Issues
Search and Discovery
Warm Bedrock Forms Water beneath Rapidly Moving Ice Stream in Central Greenland
New measurements hint at the presence of a volcano underneath the Greenland ice sheet.
From Superfluid to Insulator: Bose–Einstein Condensate Undergoes a Quantum Phase Transition
The atoms in a BEC assemble gregariously into a coherent whole, but in a periodic potential that’s sufficiently strong, they can separate into an array of isolated atoms.
Ultracold Neutrons Exhibit Quantum States in the Earth’s Gravitational Field
Quantization imposes a lower limit on the energy of a neutron trapped in a gravitational potential well.
An Energy Recovery Linac Is Seen as a Bright Idea
Will some future light sources be based on linear accelerators rather than synchrotron storage rings?
Letters
Issues and Events
MIT Media Lab Spawns International Offshoots
Famed for its fun, quirky, high-tech research and for zipping together industry and academia, the MIT Media Lab is expanding at home and abroad.
Math and Science Suffer in Education Bill
The hundreds of millions of federal dollars that in past years supported training of elementary school math and science teachers have been redirected into new math and science partnerships, and the result may be less money for the teachers.
Articles
The Puzzle of Global Sea-Level Rise
Measuring the rate of sea level rise over the past century requires modeling the behavior of Earth’s crust over the past 20 000 years.
Surface Acoustic Waves in Materials Science
Laser-generated surface waves provide new tools for studying material properties, from linear elastic behavior to fracture.
A Personal Reflection on University Research Funding
A veteran researcher in materials science and engineering argues that research funding needs reform at both the university and funding-agency levels.