California lawmakers are weighing a bill aimed at protecting their state's citizens from surreptitious genetic testing but scientists are voicing their growing concerns that, if passed, such a law would have a costly and damaging effect on research.

The honeycomb lattice is one of nature’s favorite patterns. In the two-dimensional crystal of carbon atoms known as graph­ene, for instance, the honeycomb structure arises from bonds among the atoms. Kenjiro K. Gomes of Stanford University and his colleagues have learned to make a honeycomb material in a striking new way. They place carbon monoxide molecules at regular intervals on the surface of a copper crystal, creating an imitation graphene layer. (The added molecules appear as black dots.)

The shadows lengthen in a guesthouse cafeteria on the sprawling campus of christian Medical College, Vellore, in India. Wrapped up as he is in an issue that has possessed him for years, T. Jacob John notices neither the dying light nor the gathering mosquitoes. He is talking about the oral polio vaccine.

The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy (ARPA–E) works on a three-year cycle: Funded projects have three years to prove worthy--or not. Program directors who help fund projects such as Plants Engineered to Replace Petroleum ( PETRO ) or Batteries for Electrical Energy Storage in Transportation ( BEEST ) have three years to steer the research. And, after three years at the helm as the founding director of ARPA–E, mechanical engineer Arun Majumdar has announced that he will be stepping down in June.

One of the biggest choices an expectant mother faces is how to handle the pain of childbirth. More than 60 per­cent of American women choose relief in the form of an epi­dural, a combination of local anesthetic and narcotic administered into the epidural space surrounding the spinal cord. Although most doctors believe that the injections are safe, a new study suggests that they may increase the risk that a mother will develop a fever during labor, which could, in rare instances, pose risks to her baby.

Mark Pandori was worried. It was 2008, and he had just read the latest in a string of reports from Japan. The articles all described patients infected with a particular strain of gonorrhea that was less susceptible than usual to an important class of antibiotics. Pandori, director of the laboratory at the San Francisco Department of Public Health, knew that gonorrhea had become resistant to other antibiotics in past decades. Each time, the resistance seemed to arise in Asia and spread to California. He wondered if something new was heading across the Pacific.

When the Kentucky Derby winner crosses the finish line in front of 160,000 roaring spectators on May 5, there's a good chance it will have two copies of a gene that makes a horse a sprinter.

The human heart endures a lot in a lifetime. Sophisticated imaging can give insight into what it tolerates and what ails it, but the most direct information comes from an autopsy.