INTRODUCTION: Welcome to the spider's web Over 130 articles, from. ALCOHOL: Genetic revelations of when yeast invented booze ALTRUISM AND AGGRESSION: Looking for the origins of those human alternatives ANTIMATTER: Does the coat that Sakharov made really explain its absence? ARABIDOPSIS: The modest weed that gave plant scientists the big picture ASTRONAUTICS: Will interstellar pioneers be overtaken by their grandchildren? BERNAL'S LADDER: Pointers BIG BANG: The inflationary Universe's sleight-of-hand BIODIVERSITY: The mathematics of co-existence BIOLOGICAL CLOCKS: Molecular machinery that governs life's routines BIOSPHERE FROM SPACE: 'I want to do the whole world' BITS AND QUBITS: The digital world and its looming quantum shadow BLACK HOLES: The awesome engines of quasars and active galaxies BRAIN IMAGES: What do all the vivid movies really mean? BRAIN RHYTHMS: The mathematics of the beat we think to BRAIN 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 curse SOLAR WIND: How it creates the heliosphere in which we live SPACE WEATHER: Why it is now more troublesome than in the old days SPARTICLES: A wished-for superworld of exotic matter and forces SPEECH: A gene that makes us more eloquent than chimpanzees STARBURSTS: Galactic traffic accidents and stellar baby booms STARS: Hearing them sing and sizing them up STEM CELLS: Tissue engineering, natural and medical SUN'S INTERIOR: How sound waves made our mother star transparent SUPERATOMS, SUPERFLUIDS AND SUPERCONDUCTORS: The march of the boson armies SUPERSTRINGS: Retuning the cosmic imagination TIME MACHINES: The biggest issue in contemporary physics? TRANSGENIC CROPS: For better or worse, a planetary experiment has begun TREE OF LIFE: Promiscuous bacteria and the course of evolution UNIVERSE: 'It must have known we were coming' VOLCANIC EXPLOSIONS: Where will the next big one be?.