Scientific American Magazine

Is there a majority opinion on American involvement in the war in Vietnam? A study of public-opinion polls indicates that most Americans are against the war but that motivations are mixed

The size, shape and other properties of the observed galaxies are traced to slight density enhancements in the expanding primordial fireball. Enhancements of certain mass were favored over others

Genes do not operate continuously but are switched on and off. One control mechanism is repression. Now the first specific repressors have been isolated, confining hypotheses put forward a decade ago

Pictures "painted" rapidly and accurately by an electron beam under computer control are helping designers and engineers at many tasks. Computer displays can also help to clarify complex physical phenomena

They have four modes of progression, termed lateral, rectilinear, concertina and sidewinding. In lateral progression, the commonest mode, the snake uses its loops to push not downward but sideways

Mountain glaciers all over the world have advanced several times since the end of the last major "ice age". Their fluctuations are a generalized record of global climatic changes over 6,000 years

Little has been known about the hunters and gatherers who roamed northeastern North America 4,000 years and more ago. The richness of their culture is now disclosed by work at a beach burial ground

The life cycle of the protozoans that cause malaria is carefully timed so that they are most ready for transfer from victim to mosquito during the hours of darkness, when the mosquitoes are most likely to be feeding