Scientific American Magazine

Israel is restoring to cultivation a land damaged by a millennium of abuse. The achievement is an example to a world that must face the task of increasing food supplies to feed a rising population

To bring a rocket to a precise rendezvous with another planet requires difficult compromises among the conflicting demands of payload, radio communication, guidance and available power

When certain metals are cooled almost to absolute zero, they become superconductive, that is, their electrical resistance disappears. This remarkable phenomenon is now being turned to technological purposes

The deflection of high-speed nuclear particles by samples of matter is yielding new information about the strong and complex force that holds the atomic nucleus together

Hormones secreted by this pad of tissue in the neck control the speed of basic processes in the body. The overproduction or underproduction of the hormones can have grave consequences, particularly in childhood

This formidable word and the technique it identifies are derived from immunochemistry and electrophoresis. These methods have been combined into a precise tool for the study of protein chemistry

Certain drugs have been used to interrogate suspected criminals. Can they in fact elicit the truth? If truth means objective reality, the answer is no. The drugs have nonetheless been useful in psychiatry

This colorful jellyfish is not one organism but a colony of four kinds of polyp. The stinging cells on the tentacles with which it fishes secrete a substance that is almost as toxic as cobra venom