FROM THE EDITOR

Forward Into the Past

American Scientist is now available at JSTOR

David Schoonmaker

MACROSCOPE

From Research to Reality

To understand her son’s birth defect, a mother makes an emotional and scientific journey

Katherine Willmore

COMPUTING SCIENCE

Leave the Driving to It

How would lives and landscapes change if every car had a computer in the driver’s seat?

Brian Hayes

ENGINEERING

Silver Bridge*

Disaster helps usher in the modern era of bridge inspection and maintenance

Henry Petroski

MARGINALIA

That's Interesting

Curiosity drives discovery. But what, exactly, makes us curious?

Roald Hoffmann

ETHICS

Digitizing the Coin of the Realm

Electronic publication has transformed the culture of scientific communication

Francis L. Macrina

SIGHTINGS

Where Art and Science Meet

Painter Peter Trusler and paleontologists Patricia Vickers-Rich and Thomas H. Rich collaborate to bring long-extinct species to life on the page

Catherine Clabby

SCIENCE OBSERVER

A Fish of an Idea

Analyzing swimming schools of fish inspired a California biophysicist to try to improve the performance of wind turbines

Catherine Clabby

In the News

LETTERS TO THE EDITORS

Varied and Inhospitable

Porphyria Perspective

Demolition Time Line

N-gram Insight

Intelligent Tinkering

SIGMA XI TODAY (PDF)