Telling Stories
Every issue explores cutting-edge developments in technology, medicine, education, climate change, and much more. Articles provide in-depth analyses of science and technology’s impact on public policy, the economy, and society—bringing today’s best minds to bear on tomorrow’s most critical topics.
Editor's Journal
Editor’s Journal: Telling Stories
KEVIN FINNERAN “The universe is composed of stories, not of atoms” Muriel Rukeyser wrote in her poem “The Speed of Darkness.” Good stories are not merely the collection of individual events; they… Read More
From the Hill
From the Hill – Summer 2014
Details of administration’s proposed FY2015 budget Officially released March 4, President Obama’s FY2015 budget makes clear the challenges for R&D support currently posed by the Budget Control Act spending caps. With hardly… Read More
Features
What Fish Oil Pills Are Hiding
DAVID SCHLEIFER ALISON FAIRBROTHER One Woman’s Quest to Save the Chesapeake Bay from the Dietary Supplement Industry Julie Vanderslice thought fish were disgusting. She didn’t like to look at them. She didn’t… Read MoreLittle Cell, Big Science: The Rise (and Fall?) of Yeast Research
NIKI VERMEULEN MOLLY BAIN Trying to add another chapter to the long history of yeast studies, scientists at the cutting edge of knowledge confront the painful realities of science funding. Manchester, the… Read MoreCollective Forgetting: Inside the Smithsonian’s Curatorial Crisis
As the hands on my watch hit 11 o’clock, I was still fighting with the stubborn dust clinging to my chocolate-colored pants. The dust was winning. I knew it was unlikely the… Read MoreNatural Histories
400 Years of Scientific Illustration from the Museum’s Library In a time of the internet, social media networks, and smart phones, when miraculous devices demand our attention with beeps, buzzes, and spiffy… Read MoreFinal Frontier vs. Fruitful Frontier: The Case for Increasing Ocean Exploration
Read MorePossible solutions to the world’s energy, food, environmental, and other problems are far more likely to be found in nearby oceans than in distant space.
Breaking the Climate Deadlock
Developing a broad and effective portfolio of technology options could provide the common ground on which conservatives and liberals agree. The public debate over climate policy has become increasingly polarized, with both… Read MoreHow Hurricane Sandy Tamed the Bureaucracy
Remember Hurricane Irene? It pushed across New England in August 2011, leaving a trail of at least 45 deaths and $7 million in damages. But just over a year later, even before… Read More
Book Reviews
Book Review: Climate Perceptions
Reason in a Dark Time: Why the Struggle against Climate Change Failed—and What It Means for Our Future by Dale Jamieson. Oxford University Press, New York, 260 pp. Did climate change cause… Read MoreWhat’s My (Cell) Line?
What a strange and useful book this is! It looks like much ado about not much—just three experiments conducted at zoos on cross-species cloning (in banteng, gaur, and African wild-cat). Yet the… Read More
Archives – Summer 2014
Twister To create his self-portrait, Twister, Dan Collins, a professor of intermedia in the Herberger Institute School of Art at Arizona State University (ASU), spun on a turntable while being digitally… Read More