Geneti­cists are becom­ing so pro­fi­cient that they can not only show evo­lu­tion in action – they can show it in reverse. The exper­i­men­tal suc­cess could sug­gest a new approach for gene ther­a­py, the researchers say, though any appli­ca­tions are a long way off.

Say what you will about the French; they’ve got the whole food thing down.

Sci­en­tists have known for cen­turies that the Moon isn’t round. Rather, the Moon is a flat­tened sphere—like a football—and is elon­gat­ed on the side that faces the Earth.

Hur­ri­cane Kat­ri­na has had a dev­as­tat­ing impact on the envi­ron­ment of south-east Louisiana, experts report almost a year after the vio­lent storm smashed the city of New Orleans, caus­ing floods that killed near­ly 2000 people.

In the face of the com­ing onslaught of pol­lu­tants from a rapid­ly urban­iz­ing Chi­na and India, the task of avoid­ing eco­log­i­cal dis­as­ter may seem hope­less, and some envi­ron­men­tal sci­en­tists have, qui­et­ly, con­clud­ed that it is.

JOSH WOLF is an imper­fect mar­tyr for free­dom of the press. The 24-year-old free­lance jour­nal­ist from San Fran­cis­co makes no pre­tense of being fair and bal­anced. He is a self-pro­claimed anar­chist. Advo­ca­cy, not objec­tiv­i­ty, appears to be his dri­ving motivation.

The tech­nique will even­tu­al­ly be offered as a free soft­ware tool