Issue 14
Spring 2008

Editor in Chief
Meredith Carpenter

Managing Editor
Matthew Mattozzi

Art Director
Jacqueline Chretien

Copy Editor
Kathryn Peek

Editors
Rachel Bernstein
Jacqueline Chretien
Daniel Gillick
Lenny Grokop
Kate Kolstad
Niranjana Nagarajan
Helen Stimpson

Layout Editors
Tim De Chant
Azeen Ghorayshi
Matthew Mattozzi
Kathryn Quanstrom
Orapim Tulyathan

Photographer
Annaliese Beery

Web Editor
Jesse Dill

Printer
Sundance Press

19 A Magnet With a View

Exploring new frontiers in MRI

by Natasha Keith

24 Watching the Watershed

Wireless sensor networks uncover the real water cycle

by Tim De Chant

29 The Lovely Bones

Fossils tell the tale of dinosaur life and death

by Tracy Powell

35 Alzheimer's Unfolded

Taking a complex approach to diagnosing a complex disease

by James Walker

38 Uncommon Ground

Probing the underlying causes of earthquakes

by Susan Young

43 (Un)natural Language Processing

Programmers use statistics to help computers learn language

by Paul Crider

8 This End Up
Magnetic organelles point bacteria in the right direction

9 Movies You'll Love
A Berkeley graduate student takes on the Netflix challenge

11 Karma and the Cortex
Buddhist monks and brain researchers meld minds

12 The Squid and the Whale
Ocean mammals evolved sonar to chase their prey

14 Methane Rain
Seeing through the haze of Titan, Saturn's largest moon

16 Plutonium or Produce?
Distinguishing radioactivity from harmless imports

17 Bombs Away
Hand-held sensors to detect TNT

47 Faculty Portrait: Cathryn Carson

Associate Professor of History

by Amy Whitcomb

Squealing Brakes

Behind Anemone Lines

Heavenly Halos

Vole Love



18 Quanta
Heard on Campus

49 Book Review
In Defense of Food, by Michael Pollan

51 Who Knew?
Can cell phones give you cancer?