b, is pictured here)....[More]

EXOPLANETS:

The eyes of the world turned to other worlds as astronomers made huge strides in the study of planets outside our solar system. The biggest coup came in November when two teams simultaneously published the first photographs of such planets (one of them, Fomalhaut b, is pictured here). Before this milestone announcement, the presence of extrasolar planets, or exoplanets, had previously only been inferred from the behavior or properties of their host stars. But even such indirect study has yielded bountiful results: This year methane and then carbon dioxide were found in the atmosphere of an exoplanet, boding well for future efforts to sniff out signs of life on other worlds.  [Less] [Link to this slide]

NASA/ESA/P. Kalas