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January-February 2006 Volume 94, Number 1

On the cover:

A .22-caliber bullet easily penetrates a telephone directory perched o...

FEATURE ARTICLES

A Bright Future for Subwavelength Light Sources *

Generating tiny points of light for such things as storing data on optical disks is aided by a new theory involving evanescent waves

Ancient Lakes of the Sahara *

Kevin White, David Mattingly

The Sahara was once a savannah teeming with life. The story of how the climate changed, and how humans coped, is still being unraveled

First Life *

Michael Russell

Billions of years ago, deep under the ocean, the pores and pockets in minerals that surrounded warm, alkaline springs catalyzed the beginning of life

High-speed Imaging of Shock Waves, Explosions and Gunshots

Gary Settles

New digital video technology, combined with some classic imaging techniques, reveals shock waves as never before

Fallout from Nuclear Weapons Tests and Cancer Risks

Steven Simon, André Bouville, Charles Land

Exposures 50 years ago still have health implications today that will continue into the future

* access restricted to members and subscribers

SCIENTISTS’ BOOKSHELF

A Tale of Two Chemists

Seymour Mauskopf

A review of A World on Fire: A Heretic, an Aristocrat, and the Race to Discover Oxygen, Joe Jackson and

See all book reviews for this issue.

DEPARTMENTS

COMPUTING SCIENCE

Unwed Numbers

Brian Hayes

The mathematics of Sudoku, a puzzle that boasts "No math required!"

MACROSCOPE

Where's the Real Bottleneck in Scientific Computing?

Gregory V. Wilson

Scientists would do well to pick up some tools widely used in the software industry

SIGHTINGS

Needlework

Felice Frankel

Stitching together micrographs results in impressive images of carbon nanotubes

MARGINALIA

Old Gas, New Gas

Roald Hoffmann

Methane—made and taken apart by microbes, in the Earth, by people

ENGINEERING

Levees and Other Raised Ground *

Henry Petroski

Engineering offers options for rebuilding New Orleans, but engineers won't choose which one

SCIENCE OBSERVER

Burn, Magnet, Burn

Fenella Saunders

The sudden flip of a crystal's magnetic field mimics a flame front

Protein World Atlas

Christopher R. Brodie

Pretty pictures mark proteins' province

In the News

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

IN THIS SECTION

American Scientist Classics

Authors

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