April 2008
Scientific American Magazine

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Cover; April 2008; by Staff Editor; 1 Page(s)

Table of Contents; April 2008; by Staff Editor; 3 Page(s)

From the Editor; April 2008; by John Rennie; 1 Page(s)

Future Facts

Letters; April 2008; by Staff Editor; 2 Page(s)

The Semantic Web; Many Worlds; Emissions Trading

50, 100 and 150 Years Ago; April 2008; by Daniel C. Schlenoff; 1 Page(s)

Hoyle on Matter; Our Readers?; Killing Beauty

Updates; April 2008; by Philip Yam; 1 Page(s)

Nanotubes; Offshore Wind Power; Synthetic Genome; Stress at Work

Volatility Kills; April 2008; by Gary Stix; 2 Page(s)

Recent economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa may not be sustainable

Digital Diet; April 2008; by David Biello; 2 Page(s)

Computing industry gets serious about energy conservation

Dropping Acid; April 2008; by Sarah Simpson; 2 Page(s)

Mars may have needed acid rain to stay wet

Catching No Rays; April 2008; by George Musser; 2 Page(s)

Missing in action: ultraenergetic cosmic rays from the Virgo cluster

Double-Helix Double Up; April 2008; by Charles Q. Choi; 1 Page(s)

Identical DNA strands recognize one another from afar

Wipeout?; April 2008; by Graham P. Collins; 3 Page(s)

A hyped theory of everything sinks from sight

Cellulose Success; April 2008; by Steven Ashley; 2 Page(s)

Firms seek greener ethanol from wood chips and agricultural waste

News Scan Briefs; April 2008; by Philip Yam, Larry Greenemeier, Charles Q. Choi, Nikhil Swaminathan, David Biello; 2 Page(s)

Mercury Rising; Knee-Jerk Power; More Sleep, Less Fat; Eye on the Illusion; The New Black; Lost City, Found Hydrocarbons; Kissing Cousins Have More Kin; Running Dialogue; Not Going Out to Play

SciAm Perspectives: Let the Games Begin!; April 2008; by the Editors; 1 Page(s)

Nothing beats the excitement of honest, steroid-powered competition

Sustainable Developments: Keys to Climate Protection; April 2008; by Jeffrey D. Sachs; 1 Page(s)

Dramatic, immediate commitment to nurturing new technologies is essential to averting disastrous global warming

Forum: The Economist Has No Clothes; April 2008; by Robert Nadeau; 1 Page(s)

Unscientific assumptions in economic theory are undermining efforts to solve environmental problems

Skeptic: Wag the Dog; April 2008; by Michael Shermer; 1 Page(s)

Emotions are as much a product of our evolutionary heritage as they are our environmental circumstances

Anti Gravity: Attack on the Clones; April 2008; by Steve Mirsky; 1 Page(s)

The fate of the world's favorite fruit

The Color of Plants on Other Worlds; April 2008; by Nancy Y. Kiang; 8 Page(s)

If it isn't easy being green on Earth, where chlorophyll is well tuned to absorb most of the energy in our sun's yellow light, imagine the difficulties elsewhere in the galaxy. Plants growing on worlds around cooler, brighter or more tempestuous stars would need to rely on red, blue or even black pigments to survive. That insight offers astronomers new clues about what to look for in their search for extraterrestrial life

Regrowing Human Limbs; April 2008; by Ken Muneoka, Manjong Han and David M. Gardiner; 8 Page(s)

The ability to regenerate lost body parts--salamander-style--could revolutionize the treatment of amputations and major wounds

Reclaiming the Aral Sea; April 2008; by Philip Micklin and Nikolay V. Aladin; 8 Page(s)

Mismanagement turned the world's fourth-largest lake into a dry, toxic wasteland. Now the northern part, at least, is coming back

Rulers of Light; April 2008; by Steven Cundiff, Jun Ye and John Hall; 8 Page(s)

A kind of laser light called an optical frequency comb can make atomic clocks and other instruments much more precise

The Doping Dilemma; April 2008; by Michael Shermer; 8 Page(s)

Game theory suggests how to stop the pervasive abuse of drugs in cycling, baseball and other sports

Carbon Wonderland; April 2008; by Andre K. Geim and Philip Kim; 8 Page(s)

A newly recognized form of carbon--single sheets of atoms--provides a rich lode of novel theoretical physics and practical applications

Detecting Nuclear Smuggling; April 2008; by Thomas B. Cochran and Matthew G. McKinzie; 6 Page(s)

Radiation monitors at U.S. ports cannot reliably detect highly enriched uranium, which onshore terrorists could assemble into a nuclear bomb

Insights: At the Edge of Life's Code; April 2008; by Thania Benios; 3 Page(s)

What happens in the black box between DNA and the proteins it produces? Chris Wiggins uses machine-learning techniques to peer inside

Working Knowledge: Weapons Revealed; April 2008; by Stuart F. Brown; 2 Page(s)

Whole-body scanning for airline passengers

Reviews; April 2008; by Michelle Press; 1 Page(s)

Beautifuil Science; Project Nim; Looking for E.T.

Ask the Experts; April 2008; by Joseph R. Dwyer, Douglas E. Vetter; 1 Page(s)

Do cosmic rays cause lightning? How do the bones in the inner ear amplify sound?

Fact or Fiction?; April 2008; by Christie Nicholson; 1 Page(s)

Does "spring fever" exist?