Brian Henson, whose father, Jim, created the Muppets, wasn’t always convinced that he would go into the family business. “I went through a spell in my teenage years where I absolutely was going to be an astrophysicist,” he admits. Now the co-CEO of the Jim Henson Company is channeling that early love of the stars into a new show, Sid the Science Kid, that’s designed to inspire preschoolers to question and reason like real scientists.
DNA provides the genetic code for everything from bacteria to blue whales through combinations of just four DNA units, or bases. Now chemist Floyd Romesberg of the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego hopes to expand biology’s potential by adding more bases to the mix.
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Science is reinventing play, from extreme sports to gamification to ridiculous roller coasters to the playgrounds of tomorrow, and this issue is chock full of fun. Also, on a less fun note: Did global warming destroy my hometown?