- Spinal Cords on the Mend- researchers have managed to repair breaks in the spinal cords of eight lab rats.
- Closer to Quantum Computers- physicists have achieved some success with superposition, the theory that matter can occupy more that one position at a time.
- A New Sugar High- researchers at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada have produced some promising results in transplanting islets, the insulin producing structures in the pancreas, providing a spark of hope for the millions of people with diabetes.
- Bush Meat- in October of last year, biologists announced that Miss Waldron's red colobus monkey, native to the forests of Ghana and the Ivory Coast, is extinct, probably the first species known whose disappearance is due to commercial wild animal meat trade.
- The Year of the Genome- probably the biggest story in scientific news for the year 2000, last June, Celera Genomics and the Human Genome Project jointly announced the completion of the rough draft of the human genome. the focus of this story is too often placed on the treatment and elimination of various genetic disorders and diseases, but, as the Discover article points out, it's also step on the path of discovering unwritten history among human populations (why are Asians twice as likely as Europeans to be lactose tolerant? possibly reflecting a much longer history of dairy farming in the west) and genetic adaptation to infectious disease (sickle-cell anemia protects against malaria; types A and B blood protect against cholera).
and on the "I Want One!" front, the Wolf-Garten company in Betzdorf, Germany has unveiled a concept mower that uses a laser to cut blades of grass into particles less than a tenth of an inch long.
