Новости науки и техники в "Scientific American" 1 января 2002 г.

BOOKSTORE: THE INVENTION OF CLOUDS: HOW AN AMATEUR METEOROLOGIST FORGED THE LANGUAGE OF THE SKIES by Richard Hamblyn.

The amateur meteorologist was Luke Howard, a London chemist who gave the three basic cloud families names that survive today: cirrus, cumulus and stratus. Howard had, Hamblyn writes, "the penetrating ... insight that clouds have many individual shapes but few basic forms". The author, who supervises undergraduates in English and the history of science at the University of Cambridge, weaves several strands - Howard's work, the lively London science scene 200 years ago and the development of meteorology - into a grand story.

TOP SCIENCE STORIES OF 2001

Many events of the past year are now easily forgotten, hidden in shadows cast by the former World Trade towers, the Pentagon wreckage, the anthrax deaths and an ongoing war. But 2001 did witness a number of important happenings in science and technology before and after the terrorist attacks - including the 100th anniversary of the Nobel Prizes. See the 50-odd stories that most captured our attention and imagination.  

WHAT CLONES?

On November 25, 2001, Massachusetts biotechnology company Advanced Cell Technology reported in e-biomed: The Journal of Regenerative Medicine that it had cloned the first human embryos. In a concurrent article in the January Scientific American, the researchers explained that their results could "represent the dawn of a new in medicine by demonstrating that the goal of therapeutic cloning is within reach." Many leading scientists, however, say the work should never have been published, because the research failed on several accounts to achieve its goals.

MANY FROM ONE

NASA's Deep Space 1 spacecraft made headlines when it passed within 2,200 kilometers of Comet Borrelly at some 59,400 kilometers per hour, making the first image ever of a comet nucleus and, as one researcher put it, "doubling" our knowledge of the wandering bodies. But the plucky spacecraft - which completed the goals of its primary mission back in September 1999 and finally ceased operations December 18, 2001 - will be remembered not so much for the science it did during that comet flyby, but for the broader impacts resulting from the technologies it tested.

ASK THE EXPERTS: WHAT IS A BLUE MOON?

George Spagna, chair of the Physics Department at Randolph-Macon College, explains.