www.economist.com/science-technology

http://www.economist.com/science-technology

Alzheimer's disease

• Advance warning
  

  How to detect Alzheimer’s before symptoms appear—if you are a woman (24)

• • • Obituary: Thomas DeBaggio, herb-grower and Alzheimer’s patient (Mar 2011)

    • 
      
    • (6)

  • • Stimulating the brain delays, but does not prevent, dementia (Sep 2010)

    • 
      
    • (5)

  • • Stopping Alzheimer’s disease in its tracks is proving trickier than once thought (Jul 2010)

    • 
      
    • (22)

  • • Topic page: Alzheimer's disease

    • 
      
    • 
      

Patents and business

• 
  Difference Engine: Programmed nonsense

  Sloppily approved patents for software are hindering innovation (37)

• • • Battles over patents are becoming fiercer and more expensive (Aug 2011)

    • 
      
    • (19)

  • • Leader: Why America’s patent system needs to be reformed, and how to do it (Aug 2011)

    • 
      
    • (37)

  • • An example of America's broken system (Aug 2011)

    • 
      
    • (101)

  • • Topic page: Patents

    • 
      
    • 
      

Marine biodiversity

• 
  What a gas!

  A strange, new link in the web of life (30)

• • • How surface winds blow critters from one deep-sea vent to another (May 2011)

    • 
      
    • (7)

  • • Evidence of a serious gap in biologists’ understanding of the diversity of life on Earth (Mar 2011)

    • 
      
    • (11)

  • • An expedition to the deep-ocean is revealing previously unknown living treasures (Aug 2010)

    • 
      
    • (8)

  • • Topic page: Marine Ecology and Conservation

    • 
      
    • 
      

Stem-cell medicine

• 
  The nuclear option

  A new way to create pluripotent human stem cells (57)

• • • A science writer analyses the history of stem-cell research

    • 
      
    • (6)

  • • The law continues to threaten stem-cell research in America (Dec 2010)

    • 
      
    • (10)

  • • More evidence that tumours, like healthy organs, grow from stem cells (Jan 2010)

    • 
      
    • (7)

  • • Topic page: Stem-cell research

    • 
      
    • 
      

The 2011 Nobel prizes

• 
  Expanding horizons

  This year’s prizes were awarded for work on the immune system, the expansion of the universe and quasicrystals (7)

• • • The changing chemical affinities of the Nobel Committee

    • Daily chart
    • (14)

  • • Last year’s prizes were awarded for two types of carbon chemistry, and IVF (Oct 2010)

    • 
      
    • (8)

  • • Topic page: Nobel prizes

    • 
      
    • 
      

Retrieving stolen digital devices

• 
  Difference Engine: To catch a thief

  With a laptop stolen every 53 seconds, time to make life tough for crooks (66)

• • • Some cameras leave unique traces every time a photo uploads (Jun 2011)

    • 
      
    • (23)

  • • Crowdsourcing lost and found (Feb 2011)

    • 
      
    • (5)

  • • Topics page: Consumer electronics

    • 
      
    • 
      

The future of physics

• 
  So long, and thanks for all the quarks

  As an announcement is made in Europe that may shake physics to its foundations, America’s largest particle accelerator is to be switched off (99)

• • • Fermilab reaches the end of an era. A new one beckons

    • 
      
    • (25)

  • • Physics cannot subsist on experiments alone. Mark Lazaridis of RIM backs theory

    • 
      
    • (24)

  • • Leader: What does an experiment that seems to contradict Einstein’s theory of relativity really mean?

    • 
      
    • (70)

  • • Rolf-Dieter Heuer of CERN on why not finding the Higgs boson would be as important as finding it

    • 
      
    • (6)

  • • Topic page: Physics

    • 
      
    • 
      

Moral philosophy

• 
  Goodness has nothing to do with it

  Utilitarians are not nice people (94)

• • • The human impulse to be kind to unknown individuals is not the biological aberration it might seem (Jul 2011)

    • 
      
    • (29)

  • • We review a book on morality and the brain (Mar 2011)

    • 
      
    • (11)

  • • The rich are different from you and me. They are more selfish (Jul 2010)

    • 
      
    • (139)

  • • Topic page: Philosophy

    • 
      
    • 
      

Document analysis

• 
  A classic invention

  Sometimes, innovation comes from the most unlikely places (40)

• • • A university decides to give away digital copies of the public-domain art and documents in its collection (Jun 2011)

    • Babbage
    • (14)

  • • Science invades the humanities (Dec 2010)

    • 
      
    • (9)

Cancer therapy

• 
  Grabbing cancer by the short and curlies

  A new technique for analysing tumours promises better understanding and more effective treatment (41)

• • • If personalised medicine is to achieve its full potential, it should be used earlier on in clinical trials (Jun 2011)

    • 
      
    • (9)

  • • How to track down tiny tumours by making them glow (Jan 2011)

    • 
      
    • (13)

  • • A better way to collect samples from tumours, without the risk of spreading the cancer (Dec 2010)

    • 
      
    • 
      

  • • Topic page: Cancer

    • 
      
    • 
      

• Also on this channel

• Neutrinos

  There was a neutrino named Bright

  Who travelled faster than light (110)

• Climate change in the Arctic

  Beating a retreat

  Arctic sea ice is melting far faster than climate models predict. Why? (238)

• Fossil feathers

  Not just for the birds

  A trove of fossils sheds light on the evolution of feathers (24)

• Baldness

  Difference Engine: Shining beacons

  Stem cells offer hope for men facing life without hair (42)

Feature

Steve Jobs

The magician

The revolution that Steve Jobs led is only just beginning

America’s drone campaign

Drones and the law

America’s attacks on suspected terrorists should be more closely monitored

Babbage

Our science and technology blog hails the Google bus, plumbs the internet's depths and admires precision engineering

Babbage podcast

In our weekly Babbage podcast we discuss the latest iteration of the iPhone, how IBM has outmuscled Microsoft and why Yahoo! has become the potential target of a Chinese takeover

The Difference Engine

Our weekly column ponders how technology affects our lives

EconSciTech

Follow The Economist's science and technology coverage on Twitter @EconSciTech

Peer review

Other stories from the scientific press

A planetary tiff

Antineutrino detectors can spot the destruction of weapons-grade plutonium

Technology Review

The whole truth

The ethics of whole-genome sequencing

Nature

The probabilistic mind

How human brains evolved to deal with doubt

Science News

BizTech

Business stories with a technological dimension

The astonishing career of the world’s most revered chief executive

The rapid rise of newspaper paywalls

Sciences Po

Political stories with a scientific dimension

The mounting human costs of Japan’s nuclear disaster—and the problems it causes—are changing

Why the future of air power belongs to unmanned systems soup

If only more of Latin America's higher-education institutions were like the University of São Paulo

Highlights

A history of measurement

From yardsticks to metre rule

A history of greater and greater accuracy

A special report on personal technology

Beyond the PC

Mobile digital gadgets are overshadowing the personal computer, says Martin Giles. Their impact will be far-reaching