Magazine
March-April 1998
March-April 1998
Volume: 86 Number: 2
Cancer cells, such as the melanoma cells stained orange by immunofluorescence in this light micrograph, divide without the usual restraints. Tumors invade normal cells—in this case the skin's epithelial cells, whose nuclei are stained blue. Eventually, some tumor cells acquire the ability to metastasize, or spread to new organs. In "Metastasis," Cornelis J. F. Van Noorden, Linda C. Meade-Tollin and Fred T. Bosman explain that before they can spread, cancer cells must acquire new features that, among other things, allow otherwise sedentary cells to become mobile. Understanding the changes that drive a normal cell to become cancerous and a cancerous cell to become metastatic may lead to improved anti-cancer therapies in future. (Photograph by Nancy Kerdesh/Immunogen/Science Photo Library/Photo Researchers, Inc.)
In This Issue
- Astronomy
- Biology
- Chemistry
- Communications
- Computer
- Engineering
- Environment
- Ethics
- Evolution
- Mathematics
- Medicine
- Physics
- Policy
- Psychology
- Sociology
- Technology
Transporting Water in Plants
Martin Canny
Biology
Evaporation from the leaves pulls water to the top of a tree, but living cells make that possible by protecting the stretched water and repairing it when it breaks
Mathematics and Tensegrity
Robert Connelly, Allen Back
Mathematics
Group and representation theory make it possible to form a complete catalogue of "strut-cable" constructions with prescribed symmetries
Is Beauty a Sign of Truth in Scientific Theories?
James McAllister
Anthropology
Why are some new theories embraced as beautiful, others spurned as ugly? Progress in science may require that aesthetic ideals themselves change
Metastasis
Linda Meade-Tollin, Fred Bosman
Biology Medicine
The spread of cancer cells to distant sites implies a complex series of cellular abnormalities caused, in part, by genetic aberrations
