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Features

Space Science, Space Technology and the Space Station

The space-station program will seriously diminish the opportunities for advancing space science and technology if it proceeds as planned. Most national goals in space are better realized by robot spacecraft...

By James A. Van Allen

Growth, Differentiation and the Reversal of Malignancy

Specific proteins regulate the growth of normal white blood cells and their differentiation into nondividing forms. Leukemic cells can also be made to differentiate, suggesting new approaches to cancer treatment...

By Leo Sachs

The Structure of Comet Tails

The plasma tall forms and disconnects from the comet in response to the solar wind and its magnetic field. Observations of comets Giacobini-Zinner and Halley may help to clarify such phenomena...

By John C. Brandt and Malcolm B. Niedner

Applications of Optical Phase Conjugation

"Time-reversed" light waves can be used to improve laser-beam quality, compensate for atmospheric turbulence, track a moving satellite, encode and decode messages and compare image patterns...

By David M. Pepper

Mineral Deposits from Sea-Floor Hot Springs

Seawater circulating through fractured volcanic rock above sources of heat participates in chemical exchanges with the rock. A major result is significant deposits of metal, some now uplifted onto land...

By Peter A. Rona

The Chemical Defenses of Higher Plants

Some plant-produced chemicals poison herbivores or repel them; others reduce plants' nutritive value or impede an insect's growth. Herbivores in turn have ways of exploiting these natural products...

By Gerald A. Rosenthal

Radiocarbon Dating by Accelerator Mass Spectrometry

The radioactive carbon 14 is isolated from the other atoms in a sample, making it possible to derive more accurate chronologies from much smaller archaeological or anthropological specimens...

By John A. J. Gowlett and Robert E. M. Hedges

Kin Recognition in Tadpoles

Tadpoles of the Cascades frog prefer to associate with siblings, which they distinguish from nonsiblings. The ability to recognize kin is not based on familiarity; it may have a genetic component...

By Andrew R. Blaustein and Richard K. O'Hara

Departments

  • 50 and 100 Years Ago: January 1986

  • Science and the Citizen, January 1986

  • Letters

    Letters to the Editors, 1986

  • Recommended

    Books, January 1986

  • Amateur Scientist

    The Amateur Scientist, January 1986

  • Departments

    The Authors, January 1986

  • Computer Recreations, January 1986

  • Bibliography, January 1986

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