Berkeley, California - Like fireworks bursting through a smoky haze, protostars ignite within colossal filaments of gas in a new supercomputer simulation of stars forming inside molecular clouds.

Cambridge, Massachusetts - Anonymity networks protect people living under repressive regimes from surveillance of their Internet use. But the recent discovery of vulnerabilities in the most popular of these networks - Tor - has prompted computer scientists to try to come up with more secure anonymity schemes.

Cambridge, Massachusetts - When an organization needs a new database, it typically hires a contractor to build it or buys a heavily supported product customized to its industry sector

Seattle, Washington - University of Washington and Microsoft researchers have broken what they believe is the world record for the amount of digital data successfully stored - and retrieved - in DNA molecules.

Cambridge, Massachusetts - Researchers at MIT and elsewhere have developed a new combination of methods that can provide detailed information about the microstructure of polycrystalline metals.

Seattle, Washington - The trend over recent years of increasing Antarctic sea ice extent - seemingly at odds with climate model projections - can be mostly explained by a natural long-term climate fluctuation, according to a paper published this week in Nature Geoscience.