Scientific American Magazine

The Seebeck and Peltier effects dispense with moving parts in the transformation of energy from heat to electricity. Long regarded as curiosities, they are now generating a technological revolution

A virus can transfer genetic material, and thereby hereditary traits, from one bacterium to another. The phenomenon sheds light on the behavior of viruses and the mechanism of heredity

Fifteen years ago Walter Baade observed that stars are divided into two populations. His concept opened up a broad field of study, and now astronomers classify stars into five populations instead of two

How does muscle turn chemical energy into mechanical work? Though the question still cannot be answered, recent studies have revealed significant details in the intimate structure of the muscle machine

If sperm cells from a rabbit are placed in an electric field, they separate into two groups. One group, when it is used to inseminate female rabbits, tends to produce male offspring; the other, female

As man's consumption of oil increases and old sources are depleted, he must sink more and deeper wells to find it. This necessity has stimulated the development of ingenious new techniques of drilling

These hardy seafarers have lived in the Aleutian Islands for 3,000 years, but their numbers are rapidly dwindling. They are now known to be a southern branch of the Eskimo

Water accounts for 60 per cent of the weight of an adult man. The proportion decreases slowly with age, but it is maintained within narrow limits from one day to the next