May/Jun 2000 Table of Contents

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COLUMNS
Field Notes • Breeding Discontent
Zoos are becoming latter-day Noah's arks for endangered species. But reestablishing those animals in the wild may prove impossible
CYNTHIA MILLS

Physika • Breaking Up Is Hard to Do
Trapping a neutron, then watching it vanish
HANS CHRISTIAN VON BAEYER

ESSAYS & COMMENT
Welcome to Planet Earth
Roswell, New Mexico, July 1947: No aliens visit earth, but the U.S. government covers up anyway. Is that any way to gain the public trust?
ROBERT L. PARK

FEATURES
X-ray Visionaries
Astronomers are training the sharp eyes of their new orbiting X-ray telescope on the strangest and most violent objects in the universe
CLAUDE R. CANIZARES

Full Accounting
Industrial ecology has a simple ambition: Treat consumer society as an ecosystem. Then benefits will accrue to both the environment and the bottom line
REID J. LIFSET

REVIEWS
Cover Story • The Cultured Ape?
Peel away the trappings of culture, and what do you get? Some say, biology. Others beg to differ
CRAIG B. STANFORD

Books in Brief • H2O 4 NYC
PLUS: Vanished birds; transits of Venus Rome
LAURENCE A. MARSCHALL

DEPARTMENTS
Initial Conditions • Editor's Notebook
The Unity of Science?
PETER G. BROWN

Peer Review • Letters from Readers

Working Hypotheses • Risk
RODNEY W. NICHOLS

Quanta
Quantum quartet; how birds fly south; evolution in the large

May/Jun 2000

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