March 2001
Scientific American Magazine

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

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

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

The Future of Human Evolution

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

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

Martian Canals, 1901; The Crystal Palace, 1851

Out in the Cold; March 2001; by W. Wayt Gibbs; 2 Page(s)

Ambitious plans to penetrate icebound Lake Vostok have slowed to a crawl

Scotchgard Scotched; March 2001; by Rebecca Renner; 1 Page(s)

Following the fabric protector's slippery trail to a new class of pollutant

Volcanic Accomplice; March 2001; by Naomi Lubick; 1 Page(s)

Deadly impacts may have exacerbated massive eruptions

Pour Me Another; March 2001; by Gary Stix; 1 Page(s)

A novel way of embedding chips in polymers may let you have your computer and sit on it, too

Skin So Fixed; March 2001; by Julia Karow; 1 Page(s)

A topical lotion with DNA-repair enzymes cuts down skin carcinomas

Trapped over a Chip; March 2001; by Graham P. Collins; 1 Page(s)

Microchips that control hovering atoms may lead to new quantum computers

News Briefs; March 2001; by Alison McCook, Steven Ashley, George Musser; 2 Page(s)

Music of the 'Spheres; Scratching an Old Theory; Copernican Counterrevolution; Sloppy Feeding; Fulfilling Your Darwinian Destiny

By the Numbers: Sprawling into the Third Millennium; March 2001; by Rodger Doyle; 1 Page(s)

At the dawn of the 20th century, suburbia was a dream inspired by revulsion to the poverty and crowding of the cities.

Profile: Fighting the Darkness in El Dorado; March 2001; by Kate Wong; 3 Page(s)

Anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon defends himself against Yanomam¿ charges

Plenty to Sniff At; March 2001; by Mia Schmiedeskamp; 2 Page(s)

Smaller and more sensitive electronic noses open up new applications

A Nose for Taste; March 2001; by Mia Schmiedeskamp; 1 Page(s)

Next up: an electronic tongue

Cyber View: To Protect and Self-Serve; March 2001; by Wendy M. Grossman; 1 Page(s)

Will we see hard disks with copy-preventing codes?

Making Sense of Taste; March 2001; by David V. Smith and Robert F. Margolskee; 8 Page(s)

How do cells on the tongue register the sensations of sweet, salty, sour and bitter? Scientists are finding out - and discovering how the brain interprets these signals as various tastes

Sculpting the Earth from Inside Out; March 2001; by Michael Gurnis; 8 Page(s)

Powerful motions deep inside the planet do not merely shove fragments of the rocky shell horizontally around the globe - they also lift and lower entire continents

If Humans Were Built to Last; March 2001; by S. Jay Olshansky, Bruce A. Carnes and Robert N. Butler; 6 Page(s)

We would look a lot different - inside and out - if evolution had designed the human body to function smoothly not only in youth but for a century or more

A Sharper View of the Stars; March 2001; by Arsen R. Hajian and J. Thomas Armstrong; 8 Page(s)

A new generation of optical interferometers is letting astronomers study stars in 100 times finer detail than is possible with the Hubble Space Telescope

Evolution: A Lizard's Tale; March 2001; by Jonathan B. Losos; 6 Page(s)

On some islands in the Caribbean, evolution seems to have taken the same turn - over and over and over again

The Geography of Poverty and Wealth; March 2001; by Jeffrey D. Sachs, Andrew D. Mellinger and John L. Gallup; 6 Page(s)

Tropical climate and lack of access to sea trade have hurt the poorest nations. But new aid programs point the way to prosperity

Working Knowledge: Gotcha!; March 2001; by Mark Fischetti; 2 Page(s)

How radar guns catch speeders

The Amateur Scientist: Geotropism, One Last Time; March 2001; by Shawn Carlson; 2 Page(s)

How plants grow in reduced gravity

Mathematical Recreations: Easter Is a Quasicrystal; March 2001; by Ian Stewart; 3 Page(s)

The divine mathematics of a holiday

Books: Who Owns Your Body?; March 2001; by Rick Weiss, Staff Editors; 4 Page(s)

Body Bazaar explores today's burgeoning market for human tissue. Also, The Editors Recommend

Wonders: The Needy Porcupine; March 2001; by Philip Morrison and Phylis Morrison; 2 Page(s)

The salty chemistry and nutrition of sodium and potassium

Connections: French Leave; March 2001; by James Burke; 2 Page(s)

Matters bucolic, adulterous, explosive, decorative, passionate and (fittingly) fugitive

Anti Gravity: Sound Proof; March 2001; by Steve Mirsky; 1 Page(s)

Old speech habits are on the lam for a resident of Buckingham