Next-Generation Compact Discs
A novel agreement among competing electronics companies has delivered an innovative plan for compatible "DVD" products--the first are due out this fall
Features
Blue-Laser CD Technology
Coaxing semiconductor crystals into lasing blue light is no easy task, but the rewards-- among them, greater storage space on optical disks--are well worth the wait
Sunlight and Skin Cancer
Although most skin cancers appear in older people, the damage often begins decades earlier, when the sun's rays mutate a key gene in a single cell
Physics
The Nature of Space and Time
Two relativists present their distinctive views on the universe, its evolution and the impact of quantum theory
The Mother of Mass Extinctions
Disaster struck 250 million years ago, when the worst decimation in the earth's history occurred. Called the end-Permian mass extinction, it marks a fundamental change in the development of life
Who Owns Digital Works?
Computer networks challenge copyright law, but some proposed cures may be as bad as the disease
Exoskeletal Sensors for Walking
To move their limbs, cockroaches, crabs and spiders rely on organs in their exoskeletons that act as strain gauges. Their method of locomotion could facilitate the design of multilegged robots
Departments
- From the Editor
Glimpses of the Familiar but Unknown
- Letters
Letters to the Editors, July 1996
- Recommended
Reviews and Commentaries--An Anthropologist's Attic
- Anti Gravity
Wonderful Town
- 50, 100 & 150 Years Ago
50, 100 And 150 Years Ago: Radio Transmission in Space, The Biological Survey and Gas Lamps Ignited by Electricity
- Wonders
Gutless
- In Brief
In Brief, July 196
- Profile
Pushing the Envelope for Vaccines
- Mathematical Recreation
Arithmetic and Old Lace
- Amateur Scientist
Covert Observations of Nesting Sparrows
- Science and the Citizen
Pot Luck
Mirror, Mirror
Pink Gold
Group Think
Triassic Bug
- By the Numbers
The Changing Quality of Life
- Working Knowledge
Working Knowledge on Halogen Lights
- Connections
Folies de Grandeur
- Cyber View
New Stars for the New Media
- Field Notes
Headshrinker Convention
- Technology and Business
Light Work
Treble Vision
Panacea Lost?
Keeping the "Tiger" at Bay
The Underwater Lightness of Being
Leaf it to Them
- In Focus
Waking Up