Features
Contributors

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

Sense and Sensibility
Why is tactile perception so fundamental to life?
Bio Business

Sharing Made Easy
Biological resource centers are bigger and better than ever before, storing and distributing shared reagents, plasmids, and more.
The Literature

A Good Night’s Sleep
Sleep-wake cycles affect how well our bodies fight disease.

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

Flu Fights Dirty
Mimicking a host-cell histone protein offers flu a sneaky tactic to suppress immune response.
Speaking of Science

Speaking of Science
September 2012's selection of notable quotes
Critic at Large

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

Life on the Ocean Floor, 1977
The discovery of deep-sea hydrothermal vents along the Galápagos Rift revealed a biological Garden of Eden.
Scientist to Watch

Kartik Chandran: Chemistry Kid
Associate Professor, Department of Microbiology & Immunology, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Age: 38
Capsule Reviews

Capsule Reviews
Wired for Story, Dreamland, Homo Mysterious, and Vagina
Reading Frames

A Story Biological
Using scientific information as narrative can be a powerful way to communicate.
Lab Tools

Stemming the Toxic Tide
How to screen for toxicity using stem cells

Enter the Third Dimension
Cell culture goes 3-D with devices that better mimic in vivo conditions.
Slideshows

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

Robo Touch
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

Of Frogs and Embryos
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.
Profiles

Taking the Long View
In exploring how embryos take shape, John Wallingford has identified a key pathway involved in vertebrate development—and human disease.
Modus Operandi

The Inside Scoop
Probing cells with nanometer-scale electrodes
Notebook

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

Get a Whiff of This
Can electronic noses come close to the real thing?

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

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

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