Stories by W. Wayt Gibbs

Around the U.S., engineers are finishing one-year crash projects to create robots able to dash 200 miles through the Mojave Desert in a day, unaided by humans. Scientific American tailed the odds-on favorite team for 10 months and found that major innovations in robotics are not enough to win such a contest. Obsession is also required

Once a curmudgeonly champion of "usable" design, cognitive scientist Donald A. Norman argues that future machines will need emotions to be truly dependable

As patents expire on its products, the biotechnology industry braces for impact

DNA was once considered the sole repository of heritable information. But biologists are starting to decipher a separate, much more malleable layer of information encoded within the chromosomes. Genetics, make way for epigenetics

Just when scientists thought they had DNA almost figured out, they are discovering in chromosomes two vast, but largely hidden, layers of information that affect inheritance, development and disease

In the war of the worms, was one wearing a white hat?

A rocket launch is a riveting sight. Just don't count on the countdown

A high-tech piano treats a repetitive stress disorder

Building the world's largest video arcade--in your family room

Libraries cut off access to the scientific literature

New devices connect the stereo and TV to the home data network

Cheaper, better protein drugs through sweetening

Recent evidence challenges long-held theories of how cells turn malignant--and suggests new ways to stop tumors before they spread

The new way to do pure math: experimentally

Tracking down every form of life in the Great Smoky Mountains

Physicists have spent eight years and 365 million building a radically new kind of observatory to detect gravitational waves. but will it work? a trial run put it to the test

Atomic clocks are shrinking to microchip size, heading for space--and approaching the limits of useful precision

Linguists have known for years that thousands of the world ¿s languages are at grave risk of extinction. Yet only recently has the field summoned the will--and the money--to do much about it

New insights into how language warps the brain

Explore the marvels of engineering inside Hoover Dam

With speech-recognition software, your voice is the computer's command

Programs crash, people make mistakes, networks grow and change. That¿s life, and computer scientists are finally building systems that can deal with it

To defeat cyberterrorists, computer systems must be designed to work around sabotage. David A. Fisher's new programming language will help do just that

Even an amateur can create a custom-designed internet appliance