January 2009
Scientific American Magazine

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Cover; January 2009; by Staff Editor; 1 Page(s)

Table of Contents; January 2009; by Staff Editor; 3 Page(s)

From the Editor - Dynamic Darwinism; January 2009; by John Rennie; 1 Page(s)

The naturalist would approve of how evolutionary science continues to improve

Letters; January 2009; by Staff Editor; 2 Page(s)

Privacy -- Animal Testing -- RFID Tags -- Tidal Bulge

50, 100 and 150 Years Ago; January 2009; by Daniel C. Schlenoff; 1 Page(s)

Defending Scopes -- Wrong on Earthquakes -- Comet Cleaners

Updates; January 2009; by Philip Yam; 1 Page(s)

Die-off from Germs -- Star Vibes -- Rodent Resurrection -- Stinky Relaxation

Environmental Payoff; January 2009; by Wendee Holtcamp; 2 Page(s)

Furor over a conservation group taking fees from developers

Virus in the Brain; January 2009; by Melinda Wenner; 3 Page(s)

Does a herpesvirus cause the deadly brain cancer glioblastoma?

Big Little Problem; January 2009; by Mark Wolverton; 2 Page(s)

Trying to figure out where each atom belongs in a nanostructure

Space Sticker Shock; January 2009; by George Musser; 2 Page(s)

The laws of physics are easy; it's economics that vexes NASA

Neighborhood Darkness; January 2009; by Charles Q. Choi; 2 Page(s)

Does dark matter encircle Earth and heat up the gas giants?

Decoding the Mammoth; January 2009; by Kate Wong; 2 Page(s)

Scientists sequence half the woolly mammoth's genome

Chasing Rainbows; January 2009; by Jesse Emspak; 1 Page(s)

From infrared to ultraviolet, a new photovoltaic material responds to the full spectrum of sunlight

News Scan Brief; January 2009; by Walter A. Brown; David Biello; Charles Q. Choi; Larry Greenemeier; Susannah F. Locke; 2 Page(s)

Take Two Pills and Don¿t Call Me in the Morning; Climate Control of Dynasties; Sounds like Thunder; Seeing on Faith; In Brief; Fungal Clue in Mystery Bat Deaths; Politics of Blank Looks

SciAm Perspectives: A Theory for Everyman; January 2009; by The Editors; 1 Page(s)

Evolution should be taught as a practical tool for understanding drug resistance and the price of fish

Sustainable Developments: Blackouts and Cascading Failures; January 2009; by Jeffrey D. Sachs; 1 Page(s)

Feedbacks in the economic network can turn local crises into global ones

Skeptic: Telephone to the Dead; January 2009; by Michael Shermer; 1 Page(s)

Talking to the dead is easy. Getting the dead to talk back is hard. Why not phone them?

Anti Gravity: Flies and Projectors and Bears, Oh My; January 2009; by Steve Mirsky; 1 Page(s)

Chastising cherry-picking chumps on the stumps

Darwin's Living Legacy; January 2009; by Gary Stix; 6 Page(s)

A Victorian amateur undertook a lifetime pursuit of slow, meticulous observation and thought about the natural world, producing a theory 150 years ago that still drives the contemporary scientific agenda

Testing Natural Selection; January 2009; by H. Allen Orr; 8 Page(s)

Biologists working with the most sophisticated genetic tools are demonstrating that natural selection plays a greater role in the evolution of genes than even most evolutionists had thought

From Atoms to Traits; January 2009; by David M. Kingsley; 8 Page(s)

Charles Darwin saw that random variations in organisms provide fodder for evolution. Modern scientists are revealing how that diversity arises from changes to DNA and can add up to complex creatures or even cultures

The Human Pedigree; January 2009; by Kate Wong; 4 Page(s)

Some 180 years after unearthing the first human fossil, paleontologists have amassed a formidable record of our forebears

This Old Body; January 2009; by Neil H. Shubin; 4 Page(s)

Evolutionary hand-me-downs inherited from fish and tadpoles have left us with hernias, hiccups and other maladies

What Will Become of Homo sapiens?; January 2009; by Peter Ward; 6 Page(s)

Contrary to popular belief, humans continue to evolve. Our bodies and brains are not the same as our ancestors¿ were¿or as our descendants¿ will be

Four Fallacies of Pop Evolutionary Psychology; January 2009; by David J. Buller; 8 Page(s)

Some evolutionary psychologists have made widely popularized claims about how the human mind evolved, but other scholars argue that the grand claims lack solid evidence

Evolution in the Everyday World; January 2009; by David P. Mindell; 8 Page(s)

Understanding of evolution is fostering powerful technologies for health care, law enforcement, ecology, and all manner of optimization and design problems

The Science of Spore; January 2009; by Ed Regis; 2 Page(s)

A computer game illustrates the difference between building your own simulated creature and real-life natural selection

The Latest Face of Creationism; January 2009; by Glenn Branch and Eugenie C. Scott; 8 Page(s)

Creationists who want religious ideas taught as scientific fact in public schools continue to adapt to courtroom defeats by hiding their true aims under ever changing guises

Insights: A Theory of a Deadly Fusion; January 2009; by Charles Q. Choi; 3 Page(s)

The ability to spread underlies the killing power of cancer. The process occurs, John Pawelek thinks, when tumor cells fuse with white blood cells¿ an idea that, if right, could yield new therapies

Working Knowledge: New Designs Going Up; January 2009; by Mark Fischetti; 2 Page(s)

Elevators

Reviews; January 2009; by Michelle Press; 1 Page(s)

Ancient Engineering -- Waste Not -- Earth Rising

Ask The Experts; January 2009; by A. Paul Alivisatos, Timothy E. Hullar; 1 Page(s)

How does solar power work? Why does my voice sound so different when it is recorded and played back?