Stay put for success IF YOUR team is moving to a plush new sports stadium, beware. The switch might just cost you the championship. An analysis of professional baseball, basketball and ice hockey results in the US between 1987 and 2001 shows that changing grounds can have a dramatic effect on performance. Teams that moved lost on average 24 … News
Humans Washington diary CONSERVATIVE Republicans like to think of themselves as a family-oriented bunch, frequently emphasising the importance of hearth and home – and God – to the strength of American society. Lately the Bush administration has tried to extend the definition of family to include human embryos, from the moment they are created. It doesn't matter whether … Opinion
Earth Land of the midnight sums What would a depressed Swedish chemist, alone in the Nordic winter as his marriage to his beautiful research assistant collapsed, do on a Christmas Eve? Go out on the town and find himself a new partner? Give way to maudlin sentiment? Well, in Svante Arrhenius's case, no. On 24 December 1894, he rolled up his … Features
Follow your nodes Six Degrees by Duncan Watts, W. W. Norton, $29.95, ISBN 0393041425 HAD an email from Duncan Watts recently? It may seem a silly question unless you know him personally, but there's a good reason you might have. A chain of acquaintances may have linked you into a repeat of a 36-year-old experiment with a modern … Books & Arts
Feedback ON A recent trip to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, Feedback was surprised to see a Niskin bottle mounted as a trophy on the wall of the institution's lobby. A Niskin bottle is a device for collecting samples of ocean water at great depth. It consists of a metre-long section of hollow tubing … Regulars