Why does Stephen study whale earwax?

A psychologist with wide-ranging interests, Stephen Trumble studies everything from rats to zebrafish, but these days whale earwax is taking over his Baylor University lab. There are already 30 pieces of it lined up, each requiring about a year’s worth of analysis — and he hopes to obtain five times as many. He’s doing this because hidden in all that wax is information that could tell us how life has been changing for whales and the Arctic in the past 100 years or more.

Acclaimed for countless recordings and laden with awards, including a $500,000 MacArthur "genius" grant, 34-year-old Stephen Hough is the undisputed top dog among British concert pianists. He is even more sought-after in America, where he has been touring for much of this year. In Britain this month he is due to play Liszt, Schubert and Franckat the Edinburgh festival and Rachmaninov’s "Rhapsodyon a Theme of Paganini" in his 25th appearance at the BBC Proms in London.