Innovation

Playwright, actress and spoken-word poet Sarah Jones depicts 14 characters in her Tony award-winning show, Bridge & Tunnel, which enjoyed a successful run on Broadway in 2006 and opened last month in Los Angeles. One critic called the play, “the most satisfying solo show since Mike Nichols unveiled Whoopi Goldberg and Lily Tomlin searched for signs of intelligent life in the universe 20 years ago.”

Chameleon

Playwright and performer Sarah Jones displays a genius for climbing into other people's skin

“It’s not unfair to say that we have been completely misled” by studying mostly museum-quality specimens, says O’Dea (gathering fossils in Bocas del Toro along Panama’s Caribbean coast).

Shell Fame

Paleobiologist Aaron O'Dea has made his name by sweating the small stuff

“The more race is not supposed to matter, the more it does,” says Packer (in her home office in Pacifica, California). “It’s one of the conundrums of living in America today.” She is currently working on a historical novel titled The Thousands, about the “forgotten masses of blacks who went West.”

Comedienne of Manners

Novelist ZZ Packer uses humor to point up some disconcerting signposts along America's racial divide

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Signs of Life

Astrophysicist Lisa Kaltenegger analyzes light from distant stars for evidence we're not alone

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Net Worker

Where are your friends in cyberspace? Closer than you might think, says Internet researcher Jon Kleinberg

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Civil Wrongs

In a painstaking study of 1960s Atlanta, Kevin Kruse takes suburban whites to task

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Keeper of the Keys

Pianist Jason Moran laces his strikingly original music with the soulful sounds of jazz greats

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High Scorer

Composer Nico Muhly wowed them at Carnegie Hall and the New York Public Library

There’s a misperception about prejudice, says Richeson, that “people do bad things because they’re bad people, and there are only a few of these bad apples around.” All of us have prejudices, she adds, but we also have the capacity to change.

The Bias Detective

How does prejudice affect people? Psychologist Jennifer Richeson is on the case

“I wanted to build something that grows from large to huge,” Schachter (at Yahoo!’s Palo Alto office) told the Guardian. “I don’t know if I have another innovation in me, but it would be nice to try.”

Site Seer

Faced with the Internet's overwhelming clutter, Joshua Schachter invented a deceptively simple tool that helps us all cut to the chase

Tao, 32, does mathematic both pure and practical—from proving that prime number patterns come in every conceivable shape to deriving solutions needed for the next generation of digital camera and MRI scanners.

Primed for Success

Terence Tao is regarded as first among equals among young mathematicians, but who's counting

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Down to Earth

Anthropologist Amber VanDerwarker is unraveling the mysteries of the ancient Olmec by figuring out what they ate

“His scientific contributions are joyful, spark curiosity and inspire the young,” computer scientist Jeannette Wing says of her colleague Luis von Ahn (on the Carnegie Mellon campus, seated upon one of the “guest chairs” he keeps in his office).

The Player

Luis von Ahn's secret for making computers smarter? Get thousands of people to take part in his cunning online games

Why does the human immune system sometimes fail to thwart invaders? John Wherry is trying to find out, the better to design a more effective flu vaccine.

Flu Fighter

With a possible pandemic in our future, immunologist John Wherry is racing to develop a once-a-lifetime vaccine

In the Persian Gulf, authorities are concerned about terrorism as well as piracy. Coalition vessels (the Coast Guard cutter Aquidneck, behind Coast Guardsman Zachary Coone) patrol exclusion zones around Iraq's Al Basrah and Khawr Al Amaya terminals, where tankers take on millions of barrels of oil daily.

The Pirate Hunters

As buccanneering is back with a vengeance, stepped-up law enforcement and high-tech tools work to help protect shipping on the high seas

Barbed Wire was designed for "preventing cattle from breaking through wire-fences," Glidden writes in his application.

Patent Pending

The Supreme Court may soon reinvent the rules for invention

Lincoln’s original patent model was acquired by the Smithsonian in 1908. This replica was built by the Smithsonian in 1978 for long-term display to preserve the fragile original.

Abraham Lincoln Is the Only President Ever to Have a Patent

In 1849, a future president patented an amazing addition to transportation technology

Bill Gates (in 2003) has "far surpassed anything I accomplished in engineering and business," says Jimmy Carter, now a fellow philanthropist.

35 Who Made a Difference: Bill Gates

The king of software takes on his biggest challenge yet

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Making Copies

At first, nobody bought Chester Carlson's strange idea. But trillions of documents later, his invention is the biggest thing in printing since Gutenburg

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New Leash on Life

In an innovative program, prison inmates are raising puppies to be guide dogs for the blind

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