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Can Great Coffee Save the Jungle?

Persuaded that guilt alone won’t get Americans to pay more for environmentally friendly coffee, importers give farmers the tools to grow better beans

A Bumpy Road to Mars

The president envisions a future human mission to Mars, but medical researchers say surviving the journey is no spacewalk

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Pizza Park

Sure, the new Kids’ Farm at the National Zoo will be educational, but a giant rubber pizza and a “caring corral” will make it also a place for fun

Oil platforms (above, the Spree tied to a Gulf of Mexico rig) serve as artificial reefs, attracting organisms with intriguing properties.

Medicine from the Sea

From slime to sponges, scientists are plumbing the ocean’s depths for new medications to treat cancer, pain and other ailments

Converting the Magazine Mine, above (Bat Conservation International's Sheryl Ducummon, the Forest Service's Ray Smith and UNIMIN's Siebert Crowley in 1996), cost $130,000.

A Mine of Its Own

Where miners used to dig, an endangered bat now flourishes, highlighting a new use for abandoned mineral sites

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The (Scientific) Pursuit of Happiness

What does the Dalai Lama have to teach psychologists about joy and contentment?

Tide pools with sea stars and sea anemone

Discoveries

Finding pharmaceuticals in the sea, unsettling images and nuggets of Americana

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Rescue Missions

Quests to Save a Tree… and a Country

Situated on the Atlantic migratory route, New Jersey ranks among the nation's top birding states. More than 450 species have been documented there, including, the marsh wren (above).

Birds of a Feather

Scores of teams battle for fame and glory in the no-holds-barred World Series of Birding

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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

Italian primatologist Andrea Camperio Ciani says macaques are "scapegoats" for other thigns that are damaging the forest: cutting; overgrazing; and charcoal production.

Monkey in the Middle

Blamed for destroying one of North Africa’s most important forests, Morocco’s Barbary macaques struggle to survive

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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World View

Panama offers an ideal vantage point for scientists to see the big picture of life on earth

Some boaters complain of too many manatees. But biologists (such as Cathy Beck, with some of the 100,000 manatee photos in the U.S.G.S.'s archive) say there may be too few.

Fury Over a Gentle Giant

Floridians raise a ruckus over manatees as biologists weigh prospects for the endangered species’ survival

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Gas Guzzlers

New research shows how microscopic diatoms remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and may help keep the planet from overheating

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Reading Faces

Is that a scowl or just disgust? Facial expressions can be harder to interpret than most of us realize, but help is on the way

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Sleepless in Hawaii

Insomniac islanders are hopping mad over a tiny frog from that threatens their fragile ecosystem

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To Catch A Thief

When biologists study food theft among endangered roseate terns, they find that crime most definitely pays

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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

This image of the Sun's outermost layer, or corona, was taken June 10, 1998, by TRACE (Transition Region and Coronal Explorer). The Earth-orbiting NASA spacecraft, launched two months earlier, has an unobstructed view of the Sun eight months of the year. It is helping to solve the mystery of why the Sun's corona is so much hotter (3.6 million degrees Farenheit) than its surface (11,000 degrees Farenheit). TRACE is also shedding light on solar storms, which damage satellites and disrupt power transmissions.

Celestial Sightseeing

From Triton’s active geysers to the Sun’s seething flares, newly enhanced images from U.S. and foreign space probes depict the solar system as never before

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