Magazine
March-April 2004
March-April 2004
Volume: 92 Number: 2
A pickerel frog (Rana palustris) lounges among the duckweed in a Pennsylvania wetland. This species is widely found in eastern North America from Canada to South Carolina, but many of the pickerel frog's cousins are less relaxed about their prospects. In recent decades, amphibian populations around the world have experienced dramatic declines, with some species showing high rates of deformities and others simply disappearing. In "Amphibian Decline and Emerging Disease," Joseph M. Kiesecker and his colleagues conclude that human-induced climate change can explain much of this mortality. Furthermore, they state that the same forces that threaten amphibians may be fueling the rise in human infectious diseases such as SARS, Lyme disease and West Nile virus. (Photograph by Joseph M. Kiesecker.)
In This Issue
- Astronomy
- Biology
- Chemistry
- Communications
- Computer
- Engineering
- Environment
- Evolution
- Mathematics
- Medicine
- Physics
- Policy
- Psychology
- Sociology
- Technology
The Artificial Nile
Scott Nixon
Environment Policy
The Aswan High Dam blocked and diverted nutrients and destroyed a Mediterranean fishery, but human activities may have revived it
The Origin of Matter
James Cline
Physics
The question of how matter triumphed over antimatter in the formation of the universe still awaits a satisfactory answer
The Adaptive Value of Religious Ritual
Richard Sosis
Anthropology Psychology Sociology
Rituals promote group cohesion by requiring members to engage in behavior that is too costly to fake
Internal Tides and the Continental Slope
David Cacchione, Lincoln Pratson
Physics
Curious waves coursing beneath the surface of the sea may shape the margins of the world's landmasses
Scientists' Nightstand
Dirty Work
Engineering Excerpt Scientists Nightstand
An Excerpt from Dreams of Iron and Steel: Seven Wonders of the Nineteenth Century, from the Building of the London Sewers to the Panama Canal, by Deborah Cadbury
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Honesty in Inference
Tommaso Toffoli
Physics Review Scientists Nightstand Statistics
Thanks to the late E. T. Jaynes, every schoolchild and scholar can approach inference unhampered by absurd probability myths