I f the periodic table is an atlas for chemistry, then the actinides should surely be labeled “Here be dragons”. All are radioactive, only thorium and uranium are found in appreciable quantities, and most of the rest are produced by the sort of modern-day alchemy that relies on nuclear reactors or particle accelerators. Stosh Kozimor, a staff scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, is one ...

Ninety-three years ago, in Lochner v. New York, the Supreme Court struck down a maximum-working-hours law for bakers as an impermissible invasion of employer-employee liberty of contract and, by implication, of the employer's property rights in his business. Lochner came to symbolize, and was vilified for, a vision of state power as rigidly circumscribed by the operation of judicially-determine...

the suppression of color is a common mood in the far eastern aesthetic experience, which is best represented by the brush-ink chinese painting. influenced by the taoist and confucian philosophical doctrines, it reflects the traditional principles of loneliness, poverty, and simplicity. visualizing the chinese traditional dualism, the black and white system goes beyond an artistic style and rese...