Column

  1. Math

    Outstanding, superlinear cities

    By a new mathematical method, New York City proves average and San Francisco exceptional.

    By Julie Rehmeyer

  2. A year on the job, she takes pride in disaster response

    When she took over in November 2009 as the first female director of the U.S. Geological Survey, geophysicist Marcia McNutt already had her work cut out for her in streamlining and modernizing a historic scientific agency. That was before a string of natural disasters—earthquakes in Haiti and Chile, a volcanic eruption in Iceland and the […]

    By Marcia McNutt

  3. An engineer teaches her colleagues to share their toys

    In her synthetic biology lab at Stanford, Christina Smolke designs circuits and switches using biological components, work that may lead to yeast that crank out medicines or ways to reprogram the immune system.