January 2001
Scientific American Magazine

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Cover; January 2001; by Staff Editor; 1 Page(s)

Table of Contents; January 2001; by Staff Editor; 2 Page(s)

From the Editors; January 2001; by John Rennie; 1 Page(s)

The First Optical Internet

Letters to the Editors; January 2001; by Staff Editor; 2 Page(s)

50, 100 and 150 Years Ago; January 2001; by Staff Editor; 1 Page(s)

Vaccines in 1901; The Mosquito's Demise

The New Uncertainty Principle; January 2001; by David Appell; 2 Page(s)

For complex environmental issues, science learns to take a backseat to political precaution

Pink Slip in Your Genes; January 2001; by Diane Martindale; 2 Page(s)

Evidence builds that employers hire and fire based on genetic tests; meanwhile protective legislation languishes

Lost Worlds; January 2001; by George Musser; 2 Page(s)

Evidence for the maverick view that extrasolar planets are really small stars

Aquatic Homebodies; January 2001; by Sarah Simpson; 2 Page(s)

New evidence that baby fish and shrimp stick close to home may be the key to saving coral reef biodiversity

A Gas of Steel Balls; January 2001; by Graham P. Collins; 2 Page(s)

Marbles are more difficult to understand than atoms or molecules

Side Splitting; January 2001; by W. Wayt Gibbs; 3 Page(s)

Jokes, ice water and magnetism can change your view of the world - literally

By the Numbers: Coke, Crack, Pot, Speed et al.; January 2001; by Rodger Doyle; 1 Page(s)

In 1999 illegal drug use resulted in 555,000 emergency room visits, of which 30 percent were for cocaine, 16 percent for marijuana or hashish, 15 percent for heroin or morphine, and 2 percent for amphetamines

New Briefs; January 2001; by Diane Martindale, Philip Yam, Steve Mirsky; 2 Page(s)

Rock or Rocket?; Life out of Ballast; Never Say Die; Jobless in the U.S.; Have You Got the Right Stuff?;That Ball is Gone; Cholesterol 1, Aspirin 0

Profile: The $13-Billion Man; January 2001; by Carol Ezzell; 2 Page(s)

Why Thomas R. Cech--the head of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute--could be the most powerful individual in biomedicine

Complexity's Business Model; January 2001; by Julie Wakefield; 2 Page(s)

Part Physics, part poetry - the fledgling un-discipline finds commercial opportunity

Cyber View: 2001: A Scorecard; January 2001; by Gary Stix; 1 Page(s)

How close are we to building HAL? I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid we can't do that

Brave New Cosmos; January 2001; by George Musser and Mark Alpert; 1 Page(s)

Observational cosmology is about to become a mature science. Explanations for the universe's unexpectedly odd behaviors may then be around the corner

Echoes from the Big Bang; January 2001; by Robert R. Caldwell and Marc Kamionkowski; 6 Page(s)

Scientists may soon glimpse the universe's beginnings by studying the subtle ripples made by gravitational waves

A Cosmic Cartographer; January 2001; by Charles L. Bennett, Gary F. Hinshaw and Lyman Page; 2 Page(s)

The Microwave Anisotropy Probe will give cosmologists a much sharper picture of the early universe

The Quintessential Universe; January 2001; by Jeremiah P. Ostriker and Paul J. Steinhardt; 8 Page(s)

The universe has recently been commandeered by an invisible energy field, which is causing its expansion to accelerate outward

Making Sense of Modern Cosmology; January 2001; by P. James E. Peebles; 2 Page(s)

Confused by all those theories? Good

Plan B for the Cosmos; January 2001; by João Magueijo; 2 Page(s)

If the new cosmology fails, what's the backup plan?

The Cultures of Chimpanzees; January 2001; by Andrew Whiten and Christophe Boesch; 8 Page(s)

Humankind's nearest relative is even closer than we thought: chimpanzees display remarkable behaviors that can only be described as social customs passed on from generation to generation

The Cellular Chamber of Doom; January 2001; by Alfred L. Goldberg, Stephen J. Elledge and J. Wade Harper; 6 Page(s)

Structures called proteasomes inside cells continously destroy proteins. Several common diseases result when the process works too zealously - or not at all

The Mystery of Damascus Blades; January 2001; by John D. Verhoeven; 6 Page(s)

Centuries ago craftsmen forged peerless steel blades. But how did they do it? The author and a blacksmith have found the answer

The Triumph of the Light; January 2001; by Gary Stix; 6 Page(s)

Extensions to fiber optics will supply network capacity that borders on the infinite

The Rise of Optical Switching; January 2001; by David J. Bishop, C. Randy Giles and Saswato R. Das; 7 Page(s)

Replacing electronic switches with purely optical ones will become the technological linchpin for networks that transmit trillions of bits each second

Routing Packets with Light; January 2001; by Daniel J. Blumenthal; 4 Page(s)

The ultimate all-optical network will require dramatic advances in technologies that use one lightwave to imprint information on another

Working Knowledge: The Well-Rounded Flat Speaker; January 2001; by Naomi Lubick; 2 Page(s)

The rounded tones of flat-panel speakers

Mathematical Recreations: Dots-and-Boxes for Experts; January 2001; by Ian Stewart; 2 Page(s)

The secret subtleties of a children's game

The Amateur Scientist: A Canteen Cloud Chamber; January 2001; by Shawn Carlson; 2 Page(s)

Viewing the path of charged particles

Books: Not Only Fine Feathers...; January 2001; by Staff Editors; 3 Page(s)

The Sibley Guide to Birds is a new classic in both ornithology and good design. Also, The Editors Recommend

Wonders: Information Technology, 2500 B.C.; January 2001; by Philip Morrison and Phylis Morrison; 2 Page(s)

The daily lives of those who first developed the written word some five millennia back

Connections: Class Acts; January 2001; by James Burke; 2 Page(s)

Bringing Stonehenge, Sturm und Drang, graveyards, clean air, and tea to an educative end

Anti Gravity: The Open-Heart Open; January 2001; by Steve Mirsky; 1 Page(s)

Cardiac patients might want to consider the links - and not those of the sausage variety