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The International Space Station maybe not be international for much longer. According to an NASA email leaked (by an undetermined source) to the Orlando Sentinel, the retirement of the Space Shuttle in 2010 will cede de facto control of the ISS to Russia. That control will come just as NASA finishes assembling the ISS in 2011.

Global warming, holes in the ozone layer, and lush golf courses in the desert all reveal mankind’s ability to mess with the planet. But the Earth’s core, protected by an outer core consisting of some 1,000 miles of 8,000˚F liquid metal, appears safe from our meddling.

For decades, people referred to the non-coding bits of DNA between genes as junk DNA. Then, in the eighties scientists discovered that some of that junk DNA served an important purpose. The DNA attracted or repelled transcription factors and RNA, greatly enhancing or inhibiting the potency of adjacent genes. Now scientists have just found that one of those gene enhancers may be what separates humans and chimps.

A lot has changed since the 1990s when the search engine of choice was AltaVista, when Internet connections ran through a phone line, and when Netscape battled Internet Explorer for browsing supremacy. Now Google, apparently nostalgic for the days of Presidential impeachment and O.J. Simpson, has reignited the wars with the roll out of its new application, a browser named Chrome.

J.J. Abrams, creator of Alias and Lost and director of the forthcoming Star Trek movie, brings his spooky brand of science to bear on the new television series, Fringe, set to premiere September 9th on Fox. The show centers on a mad scientist, Dr. Walter Bishop (John Noble), who’s sprung from a mental ward by his estranged son Peter Bishop (Joshua Jackson) and the blonde bombshell FBI agent Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv). Together, the unlikely trio sets out to solve paranormal mysteries on behalf of the US government. Think X-Files—only people believe them.

Popular Science: Where did your interest in science come from?

J.J. Abrams: My grandfather was a huge inspiration. He was the owner of an electronics company, and after World War II he sold surplus radio and electronics kits to schools.

Along with flying cars and underwater bubble cities, pills curing every ill are a staple of science fiction. But while aero-autobahns and submerged metropolises have not moved any closer to reality, medical science has advanced to the point where pills once considering miraculous may soon be a reality. Popular Science has a rundown of the top future pills that may one day change your life. Launch it here.

Engineers at MIT have figured out a way to deal with virus that is better than just killing them: they're putting them to work. The researchers have developed a new technique wherein a key component of a microscopic battery is assembled by viruses, allowing for the cheap and simple construction of very small power sources.

Ninety years ago the Spanish flu swept across the globe, killing between 50 and 100 million people in only a few months. Since then, the specter of another flu pandemic dealing death and woe around the world has periodically terrified the medical and popular communities. But scientists searching for ways to prevent a similar outbreak in the form of the H5N1 bird flu have found a cure for the deadliest flu in the most unlikely place: nonagenarian immune systems.

As the actual ground combat between Russia and the former Soviet Republic of Georgia grinds to a halt, security and Web experts have begun to focus on what might have been a secret third front in the conflict: the Internet. With numerous Georgian government Web sites defaced or shut down, the virtual attacks that preceded the actual invasion may go down in history as the first war in cyberspace.

Many American universities have proud traditions based around excellence in sports or the matriculation of future presidents. This is not that story. While success on the grid iron measures the worth of jocks at big state schools, for the students at America’s most intellectual colleges, the means of glory is the prank. In schools like Cal Tech, MIT and the University of Chicago, showing off who’s smarter has become the nerd version of Michigan vs. Ohio State. Popular Science has a run down of schools of some of the brainiest pranks in the college history. Launch the gallery here.

If you’re one of the few people who still believes the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) could accidentally destroy the world, I’d recommend you get your affairs in order before September 10th. CERN, the European physics agency that oversees the LHC, has announced that the proton beam in the world’s most powerful collider will be turned on for the first time this September.

Talk of the promise of stem cells usually revolves around creating new, healthy cells to repair damaged or diseased organs. However, a joint project between Harvard and Columbia Universities has been doing the exact opposite: creating stem cells that will develop into diseased cells. By creating stem cells from people with a known degenerative disorder, the researchers hope to explore the process that cause the diseases, discover where a cure might be most effective, and probe the unexplored area between genetics and disease.

It doesn’t take a stellar imagination to figure out the main downside of solar power. For years, the question of how to store the energy generated when the sun is shining for use at night has prevented solar power from becoming a viable alternative energy source. However, a new breakthrough may have overcome that storage problem, opening the door for solar energy on a grand scale.

Though it may seem like merely a yearly inconvenience to most, the flu in fact kills around 36,000 Americans annually and costs the country between $71 and $167 billion dollars; the equivalent of 10 September 11ths in deaths and a Hurricane Katrina in damages every year. Most attempts to prevent the flu focus on vaccination, but a new study suggests drugs could actually prevent the deadliest symptoms of the disease.