November 2008
Scientific American Magazine

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

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

From the Editor - Hope and HIV; November 2008; by John Rennie; 1 Page(s)

The battle must continue, even if 25 years of research have disappointed

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

No-Till Farming -- Spacetime Triangles -- Dancing Animals

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

Ideology Trumps Science -- The Too Big Diamond -- Light Cure

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

Diabetes -- Methane from Grass -- Virus-Built Battery -- The Skinny on Brown Fat

After the Anthrax; November 2008; by John Dudley Miller; 2 Page(s)

Has increased biodefense spending really made us safer?

Confidence Booster; November 2008; by Jessica Wapner; 4 Page(s)

Researchers hone seismic skills to peer inside glaciers

Going beyond Fair and Balanced; November 2008; by Vivian B. Martin; 4 Page(s)

Researchers aim to put more rigor into studies of media bias

Random Challenges; November 2008; by Barbara Juncosa; 2 Page(s)

Chance disaster as a bigger extinction threat than once thought

Less Wash, More Dry; November 2008; by Marina Krakovsky; 2 Page(s)

For hotel towel reuse, social pressure beats green values

Plastic Coolers; November 2008; by Steven Ashley; 2 Page(s)

Getting a bigger chill out of polymers that respond to electric fields

Getting a (New) Leg Up; November 2008; by Christine Soares; 1 Page(s)

Genome-sequencing contest renews regeneration research

News Scan Briefs; November 2008; by Charles Q. Choi, JR Minkel, David Biello; 2 Page(s)

Blow Away; Star Making around Holes; Space Suits Them; Survival of the Luckiest; Hockey Head Trick

SciAm Perspectives: Overshadowing Difficulties; November 2008; by The Editors; 1 Page(s)

Geoengineering is a seductive idea. Maybe too seductive

Sustainable Developments: Looking after the Future; November 2008; by Jeffrey D. Sachs; 1 Page(s)

Don¿t pit today against tomorrow: instead focus on the public capital we will leave to the future

Skeptic: Stage Fright; November 2008; by Michael Shermer; 1 Page(s)

From the stages of grief to the stages of moral development, stage theories have little evidentiary support

Anti Gravity: Hungry for Change; November 2008; by Steve Mirsky; 1 Page(s)

Why reading this magazine might cause you to clean out the fridge--and other mysteries explained

A Sunshade for Planet Earth; November 2008; by Robert Kunzig; 10 Page(s)

Global warming has become such an overriding emergency that some climate experts are willing to consider schemes for partly shielding the planet from the sun¿s rays. But no such scheme is a magic bullet

Jacking into the Brain; November 2008; by Gary Stix; 6 Page(s)

How far can science advance brain-machine interface technology? Will we one day pipe the latest blog entry or NASCAR highlights directly into the human brain as if the organ were an outsize flash drive?

The Long Arm of the Second Law; November 2008; by J. Miguel Rubí; 6 Page(s)

In seeming defiance of the second law of thermodynamics, nature is filled with examples of order emerging from chaos. A new theoretical framework resolves the apparent paradox

The Vaccine Search Goes On; November 2008; by David I. Watkins; 8 Page(s)

The unfinished quest for an AIDS vaccine has become a search for new approaches to the problem

Can HIV Be Cured?; November 2008; by Mario Stevenson; 6 Page(s)

Eliminating HIV from the body would require flushing the virus out of its hiding places and preventing those reservoirs from being refilled. A tall order but perhaps not impossible

DNA Computers for Work and Play; November 2008; by Joanne Macdonald, Darko Stefanovic and Milan N. Stojanovic; 8 Page(s)

Logic gates made of DNA could one day operate in your bloodstream, collectively making medical decisions and taking action. For now, they play a mean game of in vitro tic-tac-toe

The Incredible Shrinking Scanner; November 2008; by Bernhard Blümich; 6 Page(s)

A portable version of a room-size nuclear magnetic resonance machine can probe the chemistry and structure of objects ranging from mummies to tires

Insights: The Christian Man's Evolution; November 2008; by Sally Lehrman; 3 Page(s)

A geneticist ordained as a Dominican priest, Francisco J. Ayala sees no conflict between Darwinism and faith. Convincing most of the American public of that remains the challenge

Working Knowledge: Dinner and a Show; November 2008; by Mark Fischetti; 2 Page(s)

Microwave Ovens

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

Quantum Drama -- Insect Societies -- The Unification of Forces

Ask The Experts; November 2008; by Max and Lucy Houck, Mark A. W. Andrews; 1 Page(s)

What is touch DNA? Why do our eyelids get so heavy when we are tired?