Since the 2001 launch of the Human Genome Project, which released a first draft of the entire sequence of human DNA, many researchers have dedicated themselves to creating a library of comprehensive, species-specific genetic sequence "maps" available for study. Scientists at LSU recently took part in the International Rhesus Macaque Sequence and Analysis Consortium, which successfully detailed the full DNA sequence of the rhesus macaque, the third primate – including humans – to undergo sequencing. The results will be published in the journal Science on Friday, April 13.

At MIT, researchers are working on an early version of intelligent, robotic helpers--a humanoid called Domo who grasp objects and place them on shelves or counters. Domo is the "next generation" of earlier robots built at MIT-Kismet, which was designed to interact with humans, and Cog, which could learn to manipulate unknown objects.

In the futuristic cartoon series "The Jetsons," a robotic maid named Rosie whizzed around the Jetsons' home doing household chores--cleaning, cooking dinner and washing dishes. The technology is not quite there yet.

The powerful earthquake struck suddenly, shaking the seven-story building so hard it bent, cracked and swayed in response.

But this was no ordinary earthquake. In a groundbreaking series of tests, engineering researchers from UC San Diego's Jacobs School of Engineering jarred a full-size 275-ton building erected on a shake table, duplicating ground motions recorded during the January 17, 1994 1994 Northridge earthquake in Los Angeles, California.

Michael Marmor, MD, wanted to know what it was like to see through the eyes of an artist. Literally.

After writing two books on the topic of artists and eye disease, the Stanford University School of Medicine ophthalmologist decided to go one step further and create images that would show how artists with eye disease actually saw their world and their canvases.

Researchers from the Boston University Center for Remote Sensing used recently acquired topographic data from satellites to reveal an ancient mega-lake in the Darfur province of northwestern Sudan. Drs. Eman Ghoneim and Farouk El-Baz made the finding while investigating Landsat images and Radarsat data. Radar waves are able to penetrate the fine-grained sand cover in the hot and dry eastern Sahara to reveal buried features.

NASA scientists believe they have found a way to predict the color of plants on planets in other solar systems.

Green, yellow or even red-dominant plants may live on extra-solar planets, according to scientists whose two scientific papers appear in the March issue of the journal, Astrobiology. The scientists studied light absorbed and reflected by organisms on Earth, and determined that if astronomers were to look at the light given off by planets circling distant stars, they might predict that some planets have mostly non-green plants.