Despite coming under attack by congressional Republicans, federal science funding has received a major and mostly overlooked boost. The America Competes Act, passed by Congress shortly before Christmas, calls for $46 billion in science and technology research funding over the next three years. Final approval awaits the signature of President Barack Obama, who in a [...]

<< Previous | Next >> In a year full of major advances, over-hyped findings and controversial studies, it was tough for the Wired Science staff to choose which breakthroughs were the biggest in 2010. So we’ve collected the ones that stood out the most to us. From synthetic life and three-parent embryos to the possibility [...]

Clumps of dust in the desert shatter like glass on a kitchen floor. This similarity may mean the atmosphere carries more large dust particles than climate models assume. Dust and other airborne particles’ effect in the atmosphere is “one of the most important problems we need to solve in order to provide better predictions of [...]

Plants picked by Victorian collectors up to 150 years ago are a valuable new source of data for ecologists seeking to understand how climate change will affect the timing of flowering plants. Scientists have used the carefully labeled and dated specimens of the early spider orchid, Ophrys sphegodes, to examine the affect of spring temperatures [...]

Scientists’ view of clouds is clearing up. Two new studies show that cloud-forming particles in the atmosphere, called aerosols, look different and make different clouds depending on their origins. One study found that in one of the most pristine environments on Earth — above the treetops of the Amazon Rainforest — clouds mostly come from [...]