Scientific American Magazine Vol 222 Issue 2

Scientific American Magazine

Volume 222, Issue 2

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Features

The Assessment of Technology

A panel convened by the National Academy of Sciences recommends new Federal mechanisms to consider the broad social consequences of advancing or retarding particular technological developments

Raymond Bowers, Harvey Brooks

Large-Scale Integration in Electronics

Within the past five years the size of electronic devices has been shrunk by a factor of 10. Now one can connect more than 1,000 transistors into a circuit only a tenth of an inch square

F. G. Heath

The Afar Triangle

A new ocean seems to be in the making where three great rift systems intersect near the junction of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. The violence of the process has created a nightmarish desert landscape

Haroun Tazieff

The Physiology of High Altitude

To meet the stress of life at high altitude, notably lack of oxygen, a number of changes in body processes are required. What are these adaptations, and are they inborn or the result of acclimatization?

Raymond J. Hock

Particles that go Faster than Light

Efforts to detect such particles, named tachyons, have yielded only negative results. Contrary to common belief, however, their existence would not be inconsistent with the theory of relativity

Gerald Feinberg

Phosphenes

Seeing stars is seeing phosphenes, subjective images generated within the eye and brain rather than by light from outside. They presumably reflect the neural organization of the visual pathway

Gerald Oster

The Rangelands of the Western U.S.

These vast tracts are mainly utilized for the grazing of cattle. They could be much more productive, not only from the economic standpoint but also in the recreational and the aesthetic sense

R. Merton Love

Cell Surgery by Laser

The properties of laser light make it possible to conveniently focus it to an intense spot .0005 millimeter in diameter. This spot is small enough to produce lesions in individual organelles of the living cell

Michael W. Berns, Donald E. Rounds

Departments

Letters to the Editors, February 1970

50 and 100 Years Ago: February 1970

The Authors

Science and the Citizen: February 1970

Mathematical Games

The Amateur Scientist

Books

Bibliography