February 2004
Scientific American Magazine

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Cover; February 2004; by Staff Editor; 1 Page(s)

Table of Contents; February 2004; by Staff Editor; 2 Page(s)

SA Perspectives: A Waste of Energy; February 2004; by Staff Editor; 1 Page(s)

How to Contact Us and On the Web; February 2004; by Staff Editor; 1 Page(s)

Letters to the Editors; February 2004; by Staff Editor; 2 Page(s)

50, 100 and 150 Years Ago; February 2004; by Staff Editor; 1 Page(s)

Imaginary Spies; Illusory Rays; Erroneous Statistics

Ballot Breakdown; February 2004; by Wendy M. Grossman; 2 Page(s)

Flaws continue to hamper computerized voting

Not So Icy Stares; February 2004; by Sarah Simpson; 2 Page(s)

The moon's water may be difficult to get

When Blade Meets Bat; February 2004; by Wendy Williams; 2 Page(s)

Unexpected bat kills threaten future wind farms

Doping by Design; February 2004; by Steven Ashley; 2 Page(s)

Why new steroids are easy to make and hard to detect

Becoming Behemoth; February 2004; by Kate Wong; 2 Page(s)

How to put the rex into Tyrannosaurus

LASH Out; February 2004; by Phil Scott; 1 Page(s)

A blimp-based system for military surveillance

By the Numbers: The Great Migration; February 2004; by Rodger Doyle; 1 Page(s)

Why African-Americans moved out of the South

News Scan Briefs; February 2004; by JR Minkel, Steve Mirsky, Charles Choi; 2 Page(s)

Memorable Nanorings; When in Doubt; Aroma Therapy; AIDS Resistance Thanks to Smallpox?; Inverting the Doppler Shift

Innovations: Micro(mechanical)phones; February 2004; by Gary Stix; 2 Page(s)

Integrating microphones and speakers on a chip could be a big deal for MEMS

Staking Claims: Working the System; February 2004; by Gary Stix; 1 Page(s)

A duo of antibody makers tries to prolong ownership of a key technology

Skeptic: A Bounty of Science; February 2004; by Michael Shermer; 1 Page(s)

A new book reexamines the mutiny on the Bounty, but science offers a deeper account of its cause

Insights: Talking Bacteria; February 2004; by Marguerite Holloway; 2 Page(s)

Microbes seem to talk, listen and collaborate with one another - fodder for the truly paranoid. Bonnie L. Bassler has been eavesdropping and translating

Insights into Shock; February 2004; by Donald W. Landry and Juan A. Oliver; 6 Page(s)

Still a last step before death for thousands of people, shock is shedding some of it medical mystery and becoming more treatable

Four Keys to Cosmology; February 2004; by George Musser; 2 Page(s)

The big bang theory works better than ever. If only cosmologists could figure out that mysterious acceleration...

The Cosmic Symphony; February 2004; by Wayne Hu and Martin White; 10 Page(s)

New observations of the cosmic microwave background radiation show that the early universe resounded with harmonious oscillations

Reading the Blueprints of Creation; February 2004; by Michael A. Strauss; 8 Page(s)

The latest maps of the cosmos have surveyed hundreds of thousands of galaxies, whose clustering has grown from primordial fluctuations

From Slowdown to Speedup; February 2004; by Adam G. Riess and Michael S. Turner; 6 Page(s)

Distant supernovae are revealing the crucial time when the expansion of the universe changed from decelerating to accelerating

Out of the Darkness; February 2004; by Georgi Dvali; 8 Page(s)

Maybe cosmic acceleration isn't caused by dark energy after all but by an inexorable leakage of gravity out of our world

Better Displays with Organic Films; February 2004; by Webster E. Howard; 6 Page(s)

Light-emitting organic materials offer brighter and more efficient displays than LEDs. An you'll be able to unroll them across a tabletop

The Case of the Unsolved Crime Decline; February 2004; by Richard Rosenfeld; 8 Page(s)

Criminologists have not yet cracked the case, but they now know more about why U.S. crime rates plummeted in the 1990s - and how to help keep them down

Working Knowledge: Data Driven; February 2004; by Mark Fischetti; 2 Page(s)

Automobile black box

Technicalities: A Walk in the Woods; February 2004; by Mark Clemens; 3 Page(s)

Satellites show the way in the new sport of geocaching

Reviews: Good with Their Feet; February 2004; by Blake Edgar, Staff Editors; 2 Page(s)

Upright argues that walking on two legs was our ancestors' first step toward humanity. Also, The Editors Recommend

Puzzling Adventures: All or Nothing; February 2004; by Dennis E. Shasha; 1 Page(s)

Numerical messages

Anti Gravity: It Is High, It Is Far; February 2004; by Steve Mirsky; 1 Page(s)

But it's not gone, because there are some laws you just can't break

Ask the Experts; February 2004; by Staff Editor; 1 Page(s)

How does exercise make your muscles stronger? What causes a mirage?

Fuzzy Logic; February 2004; by Roz Chast; 1 Page(s)

Clues pointing to the universe's origins found!