Drilling the Arctic for Energy: Does tapping Alaskan oil to increase energy independence come at our peril?
Plans to greatly expand fossil-fuel exploration and retrieval in the Far North are raising environmentalists' hackles
Features1840 articles archived since 1845
Fueling Our Transportation Future
What are the options for decreasing demand for oil and lowering greenhouse gas emissions in cars and light trucks?
20 Years After the Exxon Valdez: Preventing--and Preparing for--the Next Oil Spill Disaster [Slide Show]
The biggest oil spill in U.S. history sparked improvements in tanker construction and navigation technology, along with better crew training, but the danger remains
Analyzing What Robots Tell Us About Human Nature: A Q&A with Will Wright
You don't truly appreciate the complexity of life until you try to reverse engineer and recreate it, he says
Digging Guatemala: Anthropologists Look for Clues to Past Political Killings
Fredy Peccerelli and his team exhume mass graves to search for evidence to identify victims and prosecute their killers
The Coming Merging of Mind and Machine
The accelerating pace of technological progress means that our intelligent creations will soon eclipse us--and that their creations will eventually eclipse them
Rise of the Robots--The Future of Artificial Intelligence
By 2050 robot "brains" based on computers that execute 100 trillion instructions per second will start rivaling human intelligence
Can Robots Be Programmed to Learn from Their Own Experiences?
Researchers program robots to see if they can learn a very human trait: common sense
Natural Born Automatons: Next-Gen Robots Take Cues from Biology
How a new generation of robots is taking its inspiration from the natural world (and helping biologists learn more about it)
Nitrogen Fertilizer: Agricultural Breakthrough--And Environmental Bane
A new report citing drawbacks of the corn ethanol craze casts a pall over the centennial of a Nobel Prize-winning discovery that transformed global food production
Knowing Swings for the Philosophical Fences
Nicolas Cage's new movie knowingly takes on some big questions about randomness and determinism--and, by extension, about science and faith
What to Do about Coal?
Cheap, plentiful coal is expected to fuel power plants for the foreseeable future, but can we keep it from devastating the environment?
Drink Up: Taking the Salt out of Seawater
Removing the salt from briny water is becoming more affordable
DNA on the Loose: Next-Gen Blood Tests Tap Free-Floating Genetic Material
Tests using floating nucleic acids could diagnose disease, monitor pregnancy and weed out "mad" cows
Meet the Smallest Frog in the Andes
The tiny, dime-size hopper lives in Peru's damp cloud forests
