Departments

Geology Uproar--Big-Gun Battleships--Horsepower for Horse Dung

The Honeymoon Is Over
After the vows, marital happiness may be all downhill

News Scan Briefs

Experiments at Work
What's the best way to boost sales or handle competing resellers? By lab-testing business ideas, Kay-Yut Chen gets rid of some of the guesswork

Letters

From Surmise to Sunrise
The science of life and the art of writing well

Spin and Swing

• In the Groove
• Crater Jumper
• Software Insecurity
• Ion Power
• Going to Bat
• Down in Flames

• Con Men in Lab Coats

• Annual Rapport

• Cures and Cons

 

Features

The Dangers of Ocean Acidification
Much of the carbon dioxide given off from the burning of fossil fuels goes into the ocean, where it changes the acid balance of seawater. The repercussions for marine life may be enormous
By Scott C. Doney

Shielding Space Travelers
The perils of cosmic rays pose severe, perhaps insurmountable, hurdles to human spaceflight to Mars and beyond
By Eugene N. Parker

The Limits of Reason
Ideas on complexity and randomness originally suggested by Gottfried W. Leibniz in 1686, combined with modern information theory, imply that there can never be a "theory of everything" for all of mathematics
By Gregory Chaitin

Cognitive Radio
Smart radios and other new wireless devices will avoid transmission bottlenecks by switching instantly to nearby frequencies that they sense are clear
By Steven Ashley

Little Green Molecules
Chemists have invented a new class of catalysts that can destroy some of the worst pollutants before they get into the environment
By Terrence J. Collins and Chip Walter

The Elusive Goal of Machine Translation
Statistical methods hold the promise of moving computerized translation out of the doldrums
By Gary Stix

Unlocking the Secrets of Longevity Genes
A handful of genes that control the body's defenses during hard times can also dramatically improve health and prolong life in diverse organisms. Understanding how they work may reveal the keys to extending human life span while banishing diseases of old age
By David A. Sinclair and Lenny Guarente