Scientific American Magazine

A Brazilian city challenges conventional wisdom and relies on low technology to improve the quality of urban life

The chances of a celestial body colliding with the earth are small, but the consequences would be catastrophic

In parts of sub-Saharan Africa, nearly 25 percent of the population is HIV-positive as a result of heterosexual transmission of the virus. Could lack of circumcision make men in this region particularly susceptible?

A transatlantic collaboration has uncovered the machinery responsible for forming the tiny but essential containers, or vesicles, that store proteins and shuttle them to and fro in cells

In the 1950s and 1960s, photointerpreters devised ways of extracting valuable information from recondite images. Oftentimes, their work profoundly affected international relations

Trapped in a two-dimensional plane, electrons can exhibit the quantum Hall effect, a startling phenomenon now thought to be intimately connected to superconductivity

Despite their ubiquity and prominent position between land and sea, these tropical ecosystems still hold countless surprises for researchers

The Human Genome Project is producing a plethora of information that will illuminate our hidden susceptibilities to disease. The effort could transform medical science. But new dangers are arriving, too