Melinda Wenner

At 3 p.m. last June 22, Pam Barco’s heart stopped. The 46-year-old ER clerk at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia was near the end of her shift when she felt dizzy, put her head down on her desk, and suddenly stopped breathing. A nearby co-worker saw Barco slump over and shouted, “Staff emergency!” Minutes later, a dozen doctors and nurses surrounded Barco’s body. They shocked her with a defibrillator. No response. They shocked her twice more. Nothing. Then: Beep. Beep. Beep.

Mars Science Laboratory
Launching in the fall, this research rover will collect and examine Martian soil and rock samples for traces of carbon, life’s most common building block. To find that carbon, ChemCam will fire lasers at the ground and analyze the vapor produced by the impact.

Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter
NASA is going back to the moon—after the LRO finds astronauts a good place to land. Launching on April 24, the LRO will map out the moon’s surface and home in on the poles, where scientists believe there could be water.

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Technology, Melinda Wenner, january 2009, nasa, popsci predicts, popsci predicts 2009

Earth’s twin could be waiting for us hundreds of light-years away. In fact, thousands of Earth doppelgängers may be lurking in the cosmic distance, orbiting stars just like our sun and maybe, just maybe, harboring life of their own. Although telescopes have identified more than 300 planets outside our solar system, most of them are too harsh to host life. One notable exception to the typical “hot Jupiter” model is a rocky Earth-like planet discovered in 2007, dubbed Gliese 581 c.

Nearly five decades ago, Americans learned that one of their most treasured habits—smoking—was lethal. This year, we could get more scary news, when scientists announce the results from Interphone, the largest-ever study to investigate whether cellphones cause cancer.

NASA will fire up its latest rocket this April for its first test flight. Ares 1 is designed to haul a 25-ton payload, making it capable of ferrying either six astronauts to the International Space Station or four astronauts to low-Earth orbit, where they can transfer to another vehicle and head to the moon. The rocket contains two stages: a reusable solid rocket booster and an engine powered by liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. If all goes well with Orion, NASA’s planned crew vehicle, Ares 1 will be whisking the first crews into space by 2015.

Why are there so many diseases and so few cures? It’s not just that medicine moves slowly; chemistry holds us back, too. To build drugs, chemists start with a base molecule, then add and subtract atoms from it one by one in a sequence of reactions. The process is tedious and wasteful—a 10-step reaction might convert only 8 percent of the starting material into the right end product. And that’s if chemists can make the drug at all.

When he was 12, John Santini's ankle swelled up to the size of a grapefruit. Several hospital visits later, he was diagnosed with lupus, a chronic disease marked by the immune system's attacks on healthy parts of the body. He learned he'd have to take medication indefinitely. But he has used his condition as inspiration, and has spent his life devising a completely new way to deliver drugs.

In a small room on the second floor of the Boston Children's Museum, six-month-old Hasan Helal is watching a short video. Underneath the screen, an infrared device tracks his eye movements, which appear as small red dots superimposed on a second video screen behind a curtain a few feet away. Most infants fixate on bright objects, but Hasan is unusual: He already prefers faces, his eyes tracing the characteristic triangle shape -- left eye, right eye, mouth, left eye again -- that older kids and adults make when they examine a new face.

Last May, scientists met in Geneva, Switzerland, to update the World Health Organization’s plans for pandemic preparedness. It looks like a crisis could arrive sooner rather than later. Thanks to climate change and drug resistance, a handful of deadly organisms are spreading across the globe; some are poised to make a comeback in the U.S. after decades of absence.