From the Editor

Leslie C. AielloPresident, Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research

Roger BinghamCo-Founder and Director, The Science Network

G. Steven BurrillCEO, Burrill & Company

Arthur CaplanEmanuel and Robert Hart Professor of Bioethics, University of Pennsylvania

George M. ChurchDirector, Center for Computational Genetics, Harvard Medical School

Rita Colwell Distinguished Professor, University of Maryland College Park and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Drew EndyProfessor of Bioengineering, Stanford University

Ed Felten Director, Center for Information Technology Policy, Princeton University

Kaigham J. GabrielDeputy Director , Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency

Michael S. GazzanigaDirector, Sage Center for the Study of Mind, University of California, Santa Barbara

David Gross Frederick W. Gluck Professor of Theoretical Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara (Nobel Prize in Physics, 2004)

Lene Vestergaard Hau Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics and of Applied Physics, Harvard University

Danny Hillis Co-chairman, Applied Minds

Daniel M. KammenDirector, Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley

Vinod KhoslaFounder, Khosla Ventures

Christof KochLois and Victor Troendle Professor of Cognitive and Behavioral Biology, California Institute of Technology

Lawrence M. KraussDirector, Origins Initiative, Arizona State University

Morten L. KringelbachDirector, Hedonia: TrygFonden Research Group, University of Oxford and University of Aarhus

Steven KyleProfessor of Applied Economics and Management, Cornell University

Robert S. LangerDavid H. Koch Institute Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Lawrence LessigProfessor, Harvard Law School

Ernest J. MonizCecil and Ida Green Distinguished Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

John P. MooreProfessor of Microbiology and Immunology, Weill Medical College of Cornell University

M. Granger MorganProfessor and Head of Engineering and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University

Miguel NicolelisCo-director, Center for Neuroengineering, Duke University

Martin NowakDirector, Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, Harvard University

Robert PalazzoProvost and Professor of Biology, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Carolyn PorcoLeader, Cassini Imaging Science Team, and Director, CICLOPS, Space Science Institute

Vilayanur S. Ramachandran Director, Center for Brain and Cognition, University of California, San Diego

Lisa RandallProfessor of Physics, Harvard University

Martin ReesProfessor of Cosmology and Astrophysics, University of Cambridge

John ReganoldRegents Professor of Soil Science, Washington State University

Jeffrey D. SachsDirector, The Earth Institute, Columbia University

Eugenie ScottExecutive Director, National Center for Science Education

Terry SejnowskiProfessor and Laboratory Head of Computational Neurobiology Laboratory, Salk Institute for Biological Studies

Michael ShermerPublisher, Skeptic magazine

Michael SnyderProfessor of Genetics, Stanford University School of Medicine

Michael E. WebberAssociate Director, Center for International Energy & Environmental Policy, University of Texas at Austin

Steven WeinbergDirector, Theory Research Group, Department of Physics, University of Texas at Austin (Nobel Prize in Physics, 1979)

George M. WhitesidesProfessor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Harvard University

Nathan WolfeDirector, Global Viral Forecasting Initiative

R. James Woolsey, Jr. Venture Partner, VantagePoint Venture Partners

Anton ZeilingerProfessor of Quantum Optics, Quantum Nanophysics, Quantum Information, University of Vienna

Jonathan ZittrainProfessor, Harvard Law School

Mariette DiChristina is editor in chief of Scientific American. Find her on Twitter @SAeditorinchief

BOARD OF ADVISERS

6 Scientific American, June 2011 Illustration by Nick Higgins

G et ready for a change of perspective when you turn to Vlatko Vedral’s cover story, “Living in a Quantum World,” on page 38. “According to stan-dard physics textbooks, quantum mechanics is the theory of the microscopic world,” Vedral writes.

And classical physics, in textbooks, “handles the largest of scales.”Not so, proclaims Vedral, who calls this idea “a myth.” Quan-

tum effects are harder to observe in the macroworld because of decoherence. But in the past decade experimentalists have seen quantum behaviors persisting on a macroscopic scale—and these effects turn out to be as pervasive as they are profound. Entangle-ment, a quantum property once seemingly confined only to small sets of particles, has been demonstrated in far larger systems—and even within living organisms.

Scientific American has, of course, covered many such pro-found discoveries in how the world works with the help of its sci-entist authors. More than 140 Nobel laureates have written for the magazine, often years before they won the honor. As laureates gather in Lindau, Germany, this month to share wisdom with a new generation of scientists, we mark the occasion with a special section, “A Nobel Celebration.” We present a selection of some our favorite articles in the fields of medicine and physiology from the past 60 years, including George Wald writing about the origin of life, Francis Crick about DNA, and Carol W. Greider and Eliza-beth H. Blackburn about telomeres. Turn to page 54 to enjoy the sweep of science from then through today. More is available at www.Scientific American.com.

Quantum Leapc i t i z e n S c i e n c e

Gretchen LeBuhn had a problem. The San Francisco State Uni-versity researcher wanted to study flower visits by bees, given the effects of climate shifts and the destructive illness called col-ony collapse disorder. But such ecosystem studies are very chal-lenging and expensive because of the large areas involved.

She sent a note to 15 gardening groups asking if they might grow packets of a certain type of sunflower. Once the flowers bloomed, the idea went, the gardeners would spend a few min-utes at certain times making observations about bee visits and inputting the data about what they saw into a form on a Web site LeBuhn set up. She hoped she might get at least some help. But now she had a new problem: more than 75,000 volunteers.

LeBuhn told me about the Great Sunflower Project at SciFoo—an annual “unconference” run by Google, O’Reilly Me-dia and Scientific American’s parent Nature Publishing Group. I realized that Scientific American just had to help connect those citizen scientists and researchers such as LeBuhn. There are many kinds of citizen science, among them: making field obser-vations as in the sunflower project, analyzing images and video such as the terrific Zooniverse.org projects, data crunching with spare computing power, and more.

At www.Scientific Amer i can.com, we have launched Citizen Science, which lists the most compelling activities. Soon we’ll add our own. I hope you’ll help make science happen. —M.D.

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