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November 07, 2007

INSIGHTS - 2007


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The Forgotten Code Cracker

November 2007 issue

In the 1960s Marshall W. Nirenberg deciphered the genetic code, the combination of the A, T, G and C nucleotides that specify amino acids. So why do people think that Francis Crick did it?

The Trouble with Men

October 2007 issue

Deadbeat granddads, life-shortening sons and genetically bullying brothers—these are just a few effects revealed in biologist Virpi Lummaa's studies of how evolutionary forces shape later generations

What Visions in the Dark of Light

September 2007 issue

Lene Vestergaard Hau made headlines by slowing light to below highway speed. Now the ringmaster of light can stop it, extinguish it and revive it—and thereby give quantum information a new look

The Gedanken Experimenter

August 2007 issue

In putting teleportation, entanglement and other quantum oddities to the test, physicist Anton Zeilinger hopes to find out just how unreal quantum reality can get

A Little Privacy, Please

July 2007 issue

Computer scientist Latanya Sweeney helps to save confidentiality with "anonymizing" programs, "deidentifiers" and other clever algorithms. Whether they are enough, however, is another question

Going beyond X and Y

June 2007 issue

New genetic studies, Eric Vilain says, should force a rethinking about mixed-sex babies and gender identity

Prime Directive for the Last Americans

May 2007 issue

Saving Amazonia's indigenous peoples means not meeting them, insists Sydney Possuelo--a policy of noninterference he hopes to extend, even if others hate it

The Science of Lasting Happiness

April 2007 issue

Sonja Lyubomirsky, a researcher who looks for the triggers of happiness beyond our genes, thinks that lasting happiness is indeed possible

Graph Theory and Teatime

March 2007 issue

Christian Borgs and Jennifer Chayes head a theory group that pursues some of the most formidable challenges in pure math and theoretical computer science

Graft and Host, Together Forever

February 2007 issue

Transplant pioneer Thomas E. Starzl suspects that a smattering of foreign cells can replace a lifetime of antirejection drugs