COMPUTING SCIENCE

In Search of the Optimal Scumsucking Bottomfeeder

Brian Hayes

Brian Hayes ponders ichnospecies and the undiscovered rules that may have guided their labyrinthine burrowing in the ancient seafloor

MACROSCOPE

Science as Democratizer

Robert Lawrence Kuhn

Robert Lawrence Kuhn considers the links between scientific literacy and vigorous democracy—and the resulting implications for public policy

SIGHTINGS

Richard Feynman's Diagrams

Felice Frankel

The Caltech physicist's famously elegant figures in quantum electrodynamics replaced dense lines of algebra with intuitively accessible "pictures" of an invisible world

MARGINALIA

The Harrison-Maskelyne Affair

J. Donald Fernie

J. Donald Fernie recounts an important controversy of the eighteenth century: Is longitude best reckoned by the moon or by the clock?

ENGINEERING

Fuel Cells *

Henry Petroski

Henry Petroski on the promise and pitfalls of a cleaner automotive energy source

SCIENCE OBSERVER

Greenland or Whiteland?

David Schneider

Global warming may cause the world's largest island to grow

From the President