Departments

100 Years Ago: Inaccurately Explaining Earthquakes
Innovation and discovery as chronicled in past issues of Scientific American

Dynamic Darwinism: Evolution Theory Thrives Today
The naturalist would approve of how evolutionary science continues to improve

News Scan Briefs: Sounds Like Thunder
Also: seeing on faith, climate and dynasties, blank-stare politics, and more...

Do White Blood Cells Make Cancer Deadly?
The ability to spread underlies the killing power of cancer. The process occurs, John Pawelek thinks, when tumor cells fuse with white blood cells—an idea that, if right, could yield new therapies

Readers Respond on "The End of Privacy?"
Letters to the editor on stories from our privacy issue

Scientific American Reviews: The Secret of the Great Pyramid
Also books on human waste and the first Earthrise

Updates: Whatever Happened to Natural Blood-Vessel Dilators?
Also: updates on cloning mice and extinction by disease

How Do Elevators Work?
A look inside the complex machine that moves people up and down floors

• Does Dark Matter Encircle Earth?
• Space Exploration Sticker Shock--Economics at NASA
• Breaking Down Nanostructures by the Atom
• Does Herpes Cause a Form of Sen. Edward Kennedy's Brain Cancer?
• Fury over Conservationists Taking Fees from Developers
• Chasing Rainbows: Full-Spectrum Photovoltaics

• Chastising the Cherry-Picking McCain-Palin Ticket

• A Skeptic's Review of Telephoning the Dead

• Blackouts and Cascading Failures of the Global Markets

• Why Everyone Should Learn the Theory of Evolution

 

Features

Darwin's Living Legacy--Evolutionary Theory 150 Years Later
A Victorian amateur undertook a lifetime pursuit of slow, meticulous observation and thought about the natural world, producing a theory 150 years ago that still drives the contemporary scientific agenda
By Gary Stix

Putting Evolution to Use in the Everyday World
Understanding of evolution is fostering powerful technologies for health care, law enforcement, ecology, and all manner of optimization and design problems
By David P. Mindell

The Latest Face of Creationism in the Classroom
Creationists who want religious ideas taught as scientific fact in public schools continue to adapt to courtroom defeats by hiding their true aims under ever changing guises
By Glenn Branch and Eugenie C. Scott

The Science of Spore--The "Evolution" of Gaming
A computer game illustrates the difference between building your own simulated creature and real-life natural selection
By Ed Regis

The Human Pedigree: A Timeline of Hominid Evolution
Some 180 years after unearthing the first human fossil, paleontologists have amassed a formidable record of our forebears
By Kate Wong

The Future of Man--How Will Evolution Change Humans?
Contrary to popular belief, humans continue to evolve. Our bodies and brains are not the same as our ancestors' were—or as our descendants' will be
By Peter Ward

The Evolutionary Origins of Hiccups and Hernias
How biological hand-me-downs inherited from fish and tadpoles evolved into human maladies
By Neil H. Shubin

Diversity Revealed: From Atoms to Traits
Charles Darwin saw that random variations in organisms provide fodder for evolution. Modern scientists are revealing how that diversity arises from changes to DNA and can add up to complex creatures or even cultures
By David M. Kingsley

Testing Natural Selection with Genetics
Biologists working with the most sophisticated genetic tools are demonstrating that natural selection plays a greater role in the evolution of genes than even most evolutionists had thought
By H. Allen Orr

Evolution of the Mind: 4 Fallacies of Psychology
Some evolutionary psychologists have made widely popularized claims about how the human mind evolved, but other scholars argue that the grand claims lack solid evidence
By David J. Buller

Online Exclusives

News
Raising a Glass to Your Health? Not with These Wines
Potentially dangerous heavy metals have been found in more than 100 types of wine from a dozen nations.

Science Talk
Science in the Obama Administration
Stanford University biologist Sharon Long, a science adviser to the Barack Obama campaign, talks about the role science will play after Inauguration Day.

Feature
Are You Evil? Profiling the Truly Wicked
A cognitive scientist employs malevolent logic to define the dark side of the human psyche.

60-Second Psych Podcast
More Sex for Women?
Surveys suggest that women, young couples and the over-60 crowd are closing the infidelity gap.

Slide Show
A “Narcotic Farm” That Tried to Grow Recovery
A federal prison in Kentucky was a temporary home for thousands, including Sonny Rollins, Peter Lorre and William S. Burroughs, as well as a lab for testing the effects of such substances as LSD.