Scientific American Magazine

Much of the carbon dioxide given off from the burning of fossil fuels goes into the ocean, where it changes the acid balance of seawater. The repercussions for marine life may be enormous

Statistical methods hold the promise of moving computerized translation out of the doldrums

Smart radios and other new wireless devices will avoid transmission bottlenecks by switching instantly to nearby frequencies that they sense are clear

Chemists have invented a new class of catalysts that can destroy some of the worst pollutants before they get into the environment

The perils of cosmic rays pose severe, perhaps insurmountable, hurdles to human spaceflight to Mars and beyond

Ideas on complexity and randomness originally suggested by Gottfried W. Leibniz in 1686, combined with modern information theory, imply that there can never be a "theory of everything" for all of mathematics

A handful of genes that control the body's defenses during hard times can also dramatically improve health and prolong life in diverse organisms. Understanding how they work may reveal the keys to extending human life span while banishing diseases of old age