IBM researchers are working on a new computing device that could process massive data sets while using very little energy. It would also be able to quickly learn and remember patterns, which might make it able to "issue tsunami warnings in case of an earthquake" or calculate the likelihood of contaminated produce on grocers' shelves.¹

How does a single-cell egg turn into a swimming, metabolizing, hunting tadpole? Common understanding holds that frog DNA carries the required instructional building plans. However, developmental biologists serendipitously discovered that tiny facial features were outlined with bioelectricity just prior to their formation inside frog eggs.

Scuba divers can explore underwater depths firsthand because of specialized equipment that was developed in just the last century. Likewise, solar-powered airplanes currently in development promise to provide fuel-free flying. These inventions open new realms for human exploration, but the arachnid and insect equivalents of their equipment have been on the planet for ages.

More than 80 varieties of fish, amphibian, and reptile mothers are able to lay eggs that have not been fertilized and yet produce offspring. In a process called "parthenogenesis," these eggs hatch little clones of the mother, which in turn lay clone eggs themselves. Could this remarkable mode of unisexual reproduction have evolved?

Human eyes are well-designed to see objects using light transmitted through air, but not through water, because light travels at a different speed through the two media. However, intertidal-dwelling marine mollusks called chitons can see equally well in both environments. How did they acquire this unusual ability?