INTRODUCTION: Welcome to the spider's webOver 130 articles, from.ALCOHOL: Genetic revelations of when yeast invented boozeALTRUISM AND AGGRESSION: Looking for the origins of those human alternativesANTIMATTER: Does the coat that Sakharov made really explain its absence?ARABIDOPSIS: The modest weed that gave plant scientists the big pictureASTRONAUTICS: Will interstellar pioneers be overtaken by their grandchildren?BERNAL'S LADDER: PointersBIG BANG: The inflationary Universe's sleight-of-handBIODIVERSITY: The mathematics of co-existenceBIOLOGICAL CLOCKS: Molecular machinery that governs life's routinesBIOSPHERE FROM SPACE: 'I want to do the whole world'BITS AND QUBITS: The digital world and its looming quantum shadowBLACK HOLES: The awesome engines of quasars and active galaxiesBRAIN IMAGES: What do all the vivid movies really mean?BRAIN RHYTHMS: The mathematics of the beat we think toBRAIN WIRING: How do all those nerve connections know where to go?BUCKYBALLS AND NANOTUBES: Doing very much more with very much less.to.SMALLPOX: The dairymaid's blessing and the general's curseSOLAR WIND: How it creates the heliosphere in which we liveSPACE WEATHER: Why it is now more troublesome than in the old daysSPARTICLES: A wished-for superworld of exotic matter and forcesSPEECH: A gene that makes us more eloquent than chimpanzeesSTARBURSTS: Galactic traffic accidents and stellar baby boomsSTARS: Hearing them sing and sizing them upSTEM CELLS: Tissue engineering, natural and medicalSUN'S INTERIOR: How sound waves made our mother star transparentSUPERATOMS, SUPERFLUIDS AND SUPERCONDUCTORS: The march of the boson armiesSUPERSTRINGS: Retuning the cosmic imaginationTIME MACHINES: The biggest issue in contemporary physics?TRANSGENIC CROPS: For better or worse, a planetary experiment has begunTREE OF LIFE: Promiscuous bacteria and the course of evolutionUNIVERSE: 'It must have known we were coming'VOLCANIC EXPLOSIONS: Where will the next big one be?.