Scientific American Online

By Janet Fang

Short sequences of RNA that can effectively turn off specific genes have for the first time been used to treat skin cancer in people.

The technique, called RNA interference (RNAi), gained its inventors a Nobel Prize in 2006, but researchers have struggled to get it to the clinic, partly because of problems in getting the molecules to their target.

Now, Mark Davis from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and his colleagues have found a way to deliver particles containing such sequences to patients with the skin cancer melanoma. [More]

A comparison of ancient and contemporary footprints reveals that our ancestors were strolling much like we do some 3.6 million years ago, a time when they were still quite comfortable spending time in trees, according to a study which will be published in the March 22 issue of the journal PLoS ONE . [More]

The Large Hadron Collider , the so-called big bang machine outside Geneva, has eclipsed its own world record as the highest-energy particle accelerator in history. The collider, commonly known as the LHC, accelerated its twin proton beams to 3.5 trillion electron-volts, or TeV, Friday morning, according to a prepared statement from CERN , the European lab for particle physics that operates the LHC. [More]

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is being fined for botching 97 of 116 procedures to treat prostate cancer among men seeking care at the agency's medical center in Philadelphia. Although the punishment, which adds up to a mere $227,500, might not sound like more than a slap on the wrist, it is coming from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and is one of the largest the commission has ever given out for medical mistakes. [More]

By Daniel Cressey

Only around 300 endangered right whales remain in the North Atlantic, and a number of them end up tangled in fishing gear off the east coast of the United States. [More]

On complex issues, as is often said, it is possible for intelligent people to disagree. That was certainly the case March 15 at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, when five leaders of the space exploration intelligentsia met to discuss NASA's plans for human spaceflight. [More]

Dinosaurs are frequently cited as the ultimate exemplars of failure. “Dead as a dinosaur” is now deeply embedded in our vernacular. Yet death for a species, and even for groups of species, is as inevitable as your death. Somewhere around 99 percent of all species that have ever existed are now extinct. The 10 million to 50 million species that comprise the modern day biosphere (the uncertainty due mostly to our lack of understanding of microbial diversity) are but the latest players in a four-billion-year drama--“The Greatest Show on Earth,” to borrow the title of Richard Dawkins most recent book.   [More]