Weird and Wonderful

January 2014's selection of notable quotes

Are Dolphins Really Smart?, Newton's Football, Outsider Scientists, and We Are Our Brains

A collection of colorful drawings compiled by publisher Louis Renard sheds light on eighteenth-century science.

Terrestrial mammals, carnivorous plants, and even burrowing reptiles have spread around the globe by braving the seven seas. These chance ocean crossings are rewriting the story of Earth’s biogeography.

Tuberculosis is exquisitely adapted to the human body. Researchers need a new game plan for beating it.

Solutions for partially automating your cell culture set-up

A guide for doing in vivo microscopy on neurons in the mammalian brain

Professor, Microbiology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Age: 36

By digging through dusty storerooms and reading dead people’s mail, science historian and philosopher Michael Dietrich keeps biologists attuned to the past and mindful of the present.

In a newly identified tropism, plant roots steer clear of salinity.

Astrocytes in the adult mouse brain can be reprogrammed into neuronal precursors, then neurons, in vivo.

A bacterial gene shuts down the cell's own protein synthesis, which sends the bacterium into dormancy and allows it to outlast antibiotics.

Scientists come up with a better way to watch cells leave blood vessels.

A “basic bibliography” for new drugs would provide scientists with soft incentives and acknowledge the value of basic biomedical research.

Studying and treating the chronic diseases associated with aging needs serious revamping.

Researchers uncover an unprecedented relationship between morels and bacteria. But can it be called agriculture?

New research increases the understanding of how albatrosses fly effortlessly by harvesting energy out of thin air.

A famous frog-hopping contest yields data that challenge previous lab estimates of how far a bullfrog can jump.

It’s been decades since researchers confirmed the presence of gold in plants, but biogeochemical prospecting has yet to catch on.

Plant biology: You can't make this stuff up.

Weird and wonderful, plant DNA is challenging preconceptions about the evolution of life, including our own species.

Meet some of the people featured in the January 2014 issue of The Scientist.