Scientific American Magazine

Its cost to the taxpayer is only about 5 percent of the cost of applied research and development. Yet it contributes deeply to technology, the education of scientists and the general enrichment of our culture

An orbiting, liquid-helium-cooled telescope has made panoramic images of the infrared sky, recording the glow from cold, solid matter in the solar system, the galaxy and the universe at large

The receptors bind particles carrying cholesterol and remove them from the circulation. Many Americans have too few LDL receptors, and so they are at high risk for atherosclerosis and heart attacks

Rising demand, new markets and the resulting heavy volume of production have forced commercial bakers to do their work increasingly with advanced machinery and automatic processes

Largely unexplored, it is home to one of the most diverse plant and animal communities on the earth. A new way of reaching the canopy allows close observation or its ecology

The alignment of two conventional semiconductor lasers yields a beam of almost perfect purity that enables communication systems to send signals at rates as great as billions of bits, or binary digits, per second

They were built 15,000 years ago by hunting-and-gathering bands. Their complexity and permanence suggest that a profound social change was taking place on the steppe at the end of the great Ice Age

Gothic builders used the cathedrals themselves as models, modifying designs as structural problems emerged. An analysis of buttressing patterns shows that information spread rapidly among building sites