Scientific American Magazine

The death rate is no longer an adequate index of a population's health. New techniques have been developed with which to assess the nation's health problems and plan for improved medical care

By timing when a celestial radio source goes behind the moon and reappears, its position can be accurately fixed. This simple method led to the discovery of the first quasi-stellar radio source

In which biochemists observe models of giant molecules as they are displayed on a screen by a computer and try to fold them into the shapes that they assume in nature

The striking geornetric regularity of a winding river is no accident. Meanders appear to be the form in which a river does the least work in turning; hence they are the most probable form a river can take

These primitive plants more closely resemble bacteria than they do other algae. They live in an extraordinary range of environments, and they have both beneficial and harmful effects in human affairs

When a liquid or gas flows along a solid surface, it tends to stick to the surface. This effect, named for a Romanian aircraft pioneer, has potential uses in such devices as burners and hovering vehicles

Similarities between the physiology of swine and of men suggest that if pigs were smaller, they would make excellent experimental animals. The problem of size has now been solved by breeding miniature pigs

Bones of elephants that vanished from the continent 10,000 years ago are found together with the projectile points early men used to kill them. Indeed, the hunters may have caused the elephants' extinction