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Science / Mind & Body

What do dancing and scientific research have in common? "Creativity," says Jarvis (performing in high school in the early 1980s), and "hard work."

Song and Dance Man

Erich Jarvis dreamed of becoming a ballet star. Now the scientist’s studies of how birds learn to sing are forging a new understanding of the human brain

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Last Page: The Wrath of Khan

Even IRS auditors will tremble in my presence

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Last Page: Weight of the World

The battle of the bulge goes global

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Medical Sleuth

To prosecutors, it was child abuse - an Amish baby covered in bruises, but Dr. D. Holmes Morton had other ideas

At least 40 million died of the 1918-19 "Spanish flu," the most deadly disease episode in history. Influenza cases were treated at places including this army ward in Kansas in 1918.

The Flu Hunter

For years, Robert Webster has been warning of a global influenza outbreak. Now governments worldwide are finally listening to him

35 Who Made a Difference: Edward O. Wilson

Vindicated for his controversial sociobiology? Yes. Satisfied? Not yet

35 Who Made a Difference: Robert Langridge

His quest to peer into the essence of life no longer seems so strange

Dr. Henderson a week after he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Bush

35 Who Made a Difference: D. A. Henderson

Eradicating one of history’s deadliest diseases was just the beginning

35 Who Made a Difference: James Watson

After DNA, what could he possibly do for an encore?

Friendly to whites most of his life, Mandan Chief Four Bears (in an 1832 portrait by George Catlin) turned bitter as death approached, blaming them for the disease that would kill him.

Tribal Fever

Twenty-five years ago this month, smallpox was officially eradicated. For the Indians of the high plains, it came a century and a half too late

Doses of oral polio vaccine are added to sugar cubes for use in a 1967 vaccination campaign

Conquering Polio

Fifty years ago, a scientific panel declared Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine a smashing success. A new book takes readers behind the headlines

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Our Adaptable Ancestors

Recent discoveries of skull fragments and tools testify to the resourcefulness of early humans

Researchers study identical twins—who develop from a single egg that splits after fertilization and therefore have the same genes—to learn how genes influence traits of predispose people to disease.

Twin Science

Researchers make an annual pilgrimage to Twinsburg, Ohio, to study inherited traits

A Matter of Taste

Are you a superstar? Just stick out your tongue and say “yuck”

Gimzewski uses an atomic force microscope (above, atop a bone cell) to "listen" to living cells.

Signal Discovery?

A Los Angeles scientist says living cells may make distinct sounds, which might someday help doctors “hear” diseases

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Kenyon’s Ageless Quest

A San Francisco scientist’s genetic research renews the ancient hope for a way to slow aging

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Prize Fight

Raymond Damadian refuses to take his failure to win a Nobel Prize, for a prototype MRI machine, lying down

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Hooked on Aging

Our writer tries to just say no to getting older

Neuroscientist Eugene Aserinsky attaches electrodes to his son, Armond, who was a frequent subject in his early sleep studies

The Stubborn Scientist Who Unraveled A Mystery of the Night

Fifty years ago, Eugene Aserinksy discovered rapid eye movement and changed the way we think about sleep and dreaming

Six weeks after authorities said SARS had broken out in Asia, CDC scientists in Atlanta identified a coronavirus as the culprit.

Stopping a Scourge

No one knows if SARS will strike again. But researchers’ speedy work halting the epidemic makes a compelling case study of how to combat a deadly virus

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