September 2012

Why is tactile perception so fundamental to life?

September 2012's selection of notable quotes

Researchers are learning how species from across the animal kingdom use seismic signals to mate, hunt, solve territorial disputes, and much more.

Diverse plant communities create a disease-fighting "soil genotype."

Can electronic noses come close to the real thing?

Researchers look to the emerging phenomenon of "crowdfunding" to pay for their work

Altered touch perception in deaf people may reveal individual differences in brain plasticity.

Judiciously applied pressure could benefit the scientific system by providing an opportunity for renewal.

Probing cells with nanometer-scale electrodes

Sleep-wake cycles affect how well our bodies fight disease.

The brain’s phagocytes follow an ATP bread trail laid down by calcium waves to the site of damage.

Mimicking a host-cell histone protein offers flu a sneaky tactic to suppress immune response.

In exploring how embryos take shape, John Wallingford has identified a key pathway involved in vertebrate development—and human disease.

Associate Professor, Department of Microbiology & Immunology, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Age: 38

How to screen for toxicity using stem cells

Cell culture goes 3-D with devices that better mimic in vivo conditions.

Biological resource centers are bigger and better than ever before, storing and distributing shared reagents, plasmids, and more.

Using scientific information as narrative can be a powerful way to communicate.

The discovery of deep-sea hydrothermal vents along the Galápagos Rift revealed a biological Garden of Eden.

Meet some of the people featured in the September 2012 issue of The Scientist.

Wired for Story, Dreamland, Homo Mysterious, and Vagina

See some of the images brought up from early trips to the Galápagos Rift, where an ecosystem thrives around hydrothermal vents.

Because of a lack of touch, upper-limb prosthetic users must look at their prosthetic hands the whole time they use them. Unfortunately, the prosthetics research community has put most of its efforts into making arms with wider ranges of motion and m

Associate Professor in Molecular Cell & Developmental Biology at the University of Texas at Austin, John Wallingford, makes his living using cutting-edge microscopic techniques to watch developmental events unfold in real time.