A scientist fluent in the atomic properties of materials like glass and steel and wood, Anna Ploszajski wanted the hands-on experience of how craftspeople use them. The result is her book, Handmade: A Scientist’s Search for Meaning Through Making.

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You may not realize it, but you are subtly revising and updating your memories all the time – to keep them, as Daphna Shohamy puts it, “nimble,” and so better able to help you chart both the present and the future.

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As a young Italian physics student, Caterina Vernieri was lucky enough to join the team hunting for the most elusive and highly-prized fundamental particle of all – the Higgs boson – just as it was found. She is now leading a team building the detector that may reveal the Higgs’ secrets.

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Having helped develop and install a camera to gaze the heavens with unprecedented resolution, Marcelle Soares Santos was part of the team that used the camera to capture an unprecedented record of a massive cosmic explosion.

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An unknown but very clever cockatoo in Sydney Australia invented a novel way of raiding trash bins. Teaming with citizen scientists, Lucy Aplin and her team tracked how cockatoos throughout the city soon picked up the same trick.

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Tiny satellites, catching a ride to space, can improve weather forecasting and even help spot planets outside the solar system.

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With ultra-thin fibers and minute magnetic particles, Polina Anikeeva and her team are developing new ways to tap into the brain. Her ultimate goal is to understand and treat brain diseases like Parkinson’s.

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Dangling from a balloon the size of a football stadium miles above the South Pole, a payload built by astrophysicist Abby Vieregg peers down at the ice looking for messenger particles from the most energetic places in the universe.

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She not only cares passionately about the large and ferocious animals she studies. Rae Wynn-Grant also has a passion and a talent for getting the rest of us to care about them too.

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The mightiest events in the entire universe – when black holes collide – create ripples in space-time now being detected by the most sensitive instruments ever built – and are opening up a new era in astronomy.

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