Perennially popular feature articles from past issues:
Douglas Erwin, James Valentine, David Jablonski
Molecular biology provides insights into the Early Cambrian explosion
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Lewis Branscomb
A scientist in 2006 looks back on the two decades of extraordinary progress, change and controversy that followed Sigma Xi's Centennial
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Ulric Neisser
Test scores are certainly going up all over the world, but whether intelligence itself has risen remains controversial
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Robert Dorit
This review originally appeared in the September-October 1997 issue of American Scientist.
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Richard Ostfeld
Complex interactions between seemingly unconnected phenomena determine risk of exposure to this expanding disease
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Boris Yakobson, Richard Smalley
Some unusual new molecules—long, hollow fibers with tantalizing electronic and mechanical properties—have joined diamonds and graphite in the carbon family
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Robert Provine
The study of laughter provides a novel approach to the mechanisms and evolution of vocal production, perception and social behavior
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Christian de Duve
The cradle of life may have been an acrid, boiling brew, reeking of volcanic hydrogen sulfide-laden fumes
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Earl Hunt
Are social changes dividing us into intellectual haves and have-nots? The question pushed aside in the 1970s is back, and the issues are far from simple
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Craig Stanford
Chimpanzees are efficient predators that use meat as a political and reproductive tool. Are there implications for the evolution of human behavior?
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Judith Swazey, Melissa Anderson, Karen Louis
A survey of doctoral candidates and faculty raises important questions about the ethical environment of graduate education and research
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George Gopen, Judith Swan
If the reader is to grasp what the writer means, the writer must understand what the reader needs
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