Departments

100 Years Ago: Sleeping Sickness
Innovation and discovery as chronicled in past issues of Scientific American

Start of the End
Editor in Chief Mariette DiChristina introduces the September 2010 issue of Scientific American

Readers Respond on "Revolutionary Rail"
Letters to the editor from the May 2010 issue of Scientific American

Recommended: The 50 Most Extreme Places in Our Solar System
Books and recommendations from Scientific American

• Feeling the Pain of Rejection? Try Taking a Tylenol
• Fat Attack: Will Three New Antiobesity Drugs Beat a Checkered Safety History?
• Undifferentiated Ethics: Why Stem Cells from Adult Skin Are as Morally Fraught as Embryonic Stem Cells
• Lunar Pencil Lead: Graphite Found in Moon Rock Collected During Apollo 17
• Quantum Light Switch: Single Atom Acts as a Transistor for Photons
• Rummaging for a Final Theory
• Doubts on Dispersants
• Sour Showers
• Origami Sheets That Fold Themselves

• Snake Oil in the Supermarket

• Shaky Ground: Can Seismologists Be Charged with a Crime for Not Predicting Deadly Quakes?

• The Deepening Crisis: When Will We Face the Planet's Environmental Problems?

• Democracy's Laboratory: Are Science and Politics Interrelated?

• A Year of Living Dangerously: Reflections on Hot-Button Science

 

Features

Eternal Fascinations with the End: Why We're Suckers for Stories of Our Own Demise
Our pattern-seeking brains and desire to be special help explain our fears of the apocalypse
By Michael Moyer

Why Can't We Live Forever?
As we grow old, our own cells begin to betray us. By unraveling the mysteries of aging, scientists may be able to make our lives longer and healthier
By Thomas Kirkwood

When Does Life Belong to the Living?
With thousands of people on the waiting lists for organs, doctors are bending the rules about when to declare that a donor is dead. Is it ethical to take one life and give it to another?
By Robin Marantz Henig

Dust to Dust: The Brief, Eventful Afterlife of a Human Corpse
The brief, eventful afterlife of a human corpse
By Arpad A. Vass

Last of Their Kind: What Is Lost When Cultures Die?
The world's cultures have been disappearing, taking valuable knowledge with them, but there is reason to hope
By Wade Davis

Good Riddance: Human Creations the World Would Be Better Off Without
Our highly selective list includes Teflon, dropped calls and the space shuttle
By John Pavlus, Melinda Wenner Moyer, Christopher Mims and Elizabeth Svoboda

How Much Is Left? The Limits of Earth's Resources
A graphical accounting of the limits to what one planet can provide
By Michael Moyer and Carina Storrs

Laying Odds on the Apocalypse: Experts Assess Doomsday
Could modern civilization really come to an end? Experts take stock of eight doomsday scenarios
By John Matson and John Pavlus

The Paradox of Time: Why It Can't Stop, But Must
Yes. And no. For time to end seems both impossible and inevitable. Recent work in physics suggests a resolution to the paradox
By George Musser

What Comes Next: Experts Predict the Future
The flip side to every ending is a new beginning. We asked the visionary scientists on our advisory board what new trends will shape the decades to come
By Danny Hillis, Arthur Caplan, Edward Felten, Christof Koch, Michael Webber, Daniel Kammen, R. James Woolsey, Leslie Aiello, George Church and John Reganold