Issues

Helen Quinn is a theoretical particle physicist at SLAC. Throughout her career, she has been passionately involved in science education and public understanding of science.

The precision control demonstrated in two recent experiments makes those systems serious contenders in the long race for a quantum computer.

Accurate measurements over a wide range of conditions may unravel some of the mysteries of the apparently flowing solid.

Bacteria use two basic modes for controlling the expression of a gene. Which mode prevails depends on how conditions vary and on the statistical mechanics of genetic mutation.

Sweet solution or pie in the sky? Hybrids get new attention.

The president’s first budget, and a supplement from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, would put federal support for basic physical sciences research back on schedule for a 10-year doubling by 2016.

An American Institute of Physics study completed in 2008 documents the ways in which the corporate physicist’s work has changed in the past 40 years. Here are its major findings.

On a molecular level and at the frontiers of expanding habitats, large stochastic fluctuations can obscure signals of Darwinian evolution.

Nearly a century after the equations of physical diffusion and stochastic diffusion were formulated, Albert Einstein united the observable and the abstract to establish a molecular–kinetic theory of heat.

What if one could see under a microscope how molecules fit together? Tiny Janus spheres, whose chemical makeup differs between two sides, represent an exciting step in that direction.