At first glance, some scientific research can seem, well, impractical. When physicists began exploring the strange, subatomic world of quantum mechanics a century ago, they weren't trying to build ...

Manu Prakash works on the world’s most urgent problems and seemingly frivolous questions at the same time. They add up to a philosophy he calls “recreational biology.” Inside Manu Prakash are two ...

Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko with the magnetic bioassembler. Credit: Vladislav A. Parfenov and Stanislav V. Petrov, Laboratory for Biotechnological Research Astronauts have conducted all sorts of ...

Ryan Summers receives funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). He is affiliated with the Association for Science Teacher Education (ASTE), NARST, ...