Between 3.5 and 4 billion years ago, water carved valleys into the Red Planet’s surface. But as planetary scientists try to understand the ancient Martian climate that caused this erosion, the answers from different scientific approaches don’t add up. Read the full story on NOVA Next.

Dig into the history of artificial donor insemination even a little, and it reveals itself to be fraught in that special, messed-up way unique to stories of medical progress.

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In search of new knowledge and better treatments, cancer research is leaping out of the petri dish. Researchers at MIT and BU recently found that placing breast cancer cells in three-dimensional environments changes how they move around, bind to each other, and respond to drugs. The study, published in PLOS Computational Biology last week, adds to a growing body of three-dimensional cancer research that — experts hope — will enable greater understanding of the disease and how to fight it.

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Like a footprint in wet concrete, the first language a baby hears makes an impression that lasts for years, regardless of what follows. Later, children even as old as ten who are adopted or immigrate can completely forget their first language. But even if they do not consciously remember their mother tongue, their brains retain its traces, according to a study published this week in PNAS, led by Lara Pierce of McGill University. Full Article »

Vera Kistiakowsky was not pleased. It was February 3, 1971, and the MIT nuclear physicist was sitting in the audience at the American Physical Society’s first session on women in physics. The problem wasn’t the session itself, but, as she put it, “all these idiots in the audience responding.”

Case in point: Valentine Telegdi, a Hungarian physicist at the University of Chicago, said with a big smile on his face, “If I had been married to Pierre Curie, I would have been Madame Curie.”

Kistiakowsky recalls that it “made me want to get up and scream, but I didn’t.” Instead she decided to form a Committee on Women in Physics, “so I could rub the facts in.” Full Article »

This month, a team of scientists announced that they had identified and combined key genetic mutations to significantly increase fruit production in tomato plants. These new mutations arose from a breeding technique called induced mutation, where seeds are sprayed with DNA-altering chemicals. It’s a research endeavor so risky that some describe it as “spray and pray”–but this time, it appears to have paid off. Tomatoes, the researchers say, are only the beginning: this increased fruit production could someday be translated into other crops, and might help produce more food for a growing world. Read more at NOVA Next.

Mussels, pounded by the oceans’ waves, fasten themselves to rocks as a matter of survival. Bacteria cast protein nets to hold onto surfaces for dear life. Now MIT researchers have combined the two in a clever new way, producing the best-ever underwater glue inspired by Mother Nature—and a potential replacement for today’s surgical stitches.

The new study, published in Nature Nanotechnology on September 21, describes glue made of super-sticky, self-assembling networks of protein fiber. Led by Chao Zhong—a physical science professor at ShanghaiTech University and former MIT post-doc—the study addresses an enormous need: man’s lack of effective underwater adhesives.

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Winds of change are coming, and they’re bringing poised to upend entire ecosystems. Over the last 30 years, average surface wind speeds over areas in Europe, Central Asia, Eastern Asia and North America have slowed by about 10 percent. The potential effects of “global stilling” could affect land, air and aquatic systems worldwide.

New research published in Ecology illuminates what, exactly, global stilling could mean for the hunters and hunted of the insect world. For predators, stilling winds make it easier to chow down, says Brandon Barton, the University of Wisconsin-Madison postdoc researcher who authored the study.

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According to joint research from the University of Washington and Northwest University, untrue internet rumors have a long life on the world wide web, even after they’ve been debunked. Head to NOVA Next for the full story.