Scientific American Magazine

To learn more about the ocean and harvest its resources, men must be able to live and work as free divers on the continental shelf. Several research programs are currently developing this ability.

Some viruses that cause tumors in animals are not found in the tumors but their antigens are. This suggests that the absence of a virus in a human cancer does not necessarily mean that a virus did not cause it

In which numerous obstacles are overcome to put a 575-pound spacecraft within 6,118 miles of Mars after a trip of 228 days. The first of a three-part series on the mission and its results

Basically they enable two parts of a machine to move with respect to each other. They have evolved rapidly in response to increased demands in terms of load, speed, lifetime, efficiency and economy

The fiber that conducts the nerve impulse is a tubelike structure. Its operation can be studied by squeezing the contents out of the giant axon of the squid and replacing them with various solutions

The native inhabitants of Australia were long thought to be relatively recent immigrants. In the past decade archaeologists have discovered that man first reached the remote continent at least 16,000 years ago

These small, harmless relatives of the true scorpions are surprisingly abundant in woodland regions. Their retiring way of life conceals some fascinating patterns of behavior

A faint but constant light is emitted by a layer of excited atoms and molecules in the earth's upper atmosphere. The events that give rise to this radiation have now been reproduced in the laboratory