Do plants prefer the hazy skies brought on by pollution to the clean atmosphere envisioned by environmentalists, regulators and the public? That's the implication of a new study of exactly how much plants, ranging from broadleaf trees to grasses, have been benefiting from the pollution brought on by the particles--from soot to sulfur dioxide molecules--that burning fossil fuels leaves in the air. [More]

Every day, Virunga National Park gets a little bit smaller. The forest, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, is one of the last homes of the majestic mountain gorilla (Gorilla beringei beringei). It is also the main source of energy--in the form of wood--for the millions of people who live in areas surrounding the park, only 6 percent of whom have access to electricity. [More]

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One reason cancer is not considered a single disease but many is that every cancer cell seems to be dysfunctional in its own way. Random mutations in a cell’s DNA initiate its slide into abnormal behavior. And as additional mutations accumulate, that randomness is also thought to account for the diversity in different patients’ tumors, even when they are cancers of the same tissue. But evidence is growing that there is a method to the madness of tumor cells, making some scientists reevaluate the nature of cancer.

Analyzing tumors from dozens of tissue types, Isaac S. Kohane of the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology has catalogued surprising yet familiar patterns of gene activity in cancer cells--they are the same programmed genetic instructions active during various stages of embryonic and fetal development. Entire suites of genes that drive an embryo’s early growth and the later formation of limbs and other structures in the womb normally go silent during the rest of life, but these genetic programs are switched back on in many tumor cells.