Philip Ball reports on the top science stories this month

Obama’s latest appointment has enraged the new atheists in the US scientific community. Plus, Jupiter unexpectedly suffers a direct hit

Nasa's Mars lander has a Twitter feed; big science and astronomy may soon follow suit. Plus, the genomics of schizophrenia and shit

On a visit to Cern, I found optimism over the reopening of the Large Hadron Collider and a surprising alliance with novelist Dan Brown

The search for dark matter continues with mixed results. China unveils its new particle accelerator, but it's not for particle physics

Erasing bad memories sounds like something from science fiction. Yet treatments exist and new research may improve them still further

Does religious belief activate different parts of the brain to other types of thought? Plus Nasa's new space telescope has a mission

If you're a non-believer, it's easy to mock or even despise efforts to bridge science and religion. But you don't need to be Richard Dawkins to sense that there's an imbalance in these often...

How many bees do we actually need? Nobody seems to know. Plus, stem cell research is finally put to the test

What can we expect from Obama's science team? Action on climate change and over-fishing, and perhaps a change in nuclear defence policy. Plus, when galaxies collide