NSF

The impact of nitrogen released from the burning of fossil fuels and widespread use of fertilizers is much greater that previously recognized. Scientists say the impact even extends to remote alpine lakes. --by Margaret Coulombe

Distracted drivers cause thousands of deaths in car crashes every year. Robert Gray is making driving safer by finding the best ways to bring people's attention back to the road. --by Diane Boudreau

Nanotechnology has the potential to affect our freedom, privacy, health and safety in both positive and negative ways. David Guston, director of ASU's Center for Nanotechnology in Society, talks about social concerns related to nanotech and how we can address them. --by Joe Kullman

Phoenix in the summer is hot all around. But low-income neighborhoods are even hotter than wealthy enclaves. How can this be? --by Diane Boudreau

Scientists are taking high-speed motion pictures of photosynthetic reactions that happen in a millionth of a millionth of a second. Their results have revealed a surprising twist to photosynthesis. --by Joe Caspermeyer

K-12 students are literally stepping into learning with ASU's interactive SMALLab. Through advanced technology, students manipulate a multidimensional, multisensory environment in order to learn about everything from physics to oceanography to language arts. --by Sheilah Britton

You shouldn't use your teeth to open a beer bottle or crack a nut--you'd break a tooth or even your jaw. But our earliest ancestors could have done it. Super-strong jaws in our 2.5-million-year-old relatives helped them adapt to changes in food sources in their environment. --by Jodi Guyot

Cuatro Cienegas, in Mexico's Chihuahuan desert, might hold the key to secrets about microbial evolution, the Cambrian Explosion, speciation, extraterrestrial life, and just about everything else. That key is phosphorus. --by Margaret Coulombe

It looks like an ant. It moves like an ant. It even smells like an ant. It's an ant--right? Or maybe it's a cleverly disguised spider. --by Margaret Coulombe

Why did the earliest life on Earth--mostly bacteria--remain virtually unchanged for a billion years? --by Diane Boudreau