Washington, DC, USA. A study in Social Studies of Science shows that males win scientific awards more than 95% of the time when men chair committees that select the recipients.

In the past two decades women have begun to win more awards, compared to men, but they win more service and teaching awards and fewer of the prestigious scholarly awards than would be expected based on their representation in the nomination pool.

Tempe, AZ, USA. Can archaeology be a social science that extracts information from other disciplines to inform and enhance their data, while providing input to other sciences?

A new analysis extends the popular perception of archaeologists as a team of dusty individuals in wide-brimmed hats unearthing treasures from a pharaoh's tomb or an ancient collection of Native American artifacts.

Chapel Hill, NC, USA. Public trust in science remained stable since the mid-1970s except among self-identified conservatives and among those who frequently attend church.

Between 1974 and 2010 in the United States, people who self-identified as moderates and liberals maintained their trust in science but it fell among self-identified conservatives by more than 25 percent during the same period.

Corvallis, OR, USA. Carbon nanotubes can markedly increase the speed of biological sensors, a technology that could reduce the time needed for lab tests to minutes, speeding diagnosis and treatment while reducing the costs of production and operation.

The speed of prototype nano-biosensors have nearly tripled, suggesting applications not only in medicine but also in the development of new drugs, toxicology, environmental monitoring, and other fields.

Sheffield, United Kingdom. Just when the venerable electron microscope seemed to be nearing the practical limit for its usefulness, scientists have developed a new lensless method which could create the highest resolution images ever seen.

For over 70 years, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), which looks through an object to see atomic features within it, has been constrained by the relatively poor lenses which are used to form the image.