Issues

Water managers may no longer be safe in assuming that resources will remain within their historical range of uncertainty.

Whenever a linearly polarized beam of light refracts, it splits into two parallel, almost overlapping beams of opposite circular polarization.

Experiments and simulations reveal that the velocity amplification in a turkey’s calf muscle depends on the force that the muscle opposes.

In the quest to learn what dark matter is made of, bubble chambers can render the enormous background of keV electrons invisible.

Nonlinear amplification of sound in the inner ear generates distortion that leaks out through the eardrum. But how those waves travel backward along the cochlear spiral remains unsettled.

Some 300 young researchers are receiving roughly €1 million apiece in a new strategy to strengthen Europe’s research base through broader competition.

For the third year, President Bush’s American Competitiveness Initiative proposes big increases for NSF, the Department of Energy, and NIST. Funding for most other agencies would rise modestly.

In the microwave background and the distribution of galaxies, relic imprints of primordial sound waves have contributed to an extraordinarily detailed history of the cosmos. And they provide yardsticks for resolving a great mystery.

Thomas Bradwardine’s 14th-century dynamical law may not be well known today, but it greatly influenced European scholars through the late Middle Ages and into the Renaissance.

Although exact descriptions of the quantum mechanics of molecules are computationally intractable, chemists and physicists have devised approximations that are efficient enough to be practical and accurate enough to be useful.

Dental fillings made from light-activated, polymer-based composites obviate some of the safety concerns associated with the metal amalgams they are replacing. They look better too.