FROM THE EDITOR

Going Viral

Lessons in the reach of social media

David Schoonmaker

MACROSCOPE

Do We Really Need the S-word?

The use of “significance” in reporting statistical results is fraught with problems—but they could be solved with a simple change in practice

Megan D. Higgs

COMPUTING SCIENCE

Imitation of Life

Can a computer program reproduce everything that happens inside a living cell?

Brian Hayes

MARGINALIA

Comments and Corrigenda in Scientific Literature

How self-correcting is the written record of scientific and engineering endeavors?

Joseph Grcar

BOOK REVIEWS

From Plants to Planets: Our Favorite Coffee-Table Books of 2012

Each winter we peruse the year’s large-format science books and present brief reviews of the ones we like best. This year's crop offers plenty of good books to cozy up with

ENGINEERING

Engineering in the Abstract*

How Manierre Dawson made the transition from drafting table to easel

Henry Petroski

POETRY

Flying Cars

Dolores Hayden

ESSAY

Spiral Jetty

Changeable, perhaps even erasable, by time, how permanent should Earth art be?

Robert Louis Chianese

SIGHTINGS

3D Carnivorous Plants

Optical projection tomography aids studies of predatory plants

Catherine Clabby

SCIENCE OBSERVER

A Different Kind of CSI: Crime and Stable Isotopes

Can two samples be chemically identical, yet not the same? Juries need to know

Sandra J. Ackerman

Serious Nonsense

Edward Lear’s natural-history illustration won him scientific credibility. Now his nonsense verse may do the same

Anna Lena Phillips

In the News

LETTERS TO THE EDITORS

Tetrahedral Tetris

Cartoonish Science

Around the Bend

SIGMA XI TODAY (PDF)