Life Rise of the garage genome hackers KATHERINE AULL's laboratory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, lacks a few mod cons. "Down here I have a thermocycler I bought on eBay for 59 bucks," she says, pulling out a large, box-shaped device she uses to copy short strands of DNA. "The rest is just home brew," she adds, pointing to a centrifuge made out of … 51¶¯Âþ
Life Inside the mind of an autistic savant Daniel Tammet Autistic savant Daniel Tammet shot to fame when he set a European record for the number of digits of pi he recited from memory (22,514). For afters, he learned Icelandic in a week. But unlike many savants, he's able to tell us how he does it. We could all unleash extraordinary mental abilities … Opinion
Life How your friends' friends can affect your mood IF YOU live in the northern hemisphere, this is probably not your favourite month. January tends to dispirit people more than any other. We all know why: foul weather, post-Christmas debt, the long wait before your next holiday, quarterly bills, dark evenings and dark mornings. At least, that is the way it seems. For while … Features
Enigma No. 1526 Degrees of error JOE did not trust the accuracy of his two digital thermometers, but he knew he could be confident that their percentage errors were constant over the range he needed to use them. He placed the sensors of both thermometers in a beaker of oil and noted the temperatures indicated as the oil … Regulars
Feedback How often students have group sex "FEMALE art students more sexually active than male science nerds," blared the headline on an Agence France-Presse story published by phys.org.com . Wondering who thought this was somehow, you know, news, Feedback almost missed a quote from the original paper in the Australian journal Sexual Health by Bernadette Zakher … Regulars