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There is no doubt the prolific Gustave Whitehead deserves an honorable mention in the Hall of Aviation Pioneers. He built dozens of aircraft and workable gliders as well as several lightweight gasoline-powered engines, and Scientific American frequently mentioned his work. But was he “first in flight”? No. Those honors go to the brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright, who completed the first powered, man-carrying, controlled flight of more than a few meters in the first decade of the 20th century.

When fish swim in waters tainted with antidepressant drugs, they become anxious, anti-social and sometimes even homicidal.

The brown slurry is piped through tubes into the top of the human body -- or the bottom. It can even come in pill form. For years, doctors have been transferring feces into ill people’s intestines to replace resident microbes with a fresh batch. The procedure is often a therapeutic success, but protocols for it vary wildly. As it steadily grows more popular, regulators are now working to define what a standard fecal transplant should be, and how to deliver one safely.

A fish swims into an enclosure and disappears, while the pondweed behind remains perfectly visible. A cat climbs into a glass box and vanishes, and again the scene behind the box remains visible through the glass. This latest addition to the science of invisibility cloaks is one of the simplest implementations so far, but there’s no denying its striking impact.

They already have to contend with cruel seas and crueler grant reviewers, but American marine scientists may face an even bigger problem: barring major investment, the federal oceanographic fleet is going to be down to half its current size by 2026.

In April three biohackers from a California Do-It-Yourself biology lab, BioCurious , posted a Kickstarter campaign to crowdsource their plan to bioengineer a glowing plant . They asked for $65,000. But by the close of their campaign at midnight on Thursday, June 6, they had raised a remarkable $484,013. (Meanwhile, BioCurious itself is in financial trouble.) It was the first time anyone had kick-started a genetic engineering project. The group had hit upon a new method for funding biotech, one that’s faster, cheaper and requires less expertise than traditional grants or venture capital. Crowdsourcing does require public buy in, however, and this case raises a thorny hitch--ethically, environmentally and perhaps legally.

A National Security Agency whistleblower named Thomas Drake was indicted several years ago for providing information to the press on waste, fraud and bureaucratic dysfunction in the agency’s counterterrorism programs. The U.S. Department of Justice indicted Drake, an NSA senior executive, under the Espionage Act of 1917 for retaining allegedly classified information. Eventually, the felony charges against Drake were dropped , and he pled guilty to a misdemeanor, exceeding authorized use of a computer. Still, the DOJ’s strategy in that case may provide some clues as to what’s in store for Edward Snowden, a government contractor who exposed himself last weekend as the source for a widespread domestic communications story first reported by The Guardian . Drake spoke with Scientific American to shed some light on whistleblower prosecutions and the science behind surveillance.  An edited transcript of the conversation follows:

Last week saw revelations that the FBI and the National Security Agency have been collecting Americans' phone records en masse and that the agencies have access to data from nine tech companies.

More than one in three women and more than one in four men fall prey to stalking, rape or other physical or psychological violence by a partner at some time in their lives . Despite these grim statistics and evidence that victims can end up suffering mental and physical health problems such as post-traumatic stress disorder , health professionals have yet to nail down the best way to stop the abuse--which they call “intimate partner violence”--and to care for those affected by it.

A long overdue and growing body of research on concussions is providing today’s young athletes, parents and coaches with more information about identifying and treating head injuries--but not all of that research is reliable. For instance, one new study on youth concussions offers valuable information about recovery time, whereas potentially flawed conclusions in a second new study illustrate one of the biggest challenges in studying youth concussions--missed diagnoses.

Over the next few weeks officials at the World Health Organization (WHO) face a tough and politically charged call. The Muslim month of fasting, Ramadan, begins July 9 and could draw as many as two million people from around the globe to the holy sites of Saudi Arabia in a pilgrimage called umrah . But a new disease, called Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome, or MERS, could threaten them.

When Hurricane Katrina ravaged the U.S. Gulf Coast in 2005, Facebook was the new kid on the block. There was no Twitter for news updates, and the iPhone was not yet on the scene. By the time Hurricane Sandy slammed the eastern seaboard last year, social media had become an integral part of disaster response, filling the void in areas where cell phone service was lost while millions of Americans looked to resources including Twitter and Facebook to keep informed, locate loved ones, notify authorities and express support. Gone are the days of one-way communication where only official sources provide bulletins on disaster news.

Jeff Harris was on a beach in The Outer Banks, N.C., with friends, kicking a soccer ball in the surf. Diving for the ball in shallow water, he hit his head on the sand with such force that he couldn't move. He kept trying to lift his head but it became so tiring that he just let it dangle in the surf. He eventually passed out.

England’s badgers are once again in the firing line, as pilot culls to control the spread of bovine tuberculosis begin. As protesters descended on the nation’s capital last week, the chief scientific adviser of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), Ian Boyd, talked to Nature about why he thinks the cull is scientifically sound, what else will be needed to control this disease and what happened when he got the country’s leading experts together for a workshop meeting on this subject at the end of April.

Researchers have both created and relieved symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) in genetically modified mice using a technique that turns brain cells on and off with light, known as optogenetics. The work, by two separate teams, confirms the neural circuits that contribute to the condition and points to treatment targets. It also provides insight into how quickly compulsive behaviors can develop -- and how quickly they might be soothed. The results of the studies are published in Science .

Earlier this year a group of researchers published a controversial idea for giving law enforcement access to suspicious electronic communications. Instead of forcing tech companies like Facebook and Google to build backdoors into their software , the researchers suggested law enforcement simply exploit existing vulnerabilities in Web software to plant their digital wiretaps. [More]

Ishmael Tirado watches as his fellow construction workers rebuild the Steeplechase Pier, a central feature of New York’s iconic Coney Island boardwalk. Planks of tropical ipê wood that were torn asunder by last year’s Hurricane Sandy lie in grey stacks behind him, ready to be scrapped or recycled, but fresh boards are tellingly absent. When the pier reopens this summer, visitors will encounter a shiny expanse of recycled plastic jutting out to sea on a platform of steel-reinforced concrete. “I think it’s a good idea,” Tirado says. “It’s more durable, and we are saving trees.”

One way to obliterate an atom is to shoot it with the planet's most powerful X-ray gun. Linda Young tried that experiment in October 2009, when she was testing the newly opened X-ray free-electron laser at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, California. A single pulse from the US$420-million machine packs the same energy as all the solar radiation hitting Earth at that moment, but focused down to one square centimeter. “It will destroy anything you put in front of it,” says Young.

Advances in energy storage could help make wind and solar power a mainstay of our electricity system by taking root not only in the Great Plains and the Mojave Desert but also Park Avenue high-rises and urban data centers.

If you’ve ever wanted to edit an event from your history, then help may soon be at hand. Electrical engineers have used lasers to create a cloak that can hide communications in a 'time hole', so that it seems as if they were never sent. The method , published today in Nature , is the first that can cloak data streams sent at the rapid rates typically seen in telecommunications systems. It opens the door to ultra-secure transmission schemes, and may also provide a way to better shield information from noise corruption.