Celebrations in honor of the the first person to traveled to space -- cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, who launched in the Vostok 1 for one 108-minute orbit around the Earth on April 12, 1961 -- are an annual tradition. And they're awesome. Especially so this year, when Yuri's Night participants will mark the golden anniversary of Gagarin's circle around the world. more ›

Mark Willenbring, M.D., is the Director of the Treatment and Recovery Research Division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). He is a former professor of psychiatry at the University of Minnesota, and has worked to develop and test management strategies for people with complex addiction problems. In his work he has worked to develop evidence-based clinical practice guidelines for treating mental and addictive disorders. Dr. Willenbring co-led a national initiative to determine the feasibility of introducing guidelines for treating addictive disorders within the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The NIAAA recently introduced Rethinking Drinking, a Web-based test that examines your drinking patterns and their effect on your health. more ›

Forty young men and women chosen as Intel Science Talent Search finalists gathered in the Great Hall of the National Academy of Sciences to compete for more than $500,000 in awards and scholarships to support careers in science -- including one top prize, a $100,000 scholarship. Two area budding young scientists, both hailing from Thomas Jefferson High School for Science & Technology in Fairfax, Virginia, are among the finalists. Each finalist picks up at least $5,000 in scholarship money and an Intel-powered laptop. more ›

Jonathan Alderfer began his career as a bird painter in the 1980s by illustrating bird identification articles for the Los Angeles Audubon Society's newsletter, , a large-format illustrated guide. more ›

Don Moore is the Associate Director for Animal Care at the Smithsonian National Zoological Park. As a zoo-based wildlife biologist, Moore has helped to create conservation and animal-management plans for zoos and wild animals in nature for more than 30 years. He worked for the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York as a curator and zoo director and has published more than four dozen papers on animal husbandry and behavior. Moore helped to launch the “Managing Animal Enrichment and Training Programs” course at George Mason University as well as the Animal Behavior and Conservation at Hunter College in New York. He appears as a guest scientist in by Amanda Lumry and Laura Hurwitz. more ›

, the first textbook within the field. more ›

(Plume Press), which has been translated into Italian and Spanish. Dr. Oerter has done research in elementary particle physics, supersymmetry, quantum chaos, and underwater acoustics. more ›