Features
Capsule Reviews

Capsule Reviews
Evolving Ourselves, The Man Who Touched His Own Heart, Bats, and The Invaders
Contributors

Contributors
Meet some of the people featured in the March 2015 issue of The Scientist.
Editorial

Age-Old Questions
How do we age, and can we slow it down?
Speaking of Science

Speaking of Science
March 2015's selection of notable quotes
Notebook

Beneficial Stats
Statisticians who normally crunch numbers to forecast trends in the food-service industry turn their attention to bettering treatment of ALS.

A Deathly Pallor
Global warming could lead to lighter-colored insects with waning immune defenses.

Slip Me Some Skin
Scientists tracing the history of livestock breeding probe parchment documents for genetic information.

Falling Out of the Family Tree
A mutation in an ethanol-metabolizing enzyme arose around the time that arboreal primates shifted to a more terrestrial lifestyle, perhaps as an adaptation to eating fermented fruit.
Critic at Large

Sharing Longevity Data
Aging research would greatly benefit from consistently making annotated life span data available.

Quantity or Quality?
Living longer doesn’t necessarily mean living healthier.
Modus Operandi

Tricky Transfections
A combination of microinjection and electroporation inserts genes into hard-to-reach cells.
The Literature

Rethinking Telomeres
Not only do telomeres protect the ends of chromosomes, they also modulate gene expression over cells’ lifetimes.

Long Live Collagen
Increased collagen expression is a common feature of many different pathways to extended longevity in worms.

Growth Hormone Guidance
Intact growth hormone signaling pathways are needed for methionine restriction to extend mouse lifespan.
Profiles

Of Cells and Limits
Leonard Hayflick has been unafraid to speak his mind, whether it is to upend a well-entrenched dogma or to challenge the federal government. At 86, he’s nowhere near retirement.
Scientist to Watch

Weiwei Dang: Epigenetics in Aging
Assistant Professor, Huffington Center On Aging, Baylor College of Medicine. Age: 38
Lab Tools
Careers

Riding Out Rejection
How to navigate the choppy waters of scientific publication
Reading Frames

Stirring the Pot
How to navigate the slings and arrows of conducting “controversial” research
Foundations

Apiarium, 1625
Galileo’s improvements to the microscope led to the first published observations using such an instrument.
Cover Story

How We Age
From DNA damage to cellular miscommunication, aging is a mysterious and multifarious process.