Scientific American

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• Microbubbles Cut Cost of Algae-Derived Biofuel

  Scientific American

  27 Jan 2012 | 6:47 pm

  Algae naturally produce oil. When it’s processed, that oil can be turned into biofuel, an alternative energy source. There’s just one snag--harvesting the oil from algae-filled water is prohibitively expensive. But researchers have come up with an effervescent solution: bubbles smaller than the width of a human hair can help reduce the costs of collecting algae oil. [More]

• How Google's New Privacy Policy Could Affect You

  Scientific American - News

  27 Jan 2012 | 4:00 pm

  You’re on the way to a meeting. Traffic seems to be slowing. A text comes in: “You’re going to be late. Take the next exit for alternate route.” It’s from Google. [More]

• Jumping Spiders Use Blurry Vision to Catch Quick Prey with Precision [Video]

  Observations

  Katherine Harmon

  26 Jan 2012 | 1:26 pm

  Jumping Spider: image courtesy of Science/AAAS To figure out how far away our dinner plate is our brain melds the slightly different images coming from our two eyes. Other creatures, including many insects, move their heads to glean how far a piece of food might be. But jumping spiders (Hasarius adansoni) don’t seem to possess either of these abilities. So how do they manage such quick and exacting lunges to capture their lunches? Researchers have suspected the answer might have something to do with their four-layered eyes. Previous molecular and physiological work had shown that the…

• The Power of Introverts: A Manifesto for Quiet Brilliance

  Scientific American - Mind Matters

  24 Jan 2012 | 10:40 am

  Do you enjoy having time to yourself, but always feel a little guilty about it? Then Susan Cain’s “ Quiet : The Power of Introverts ” is for you. It’s part book, part manifesto. We live in a nation that values its extroverts – the outgoing, the lovers of crowds – but not the quiet types who change the world. She recently answered questions from Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook . [More]

• Microbubbles Cut Cost of Algae-Derived Biofuel

  60-Second Science

  Scientific American

  27 Jan 2012 | 6:47 pm

  Tiny bubbles float algae to the water's surface for harvest and processing. Sophie Bushwick reports.

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  Scientific American

• Microbubbles Cut Cost of Algae-Derived Biofuel

  27 Jan 2012 | 6:47 pm

  Algae naturally produce oil. When it’s processed, that oil can be turned into biofuel, an alternative energy source. There’s just one snag--harvesting the oil from algae-filled water is prohibitively expensive. But researchers have come up with an effervescent solution: bubbles smaller than the width of a human hair can help reduce the costs of collecting algae oil. [More]

• How Google's New Privacy Policy Could Affect You

  27 Jan 2012 | 4:00 pm

  You’re on the way to a meeting. Traffic seems to be slowing. A text comes in: “You’re going to be late. Take the next exit for alternate route.” It’s from Google. [More]

• California OKs New Rules to Cut Tailpipe Emissions

  27 Jan 2012 | 2:02 pm

  LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - California's powerful air-quality regulator on Friday approved sweeping new rules to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles by requiring automakers to put many more electric and hybrid vehicles on the state's roads. The regulations, approved unanimously by the state's Air Resources Board at a meeting in Los Angeles, would also support development of an infrastructure for hydrogen fueling stations. [More]

• Dozens and Dozens: NASA's Kepler Spies Packs of New Exoplanets

  27 Jan 2012 | 1:25 pm

  [More]

• Blue Ribbon Commissions Calls for New Home for Nuclear Waste

  27 Jan 2012 | 11:00 am

  The embarrassing and damaging failure of U.S. policy on spent nuclear fuel can be repaired if the administration and Congress begin work now on new strategies, the co-chairmen of a presidential commission said yesterday. [More]

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  Scientific American - News

• How Google's New Privacy Policy Could Affect You

  27 Jan 2012 | 4:00 pm

  You’re on the way to a meeting. Traffic seems to be slowing. A text comes in: “You’re going to be late. Take the next exit for alternate route.” It’s from Google. [More]

• Primitive Attraction: Magnetized Moon Rock Points to Lunar Core's Active Past

  26 Jan 2012 | 1:01 pm

  The moon of today is a static orb with little to no internal activity; for all intents and purposes it appears to be a dead, dusty pebble of a world. But billions of years ago the moon may have been a place of far more dynamism--literally. [More]

• Race and Religion at the Ballot Box: Building a Better Bias Detector

  26 Jan 2012 | 12:00 pm

  The color of a candidate’s skin failed to sway voters to depress the lever for either Obama or McCain in the 2008 election, immediate analyses of that contest seemed to suggest. Some pundits hailed it as the first postracial election. [More]

• Children May Be Exposed to Higher Chemical Concentrations Than Their Mothers

  26 Jan 2012 | 6:00 am

  Children living near DuPont’s plant in West Virginia are exposed to much higher concentrations of an industrial chemical than their mothers, according to a newly published study. [More]

• Has Petroleum Production Peaked, Ending the Era of Easy Oil?

  25 Jan 2012 | 3:31 pm

  Despite major oil finds off Brazil's coast, new fields in North Dakota and ongoing increases in the conversion of tar sands to oil in Canada , fresh supplies of petroleum are only just enough to offset the production decline from older fields. At best, the world is now living off an oil plateau--roughly 75 million barrels of oil produced each and every day--since at least 2005, according to a new comment published in Nature on January 26. ( Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.) That is a year earlier than estimated by the International Energy Agency--an energy cartel…

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  Observations

• Jumping Spiders Use Blurry Vision to Catch Quick Prey with Precision [Video]

  Katherine Harmon

  26 Jan 2012 | 1:26 pm

  Jumping Spider: image courtesy of Science/AAAS To figure out how far away our dinner plate is our brain melds the slightly different images coming from our two eyes. Other creatures, including many insects, move their heads to glean how far a piece of food might be. But jumping spiders (Hasarius adansoni) don’t seem to possess either of these abilities. So how do they manage such quick and exacting lunges to capture their lunches? Researchers have suspected the answer might have something to do with their four-layered eyes. Previous molecular and physiological work had shown that the…

• Could a Balloon Fly in Outer Space?

  George Musser

  26 Jan 2012 | 12:28 pm

  Here’s the sort of crazy idea that animates our office conversation at Scientific American. It all started with my colleague Michael Moyer’s joke that a certain politician could build his moon base using a balloon: just capture the hot air and float all the way up. Ha ha, we all know that balloons don’t work in outer space. But is that really true? Why couldn’t they? The more I thought about it, the more confused I got, so let me float it as a trial balloon and see whether you can shoot it down. Ground rules: no weaselly appeal to “feasibility” or “practicality” allowed. You…

• Newt to NASA: Stop Talking about Space Exploration–Just Do It

  John Matson

  26 Jan 2012 | 10:19 am

  Gingrich in New Hampshire. Credit: Patrick Gensel via Flickr/Creative Commons Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich made a campaign stop on Florida’s Space Coast January 25, laying out a vision for NASA that included a manned moon base within a decade. The former speaker of the House, who topped our rankings of the candidates in terms of geek cred, wasted no time in trotting out his space bona fides. “I have a deep passion about this because I’m old enough that I used to read Missiles & Rockets magazine,” Gingrich said at public event at a Holiday Inn…

• New Orleans Protection Plan Will Rely on Wetlands to Hold Back Hurricanes

  Mark Fischetti

  26 Jan 2012 | 7:15 am

  Encroaching seas have eroded southeastern Louisiana. More than six years after Hurricane Katrina plowed into New Orleans and the Mississippi River delta, a plan has finally emerged to protect the area from future storms. It relies heavily on the restoration of wetlands to cut down high surges of ocean water like those that flooded the city in 2005—somewhat of a surprise, considering past efforts focused on levees and seawalls. Last week, after prolonged deliberations over competing plans between state and federal agencies, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and cities and parishes…

• Risk of Heart Disease Underestimated, Researchers Say

  Katherine Harmon

  25 Jan 2012 | 4:00 pm

  Image courtesy of iStockphoto/energyy Heart disease is the leading killer in the U.S., and more than 27 million Americans currently have a cardiac condition. But what is your risk of developing heart disease at some point in your entire life? It might be a lot higher than you think, according to a new paper published online Wednesday in The New England of Medicine. “We are giving incomplete and misleading risk information if we only focus on the next 10 years of someone’s life,” Donald Lloyd-Jones, an associate professor at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of…

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  Scientific American - Mind Matters

• The Power of Introverts: A Manifesto for Quiet Brilliance

  24 Jan 2012 | 10:40 am

  Do you enjoy having time to yourself, but always feel a little guilty about it? Then Susan Cain’s “ Quiet : The Power of Introverts ” is for you. It’s part book, part manifesto. We live in a nation that values its extroverts – the outgoing, the lovers of crowds – but not the quiet types who change the world. She recently answered questions from Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook . [More]

• In Atheists We Distrust

  17 Jan 2012 | 6:30 am

  Atheists are one of the most disliked groups in America. Only 45 percent of Americans say they would vote  for a qualified atheist presidential candidate, and atheists are rated as the least desirable  group for a potential son-in-law or daughter-in-law to belong to. Will Gervais at the University of British Columbia recently published a set of studies  looking at why atheists are so disliked. His conclusion: It comes down to trust. [More]

• The Neuroscience of Looking on the Bright Side

  10 Jan 2012 | 11:00 am

  Ask a bride before walking down the aisle “How likely are you to get divorced?” and most will respond “Not a chance!” Tell her that the average divorce rate is close to 50 percent, and ask again. Would she change her mind? Unlikely. Even law students who have learned everything about the legal aspects of divorce, including its likelihood, state that their own chances of getting divorced are basically nil. How can we explain this? [More]

• What Hand You Favor Shapes Your Moral Space

  3 Jan 2012 | 9:35 am

  You’re out to dinner at a restaurant that just recently opened. Steamed mussels or steamed calamari? Three cheese ravioli or eggplant parmesan? Strawberry cheesecake or chocolate mousse? With so many good choices, how to decide? [More]

• The Hidden Logic of Deception

  27 Dec 2011 | 1:55 pm

  We lie to ourselves all the time. We tell ourselves that we are better than average -- that we are more moral, more capable, less likely to become sick or suffer an accident. It’s an odd phenomenon, and an especially puzzling one to those who think about our evolutionary origins. Self-deception is so pervasive that it must confer some advantage. But how could we be well served by a brain that deceives us? This is one of the topics tackled by Robert Trivers in his new book , “The Folly of Fools,” a colorful survey of deception that includes plane crashes, neuroscience and the…

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  60-Second Science

• Microbubbles Cut Cost of Algae-Derived Biofuel

  Scientific American

  27 Jan 2012 | 6:47 pm

  Tiny bubbles float algae to the water's surface for harvest and processing. Sophie Bushwick reports.

• Bosses Who Work Out Are Nicer

  Scientific American

  26 Jan 2012 | 8:25 pm

  Employees rated supervisors who worked out as less abusive than their sedentary counterparts. Christopher Intagliata reports

• People in Power Feel Taller

  Scientific American

  25 Jan 2012 | 5:49 pm

  A person in a position of power will overestimate their height. Cynthia Graber reports

• Dark-Dwelling Fish Converge on Blindness

  Scientific American

  24 Jan 2012 | 6:43 pm

  DNA analysis revealed that 11 populations of blind cave fish did not all descend from a single blind ancestor, but had five separate evolutionary origins. Sophie Bushwick reports

• Worm Turns Alcohol into Longevity

  Scientific American

  23 Jan 2012 | 9:50 am

  A very dilute alcohol solution doubles the life span of the ubiquitous lab organism C. elegans. Christopher Intagliata reports

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  Scientific American - 60-Second Mind

• Lack of Sleep Might Make You Feel Hungrier

  21 Jan 2012 | 11:00 pm

  Scientists are still trying to understand the full purpose of sleep. But we know one thing it’s probably good for: it may help keep you on that diet. [More]

• Men Spend the Big Bucks When Women Are Scarce

  14 Jan 2012 | 10:00 am

  Across the animal kingdom, males are competitive when females are scarce. Now a study with people has examined how the number of women affects men’s attitudes about a marker for competitive fitness: Money. Basically, the fewer the women, the more the men threw their money around. The research is in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology . [More]

• Cognitive Decline Sets in around Age 45

  8 Jan 2012 | 9:00 am

  When people over 65 show losses in their short-term memory and comprehension, it’s no surprise. But a new study claims that a general cognitive decline starts to set in as early as age 45. The research is in the British Medical Journal .  [More]

• The Elderly React Slowly Because They Want to Be Right

  31 Dec 2011 | 11:00 am

  Older folks may appear to react or process info slowly. But there may be a method to their meander-ness: they’re making sure they get it right.  [More]

• Toddlers Don't Monitor Their Own Speech

  24 Dec 2011 | 10:00 am

  When I'm talking I can hear my own voice. And with that feedback I can tell almost immediately when I’ve made an error. Like I just did. An error. [More]

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  60-Second Earth

• Worried about Air Pollution? Don't Hide Indoors

  Scientific American

  22 Jan 2012 | 8:00 am

  Scientists are uncovering more and more evidence that the air in buildings can be bad for you. David Biello reports

• Gee Whiz, Why Not Recycle Urine for Drinking Water?

  Scientific American

  16 Jan 2012 | 10:32 am

  The U.S. can no longer afford to ignore sewage as a source of drinking water, scientists argue. David Biello reports

• Michael Mann Defends Climate Computer Models

  Scientific American

  10 Jan 2012 | 9:27 am

  Penn State climate modeler Michael Mann talks about what computer models can tell us--and what they don't need to. David Biello reports

• Welcome to the Year of the Lightbulb

  Scientific American

  1 Jan 2012 | 8:00 am

  Get ready to buy lightbulbs by lumens rather than watts. David Biello reports

• What Are the Chances of a White Christmas?

  Scientific American

  25 Dec 2011 | 8:00 am

  Climate change is also messing with cherished holiday dreams. David Biello reports

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  Science Talk

• State of the Union: Research, Technology and Energy

  Scientific American

  25 Jan 2012 | 12:00 pm

  About six minutes of President Obama's State of the Union address dealt with research, technology and energy

• A Second Science Front: Evolution Champions Rise to Climate Science Defense

  Scientific American

  16 Jan 2012 | 3:35 pm

  Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, long the nation's leading defender of evolution education, discusses the NCSE's new initiative to help climate science education

• Anna Deavere Smith: Let Me Down Easy

  Scientific American

  14 Jan 2012 | 10:27 am

  Actor, playwright and journalist Anna Deavere Smith talks about the health care crisis and her play about people dealing with illness, health and the health care system, Let Me Down Easy

• Man from Mars: Health and Nutrition Research at Mars, Inc., and Beyond

  Scientific American

  5 Jan 2012 | 6:02 pm

  Hagen Schroeter, the director of fundamental health and nutrition research at Mars, Inc., talks about research on bio-active food compounds and the search for why a healthful diet is good for you

• The YouTube SpaceLab Competition

  Scientific American

  11 Dec 2011 | 11:01 pm

  If you're 14 to 18 years old, you still have until December 14th to prepare a two-minute video of a suggestion for an experiment to be performed at the International Space Station and upload it to youtube.com/spacelab. Winners will see their experiment performed in space

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  Scientific American - SciAm Exclusives Video

• Time Cloak Hides Very Brief Events

  5 Jan 2012 | 8:00 pm

  The achieved cloaking was just 50 trillionths of a second, in duration, but could be extended to a few nanoseconds

• NYC's Ring of Steel pt 3: Motion Capture

  27 Sep 2011 | 10:00 am

  What new technologies might be incorporated into New York City's surveillance network, the 'Ring of Steel'? Computer scientist Chris Bregler thinks that detecting motion signatures, our unique body movements, is the wave of the future.

• NYC's Ring of Steel pt 2: Central Command

  9 Sep 2011 | 2:00 pm

  In the second of three videos, we visit the central hub of New York City's 'Ring of Steel', the expansive camera network keeping watch over Lower Manhattan.

• NYC's Ring of Steel pt 1: Street View

  9 Sep 2011 | 11:00 am

  The terrorist attacks of September 11th drastically changed the security strategy of NYC. A massive camera network, dubbed the 'Ring of Steel' , is at the heart of this new strategy. In the first of three videos we watch it as it watches us.

• Motherhood: Your brain on kids

  30 Jun 2011 | 10:00 am

  For most women, having kids means new responsibilities and a shift in priorities. What moms don't realize is how kids physically change their brain. Scientific American brings you a quick tour of the female brain under the influence--of offspring.

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  Scientific American - Video

• Magnetic Soap Could Suck Up Oil Spills

  27 Jan 2012 | 8:30 am

  A team of international scientists has invented a magnetic soap that could revolutionise the clean-up of dangerous oil spills. It's the first cleaning surfactant that responds to magnets

• Alligators Bring Bite to Pilosaur Study

  25 Jan 2012 | 11:30 am

  Scientists in Gosford near Sydney have take the bull by the horns - or in this case, the alligator by the snout - in an effort to learn about the bite force and probable dining habits of prehistoric animals

• Gorillas in Our Midst - Jungle Encounter Aids Conservation Efforts

  24 Jan 2012 | 11:30 am

  Video showing a nerve-wracking encounter between an American eco-tourist and a troop of mountain gorillas in Uganda last month, has taken on a life of its own as a promotional tool for gorilla conservation

• Aesop's Fable Brought to Life by Clever Crows

  24 Jan 2012 | 2:30 am

  In a series of experiments, the New Caledonian crow has demonstrated an unexpected understanding of how tools work to make their lives easier

• A Yawn as Good as a Kiss between Friends and Family

  23 Jan 2012 | 10:30 am

  Italian researchers say that contagious yawning occurs at a faster rate among friends and family than strangers. Their study, aimed at advancing the understanding of empathy between people, also uncovered similar findings among other primates

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  Scientific American - Health

• Readers Respond to "Toxins All Around Us" and Other Articles

  27 Jan 2012 | 11:00 am

  CHEMISTRY COMMENTARY [More]

• Can Too Much Information Harm Patients? [Excerpt]

  27 Jan 2012 | 10:00 am

  Editor's Note: The following is an excerpt from The Creative Destruction of Medicine: How the Digital Revolution Will Create Better Health Care (Basic Books, 2012), by Eric Topol, a professor of innovative medicine and the director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute. [More]

• Mourning Digitally

  27 Jan 2012 | 8:19 am

  Sleepy Hollow Graveyard. Photo by KDCosta, December 2011. Ed Note: Another flashback from the archives of AiP this Friday, though a sombre one at that. It’s rainy and dreary here in New York City, and my thoughts are a bit dark today. [More]

• Notion in Motion: Wireless Sensors Monitor Brain Waves on the Fly

  27 Jan 2012 | 6:00 am

  A fighter pilot heads back to base after a long mission, feeling spent. A warning light flashes on the control panel. Has she noticed? If so, is she focused enough to fix the problem? [More]

• #SciAmBlogs Thursday - Actinides, Roy Chapman Andrews, Balloons in Space, Jumping Spiders and more

  26 Jan 2012 | 11:13 pm

  - Christie Wilcox – Blogging Science While Female the Storify   [More]

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  Scientific American Topic - Aging and the Elderly

• Digital Health Care Puts Control in Consumer Hands

  19 Jan 2012 | 9:51 pm

  For years, do-it-yourself health care meant looking up your symptoms on WebMD. But smart phones are extending our control, with apps that let people plan and track workouts, monitor important health indicators, and even locate nearby clinical trials. Apple's App Store alone offers thousands of mobile health apps. [More]

• How Scientists Are Tackling the Bed Bug Nightmare (preview)

  19 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  The elderly man lived by himself in a low-income apartment near Cincinnati. But he was not alone. After dark the bed bugs would emerge from his recliner and tattered box-spring mattress to feed on his blood. Judging from the thousands of insects I found in his home, I would venture that it had been this way for many months. Imprisoned by poverty and infirmity, the man had nourished generations of these pests, enduring their bites night after night while their numbers swelled. [More]

• Emotion Selectively Distorts Our Recollections (preview)

  12 Jan 2012 | 6:00 am

  On September 11, 2001, Elizabeth A. Phelps stepped outside her apartment in lower Manhattan and noticed a man staring toward the World Trade Center, about two miles away. Looking up, “I just saw this big, burning hole,” Phelps recalls. The man told her that he had just seen a large airplane crash into one of the skyscrapers. Thinking it was a horrible accident, Phelps started walking to work, a few blocks away, for a 9 a.m. telephone meeting. By the time she reached her eighth-floor office at New York University, a second jet had struck the other tower, which collapsed after an…

• Five Hidden Dangers of Obesity (preview)

  10 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  By now it is common knowledge that being severely overweight puts people at increased risk of suffering from heart disease, stroke and diabetes and that obesity--defined as weighing at least 20 percent more than the high side of normal--is on the rise. According to one estimate, the U.S. will be home to 65 million more obese people in 2030 than it is today, leading to an additional six million or more cases of heart disease and stroke and another eight million cases of type 2 diabetes. Many clinicians have already begun seeing families in which the grandparents are healthier and living longer…

• Battles among Ants Resemble Human Warfare (preview)

  8 Jan 2012 | 11:00 am

  The raging combatants form a blur on all sides. the scale of the violence is almost incomprehensible, the battle stretching beyond my field of view. Tens of thousands sweep ahead with a suicidal single-mindedness. Utterly devoted to duty, the fighters never retreat from a confrontation--even in the face of certain death. The engagements are brief and brutal. Suddenly, three foot soldiers grab an enemy and hold it in place until one of the bigger warriors advances and cleaves the captive’s body, leaving it smashed and oozing. [More]

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  Scientific American Topic - Arthritis

• Unusual Flavors Can Dampen Immune Response

  8 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  More than 100 years ago Ivan Pavlov famously observed that a dog salivated not only when fed but also on hearing a stimulus it associated with food. Since then, scientists have discovered many other seemingly autonomous processes that can be trained with sensory stimuli--including, most recently, our immune system. [More]

• Why Women Report Being in Worse Health Than Men

  30 Dec 2011 | 10:00 am

  When asked to rate their own health, women , on average, consistently report being in worse health than men do, and a new study from researchers in Spain says this is because women have a higher rate of chronic diseases -- contradicting a previous theory that women's lower self-rated health is simply a reporting bias. [More]

• Common Brain Mechanisms Underlie Supernatural Perceptions (preview)

  29 Dec 2011 | 12:00 pm

  You may have never personally caught sight of Jesus Christ’s face in a potato chip, but you have likely succumbed to an equally improbable belief at some point in your life. Many people claim that ghosts exist or that their dreams can predict the future. Some individuals even think they have seen the face of the Virgin Mary in a grilled cheese sandwich and Mother Teresa in a cinnamon bun. [More]

• FDA to Approve New Generics, But Health Care Savings Will Be Minimal

  5 Dec 2011 | 6:00 am

  In 1984 the Hatch-Waxman Act made it cheaper and easier to put generic versions of a drug on the market. As a result of the expedited approval process, generics now make up more than 60 percent of prescription drugs sold in the U.S. and have saved the health care system $734 billion between 1999 and 2008 alone. [More]

• The Neuroscience of Barbie

  8 Nov 2011 | 10:00 am

  In science fiction and fantasy tales, there is a long running fascination with the idea of dramatically diminishing or growing in stature.  In the 1989 classic, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids,  Rick Moranis invents a device which accidentally shrinks both his own and the neighbor’s children down to a quarter-of-an-inch tall.  Preceding this by more than 100 years, Lewis Carroll wrote about a little girl who, after tumbling down a rabbit hole, nibbles on some cake and then grows to massive proportions.  Nearly 300 years ago, Jonathan Swift described the adventures of…

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  Scientific American Topic - Influenza

• Is Space Digital? (preview)

  17 Jan 2012 | 10:12 am

  Craig Hogan believes that the world is fuzzy. This is not a metaphor. Hogan, a physicist at the University of Chicago and director of the Fermilab Particle Astrophysics Center near Batavia, Ill., thinks that if we were to peer down at the tiniest subdivisions of space and time, we would find a universe filled with an intrinsic jitter, the busy hum of static. This hum comes not from particles bouncing in and out of being or other kinds of quantum froth that physicists have argued about in the past. Rather Hogan’s noise would come about if space was not, as we have long assumed, smooth…

• A Man-Made Contagion

  15 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  It’s a rare kind of research that incites a frenzied panic before it is even published. But it’s flu season, and influenza science has a way of causing a stir this time of year. [More]

• Can a Vaccine Cure Haiti's Cholera?

  12 Jan 2012 | 5:00 am

  The cholera epidemic in Haiti has cast a stark light on deep development holes and disagreements about whether a short-term patch--in the form of a cholera vaccine--can help in the long-term fight for better health. [More]

• Doomsday Clock Moved 1 Minute Closer to Midnight

  10 Jan 2012 | 3:15 pm

  In a sign of pessimism about humanity's future , scientists today set the hands of the infamous "Doomsday Clock" forward one minute from two years ago. [More]

• Call to Censor Bird Flu Studies Draws Fire

  3 Jan 2012 | 3:30 pm

  “I don’t like to scare people,” says microbiologist Paul Keim. “But the worst-case scenarios here are just enormous.” [More]

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  Scientific American Topic - Cancer

• The Math behind Screening Tests

  31 Dec 2011 | 9:00 am

  It seems like every few months a new study points out the inefficacy of yet another wide-scale cancer screening. In 2009 the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force sug­gested that many women undergo mam­mograms later and less frequently than had been recommended before because there seems to be little, if any, extra benefit from annual tests. This same group recently issued an even more pointed statement about the prostate-specific antigen test for prostate cancer: it blights many lives but overall doesn’t save them. [More]

• D'oh! Top Science Journal Retractions of 2011

  27 Dec 2011 | 11:30 am

  Bad science papers can have lasting effects. Consider the 1998 paper in the journal The Lancet that linked autism to the MMR vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella. That paper was fully retracted in 2010 upon evidence that senior author Andrew Wakefield had manipulated data and breached several proper ethical codes of conduct. [More]

• Anything Boys Can Do...

  26 Dec 2011 | 7:00 am

  When then Harvard University president Lawrence Summers suggested in 2005 that innate differences between men and women may account for the lack of women in top science and engineering positions (and subsequently resigned), he was referring to the greater male variability hypothesis. Women, it holds, are on average as mathematically competent as men, but there is a greater innate spread in math ability among men. In other words, a higher proportion of men stumble mathematically, but an equally high proportion excel because of something in the way male brains develop. This supposedly explained…

• 2011 Nobel Laureate Ralph Steinman Explains Discovery of Cells Used for Cancer Treatment [Video]

  20 Dec 2011 | 11:04 am

  In the quest to cure cancer, many researchers have started looking beyond toxic chemicals and harsh radiation and instead are trying to harness the body's immune system. [More]

• How Ralph Steinman Raced to Develop a Cancer Vaccine--And Save His Life (preview)

  20 Dec 2011 | 11:04 am

  Peering through a microscope at a plate of cells one day, Ralph M. Steinman spied something no one had ever seen before. It was the early 1970s, and he was a researcher at the Rockefeller University on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. At the time, scientists were still piecing together the basic building blocks of the immune system. They had figured out that there are B cells, white blood cells that help to identify foreign invaders, and T cells, another type of white blood cell that attacks those invaders. What puzzled them, however, was what triggered those T cells and B cells to go to…

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  Scientific American Topic - Depression

• Five Hidden Dangers of Obesity (preview)

  10 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  By now it is common knowledge that being severely overweight puts people at increased risk of suffering from heart disease, stroke and diabetes and that obesity--defined as weighing at least 20 percent more than the high side of normal--is on the rise. According to one estimate, the U.S. will be home to 65 million more obese people in 2030 than it is today, leading to an additional six million or more cases of heart disease and stroke and another eight million cases of type 2 diabetes. Many clinicians have already begun seeing families in which the grandparents are healthier and living longer…

• Two Big Myths about Grief

  5 Jan 2012 | 10:00 am

  Virtually all of us experience the loss of a loved one at some point in our life. So it is surprising that the serious study of grief is not much more than 30 years old. Yet in that time, we have made significant discoveries that have deepened our understanding of this phenomenon--and challenged widely held assumptions. [More]

• Deep-Brain Stimulation Found to Fix Depression Long-Term

  3 Jan 2012 | 3:20 pm

  Deep depression that fails to respond to any other form of therapy can be moderated or reversed by stimulation of areas deep inside the brain. Now the first placebo-controlled study of this procedure shows that these responses can be maintained in the long term. [More]

• Forgetting is Key to a Healthy Mind (preview)

  23 Dec 2011 | 12:35 pm

  Solomon Shereshevsky could recite entire speeches, word for word, after hearing them once. In minutes, he memorized complex math formulas, passages in foreign languages and tables consisting of 50 numbers or nonsense syllables. The traces of these sequences were so durably etched in his brain that he could reproduce them years later, according to Russian psychologist Alexander R. Luria, who wrote about the man he called, simply, “S” in The Mind of a Mnemonist. [More]

• Fearless Youth: Prozac Extinguishes Anxiety by Rejuvenating the Brain

  22 Dec 2011 | 1:44 pm

  Once adult lab mice learn to associate a particular stimulus--a sound, a flash of light--with the pain of an electric shock, they don't easily forget it, even when researchers stop the shocks. But a new study in the December 23 issue of Science shows that the antidepressant Prozac (fluoxetine) gives mice the youthful brain plasticity they need to learn that a once-threatening stimulus is now benign. The research may help explain why a combination of therapy and antidepressants is more effective at treating depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) than either drugs or…

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  Scientific American Topic - Epidemics & Pandemics

• How Scientists Are Tackling the Bed Bug Nightmare (preview)

  19 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  The elderly man lived by himself in a low-income apartment near Cincinnati. But he was not alone. After dark the bed bugs would emerge from his recliner and tattered box-spring mattress to feed on his blood. Judging from the thousands of insects I found in his home, I would venture that it had been this way for many months. Imprisoned by poverty and infirmity, the man had nourished generations of these pests, enduring their bites night after night while their numbers swelled. [More]

• A Man-Made Contagion

  15 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  It’s a rare kind of research that incites a frenzied panic before it is even published. But it’s flu season, and influenza science has a way of causing a stir this time of year. [More]

• Can a Vaccine Cure Haiti's Cholera?

  12 Jan 2012 | 5:00 am

  The cholera epidemic in Haiti has cast a stark light on deep development holes and disagreements about whether a short-term patch--in the form of a cholera vaccine--can help in the long-term fight for better health. [More]

• Social Media Tracks Disease Spread

  9 Jan 2012 | 4:28 pm

  After Haiti’s earthquake two years ago, cholera swept the country. And within a month, the same strain had spread to the Dominican Republic and the U.S., and then to Venezuela, Mexico, Spain, and Canada. [More]

• Call to Censor Bird Flu Studies Draws Fire

  3 Jan 2012 | 3:30 pm

  “I don’t like to scare people,” says microbiologist Paul Keim. “But the worst-case scenarios here are just enormous.” [More]

• 

  Scientific American Topic - Epilepsy

• Read My E-mail? Get a Warrant

  11 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  Last October the well-known hacking group Chaos Computer Club revealed that the German state police had been monitoring the computers of ordinary citizens using specially designed surveillance software. This spyware could peek into users’ files, record keystrokes, take screenshots of Web pages users happened to be visiting, and even commandeer Web cams and microphones, giving the cops an open window into the home. The revelations invited comparisons to the Stasi, the infamous police force that operated in the former East Germany. [More]

• Family Gold Mining Poisons Children in Nigeria

  21 Dec 2011 | 11:15 am

  Large numbers of infants and toddlers have died from lead poisoning in Nigerian villages where their parents process gold ore inside their family compounds, according to a report published Tuesday by an international team of researchers. [More]

• Rope a Dope: U.S. Anti-Terrorism Labs Enlisted in the War on "Legal" Synthetic Drugs

  23 Nov 2011 | 6:00 am

  A worldwide arms race has erupted between inventive street chemists who concoct "legal" highs and government officials who wish to regulate and interdict the proliferation of synthetic cannabis products that can send their users to an emergency room or the morgue. [More]

• Stop the Genetic Dragnet

  22 Nov 2011 | 7:00 am

  In 2009 the San Francisco police arrested Lily Haskell when she allegedly attempted to come to the aid of a companion who had already been taken into custody during a peace demonstration. The authorities released her quickly, without pressing charges. But a little piece of Haskell remained behind in their database. [More]

• The Drone Threat to Privacy

  14 Nov 2011 | 6:30 am

  Editor’s note: This is the second of a two-part series on security and privacy during the age of drone warfare. Part one is available here . Technology, as Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in a 2001 Supreme Court opinion, has the power " to shrink the realm of guaranteed privacy ." Few other technologies have as much power to do this as drones. Because they can perch hundreds or thousands of meters in the air, drones literally add a new dimension to the ability to eavesdrop. They can see into backyards and into windows that look out onto enclosed spaces not visible…

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  Scientific American Topic - Exercise and Fitness

• Readers Respond to "Fight the Frazzled Mind"--and More

  6 Jan 2012 | 10:00 am

  Older and More Stressed [More]

• Two Big Myths about Grief

  5 Jan 2012 | 10:00 am

  Virtually all of us experience the loss of a loved one at some point in our life. So it is surprising that the serious study of grief is not much more than 30 years old. Yet in that time, we have made significant discoveries that have deepened our understanding of this phenomenon--and challenged widely held assumptions. [More]

• Hit the Gym to Help Hit the Books

  3 Jan 2012 | 7:50 pm

  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. And a worse student. Regular exercise--whether in gym class or less formally in a local park--has been shown to improve kids' mood and short-term focusing abilities. Now a new systematic analysis of numerous studies finds that keeping kids active also boosts their academic performance. The paper is in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine . [Amika Singh et al., " Physical Activity and Performance at School: A Systematic Review of the Literature Including a Methodological Quality Assessment "] [More]

• This Way to Mars: How Technologies Borrowed from Robotic Missions Could Deliver Astronauts to Deep Space

  29 Nov 2011 | 7:00 am

  In October 2009 a small group of robotic space exploration geeks decided to venture out of our comfort zone and began brainstorming different approaches to flying people into space. We were spurred into action when the Augustine com­mission, a blue-ribbon panel that President Barack Obama set up earlier that year to review the space shuttle and its intended successor, reported that “the U.S. human spaceflight program appears to be on an unsustainable trajectory.” Having worked in an exciting robotic exploration program that has extended humanity’s reach from Mercury to…

• Atrazine in Water Tied to Hormonal Irregularities

  28 Nov 2011 | 1:10 pm

  Women who drink water contaminated with low levels of the weed-killer atrazine may be more likely to have irregular menstrual cycles and low estrogen levels, scientists concluded in a new study. [More]

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  Scientific American Topic - Healthy Eating

• Middleweight Black Holes: Clues to the Universe's Evolution (preview)

  12 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  Astronomers have known for some 10 years that nearly every large galaxy contains at its core an immense black hole--an object having such intense gravity that even light cannot escape. The death of stars can produce small black holes--with masses ranging from about three to 100 times the mass of the sun--but such stellar-mass black holes are tiny compared with the behemoths at the centers of galaxies, measuring millions to billions of solar masses. [More]

• Battles among Ants Resemble Human Warfare (preview)

  8 Jan 2012 | 11:00 am

  The raging combatants form a blur on all sides. the scale of the violence is almost incomprehensible, the battle stretching beyond my field of view. Tens of thousands sweep ahead with a suicidal single-mindedness. Utterly devoted to duty, the fighters never retreat from a confrontation--even in the face of certain death. The engagements are brief and brutal. Suddenly, three foot soldiers grab an enemy and hold it in place until one of the bigger warriors advances and cleaves the captive’s body, leaving it smashed and oozing. [More]

• Can Mountain Dew Really Dissolve a Mouse Carcass?

  5 Jan 2012 | 5:00 pm

  An attempt to win a small court battle this week has put Mountain Dew in peril of losing a much larger war. PepsiCo, the soft drink's parent company, defended itself against a man who claimed he found a dead mouse in a can of the citrus soda . Experts called in by PepsiCo's lawyers offered a stomach-churning explanation for why it couldn't be true: the Mountain Dew would have dissolved the mouse, turning it into a "jelly-like substance," had it been in the can of fluid from the time of its bottling until the day the plaintiff opened it, 15 months later. [More]

• 10 Tips for Deciphering Diet and Nutrition Claims [Excerpt]

  30 Dec 2011 | 9:00 am

  Editor's note: The following is an excerpt from the new book Coffee Is Good for You: From Vitamin C and Organic Foods to Low-Carb and Detox Diets, the Truth About Diet and Nutrition Claims (Perigee, 2012), by Robert J. Davis , who teaches the Emory University's Rollins School of Public Health. [More]

• How to Make the Food System More Energy Efficient

  29 Dec 2011 | 7:00 am

  For more than 50 years fossil fuels and fertilizers have been the key ingredients in much greater global food production and distribution. The food-energy relationship has been a good one, but it is now entering a new era. Food production is rising sharply, requiring more carbon-based fuels and nitrogen-based fertilizers, both of which exacerbate global warming, river and ocean pollution, and a host of other ills. At the same time, many nations are grappling with how to reduce energy demand, especially demand for fossil fuels. [More]

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  Scientific American Topic - Heart Disease

• Gumming Up Appetite

  15 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  Losing weight is not always about anticipating swimsuit season or squeezing into skinny jeans--for the  obese, losing weight is about fighting serious illness and reclaiming health. Yet the primal part of the brain that regulates appetite will not place a moratorium on hunger just because someone has acknowledged the need to lose weight. Researchers at Syracuse University are working toward a unique solution: chewing gum that suppresses appetite. [More]

• Five Hidden Dangers of Obesity (preview)

  10 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  By now it is common knowledge that being severely overweight puts people at increased risk of suffering from heart disease, stroke and diabetes and that obesity--defined as weighing at least 20 percent more than the high side of normal--is on the rise. According to one estimate, the U.S. will be home to 65 million more obese people in 2030 than it is today, leading to an additional six million or more cases of heart disease and stroke and another eight million cases of type 2 diabetes. Many clinicians have already begun seeing families in which the grandparents are healthier and living longer…

• Unusual Flavors Can Dampen Immune Response

  8 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  More than 100 years ago Ivan Pavlov famously observed that a dog salivated not only when fed but also on hearing a stimulus it associated with food. Since then, scientists have discovered many other seemingly autonomous processes that can be trained with sensory stimuli--including, most recently, our immune system. [More]

• Could Public Health Benefits Make Combating Climate Change Free?

  21 Dec 2011 | 1:21 pm

  DURBAN, South Africa--Former entomologist Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum of the World Health Organization worries about nosebleeds more than the average person. That's because he's one of the estimated 12 million people worldwide afflicted with leishmaniasis --a potentially fatal parasitic disease characterized most often by lesions on the skin and/or mucus membranes--caused by the bite of a sandfly. [More]

• Neurons Offer Clues to Suicide

  21 Dec 2011 | 7:00 am

  A certain type of brain cell may be linked with suicide, according to a recent investigation. People who take their own lives have more densely packed von Economo neurons, large spindle-shaped cells that have dramatically increased in density over the course of human evolution. [More]

• 

  Scientific American Topic - Heart Disease

• Gumming Up Appetite

  15 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  Losing weight is not always about anticipating swimsuit season or squeezing into skinny jeans--for the  obese, losing weight is about fighting serious illness and reclaiming health. Yet the primal part of the brain that regulates appetite will not place a moratorium on hunger just because someone has acknowledged the need to lose weight. Researchers at Syracuse University are working toward a unique solution: chewing gum that suppresses appetite. [More]

• Five Hidden Dangers of Obesity (preview)

  10 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  By now it is common knowledge that being severely overweight puts people at increased risk of suffering from heart disease, stroke and diabetes and that obesity--defined as weighing at least 20 percent more than the high side of normal--is on the rise. According to one estimate, the U.S. will be home to 65 million more obese people in 2030 than it is today, leading to an additional six million or more cases of heart disease and stroke and another eight million cases of type 2 diabetes. Many clinicians have already begun seeing families in which the grandparents are healthier and living longer…

• Unusual Flavors Can Dampen Immune Response

  8 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  More than 100 years ago Ivan Pavlov famously observed that a dog salivated not only when fed but also on hearing a stimulus it associated with food. Since then, scientists have discovered many other seemingly autonomous processes that can be trained with sensory stimuli--including, most recently, our immune system. [More]

• Could Public Health Benefits Make Combating Climate Change Free?

  21 Dec 2011 | 1:21 pm

  DURBAN, South Africa--Former entomologist Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum of the World Health Organization worries about nosebleeds more than the average person. That's because he's one of the estimated 12 million people worldwide afflicted with leishmaniasis --a potentially fatal parasitic disease characterized most often by lesions on the skin and/or mucus membranes--caused by the bite of a sandfly. [More]

• Neurons Offer Clues to Suicide

  21 Dec 2011 | 7:00 am

  A certain type of brain cell may be linked with suicide, according to a recent investigation. People who take their own lives have more densely packed von Economo neurons, large spindle-shaped cells that have dramatically increased in density over the course of human evolution. [More]

• 

  Scientific American Topic - Malaria

• Microbes Make Some People Smell Delicious to Mosquitoes

  3 Jan 2012 | 7:08 pm

  Ever wondered why mosquitoes eat some people up but leave others relatively unscathed? A new study finds that this preferential treatment is due to the smells produced by the microscopic critters that cover our bodies. The research is in the journal Public Library of Science ONE . [Niels O. Verhulst et al., " Composition of Human Skin Microbiota Affects Attractiveness to Malaria Mosquitoes "] [More]

• Could Public Health Benefits Make Combating Climate Change Free?

  21 Dec 2011 | 1:21 pm

  DURBAN, South Africa--Former entomologist Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum of the World Health Organization worries about nosebleeds more than the average person. That's because he's one of the estimated 12 million people worldwide afflicted with leishmaniasis --a potentially fatal parasitic disease characterized most often by lesions on the skin and/or mucus membranes--caused by the bite of a sandfly. [More]

• Paul Farmer: International Health Is Equity Issue

  13 Dec 2011 | 2:17 pm

  "In 1983, when I went to Haiti, the wave of sentiment that crashed over me was not just, gosh, this is appalling--it’s unfair." [More]

• World's 10 Worst Toxic Pollution Problems [Slide Show]

  10 Nov 2011 | 3:01 pm

  The price of gold affects more than global finances; it also drives the world's most toxic pollution problem, according to new research from the Blacksmith Institute , an environmental health group based in New York City. Miners in countries from across Africa and Southeast Asia use mercury to separate the precious metal from the surrounding rock and silt. To then separate the resulting amalgam of gold and mercury, heat must be applied to vaporize the mercury. Typically, heating occurs over an open gas flame, releasing the potent neurotoxic element into the atmosphere. What's more,…

• Should Scientists Use Genetically Modified Insects to Fight Disease?

  24 Oct 2011 | 10:00 am

  In the November 2011 issue of Scientific American, author Bijal Trivedi looks at the ongoing controversies surrounding the use of genetically modified mosquitoes to fight dengue fever. We asked biologist Mark Q. Benedict and Helen Wallace, the director of GeneWatch UK , to illuminate the issues surrounding the release of genetically modified insects into the wild. Genetically Modified Mosquitoes Could Be an Important Tool in the Fight against Disease [More]

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  Scientific American Topic - Medical Ethics

• Anti-GM Groups Attempt to Sully Transgenic Control of Dengue Fever

  12 Jan 2012 | 1:00 pm

  Genetically engineered mosquitoes developed by British biotech firm Oxitec as an approach to controlling dengue fever have been caught up in controversy since 6,000 of them were deliberately released to an uninhabited forest in Malaysia in a trial in December 2010. [More]

• Red-Wine Researcher Implicated in Data Misconduct Case

  12 Jan 2012 | 10:48 am

  A three-year investigation into a University of Connecticut biology laboratory has found its chief guilty of falsifying and fabricating data on more than two dozen papers and grant applications. [More]

• Can a Vaccine Cure Haiti's Cholera?

  12 Jan 2012 | 5:00 am

  The cholera epidemic in Haiti has cast a stark light on deep development holes and disagreements about whether a short-term patch--in the form of a cholera vaccine--can help in the long-term fight for better health. [More]

• Airport Screeners to Be Monitored for Radiation

  10 Jan 2012 | 9:59 am

  The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is looking to monitor the levels of radiation that its employees are exposed to from X-ray technology, including airport body scanners, a document from the agency says. [More]

• PAIN Relief: India on Track to Be Declared Polio-Free Next Month

  9 Jan 2012 | 1:30 pm

  In the mid-2000s, when scientists questioned whether the campaign to rid the world of polio could succeed, skeptics pointed to a problem that some called PAIN . [More]

• 

  Scientific American Topic - Mental Health

• Anti-GM Groups Attempt to Sully Transgenic Control of Dengue Fever

  12 Jan 2012 | 1:00 pm

  Genetically engineered mosquitoes developed by British biotech firm Oxitec as an approach to controlling dengue fever have been caught up in controversy since 6,000 of them were deliberately released to an uninhabited forest in Malaysia in a trial in December 2010. [More]

• Emotion Selectively Distorts Our Recollections (preview)

  12 Jan 2012 | 6:00 am

  On September 11, 2001, Elizabeth A. Phelps stepped outside her apartment in lower Manhattan and noticed a man staring toward the World Trade Center, about two miles away. Looking up, “I just saw this big, burning hole,” Phelps recalls. The man told her that he had just seen a large airplane crash into one of the skyscrapers. Thinking it was a horrible accident, Phelps started walking to work, a few blocks away, for a 9 a.m. telephone meeting. By the time she reached her eighth-floor office at New York University, a second jet had struck the other tower, which collapsed after an…

• Casual Marijuana Smoking Not Harmful to Lungs

  10 Jan 2012 | 5:25 pm

  It wouldn't have mattered if Bill Clinton inhaled, as far as his lungs are concerned. Smoking up to a joint per day doesn't seem to decrease lung function, according to a study published in Jan. 11 edition of Journal of the American Medical Association. [More]

• Five Hidden Dangers of Obesity (preview)

  10 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  By now it is common knowledge that being severely overweight puts people at increased risk of suffering from heart disease, stroke and diabetes and that obesity--defined as weighing at least 20 percent more than the high side of normal--is on the rise. According to one estimate, the U.S. will be home to 65 million more obese people in 2030 than it is today, leading to an additional six million or more cases of heart disease and stroke and another eight million cases of type 2 diabetes. Many clinicians have already begun seeing families in which the grandparents are healthier and living longer…

• Shelf-Preservation: Researchers Tap Century-Old Brain Tissue for Clues to Mental Illness

  9 Jan 2012 | 6:00 am

  Among the bloodletting boxes, ether inhalers, kangaroo-tendon sutures and other artifacts stored at the Indiana Medical History Museum in Indianapolis are hundreds of scuffed-up canning jars full of dingy yellow liquid and chunks of human brains. [More]

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  Scientific American Topic - Mood Disorders

• Diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder Is Often Flawed

  4 Jan 2012 | 9:30 am

  This past June renowned clinical psychologist Marsha M. Linehan of the University of Washington made a striking admission. Known for her pioneering work on borderline personality disorder (BPD), a severe and intractable psychiatric condition, 68-year-old Linehan announced that as an adolescent, she had been hospitalized for BPD. Suicidal and self-destructive, the teenage Linehan had slashed her limbs repeatedly with knives and other sharp objects and banged her head violently against the hospital walls. The hospital’s discharge summary in 1963 described her as “one of the most…

• Forgetting is Key to a Healthy Mind (preview)

  23 Dec 2011 | 12:35 pm

  Solomon Shereshevsky could recite entire speeches, word for word, after hearing them once. In minutes, he memorized complex math formulas, passages in foreign languages and tables consisting of 50 numbers or nonsense syllables. The traces of these sequences were so durably etched in his brain that he could reproduce them years later, according to Russian psychologist Alexander R. Luria, who wrote about the man he called, simply, “S” in The Mind of a Mnemonist. [More]

• Motions Unmask Moods

  16 Dec 2011 | 7:00 am

  None of us can stand perfectly still. No matter how hard we try, our bodies constantly make small adjustments, causing us to sway slightly as we stand. A new study finds that people with bipolar disorder tend to sway more than those who are unaffected, which may lead to new ways to treat and diagnose the illness.When psychologists diagnose bipolar disorder, they typically look for mood swings between agitated mania and bleak depression. Previous studies have linked bipolar disorder to abnormalities in the cerebellum and basal ganglia, regions of the brain that are also important for motor…

• Do MRIs Relieve Symptoms of Depression?

  28 Nov 2011 | 6:00 am

  When a researcher asks a volunteer to slide head-first into the open eye of a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine, the expectation is that the device's magnetic field will penetrate the skull to produce a faithful picture of the brain without changing its behavior. A new study suggests, however, that MRI machines do, in fact, manipulate brain activity--and they change the brain in a way that helps treat depression. In other words, MRIs may be unintentional antidepressants . [More]

• On the Trail of the Orchid Child

  22 Nov 2011 | 10:00 am

  Scientific papers tend to be loaded with statistics and jargon, so it is always a delightful surprise to stumble on a nugget of poetry in an otherwise technical report. So it was with a 2005 paper in the journal Development and Psychopathology , drily entitled “Biological Sensitivity to Context,” which looked at kids’ susceptibility to their family environment. The authors of the research paper, human development specialists Bruce J. Ellis of the University of Arizona and W. Thomas Boyce of the University of California, Berkeley, borrowed a Swedish idiom to name a startling…

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  Scientific American Topic - Neurology

• Dirty Dancing: Dung Beetles Get Down to Walk the Line

  18 Jan 2012 | 4:00 pm

  As a dung beetle rolls its planet of poop along the ground it periodically stops, climbs onto the ball and does a little dance. Why? It's probably getting its bearings. A series of experiments published in the January 18 issue of PLoS ONE shows that the beetles are much more likely to perform their dance when they wander off course or encounter an obstacle. Until now, no one had any idea what a jitterbugging dung beetle was up to. [More]

• Casual Marijuana Smoking Not Harmful to Lungs

  10 Jan 2012 | 5:25 pm

  It wouldn't have mattered if Bill Clinton inhaled, as far as his lungs are concerned. Smoking up to a joint per day doesn't seem to decrease lung function, according to a study published in Jan. 11 edition of Journal of the American Medical Association. [More]

• The Neuroscience of Looking on the Bright Side

  10 Jan 2012 | 11:00 am

  Ask a bride before walking down the aisle “How likely are you to get divorced?” and most will respond “Not a chance!” Tell her that the average divorce rate is close to 50 percent, and ask again. Would she change her mind? Unlikely. Even law students who have learned everything about the legal aspects of divorce, including its likelihood, state that their own chances of getting divorced are basically nil. How can we explain this? [More]

• PAIN Relief: India on Track to Be Declared Polio-Free Next Month

  9 Jan 2012 | 1:30 pm

  In the mid-2000s, when scientists questioned whether the campaign to rid the world of polio could succeed, skeptics pointed to a problem that some called PAIN . [More]

• How Has Stephen Hawking Lived to 70 with ALS?

  7 Jan 2012 | 5:00 am

  Stephen Hawking turns 70 on Sunday, beating the odds of a daunting diagnosis by nearly half a century. [More]

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  Scientific American Topic - Obesity

• Soda Tax Could Turn Health Profit

  10 Jan 2012 | 4:26 pm

  Sugary drinks are one of the leading culprits behind America's weight problem. Whether it's sugar-sweetened soda, sports drinks, teas or juices, we're each gulping down an average of 70,000 liquid calories each year.   [More]

• Five Hidden Dangers of Obesity (preview)

  10 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  By now it is common knowledge that being severely overweight puts people at increased risk of suffering from heart disease, stroke and diabetes and that obesity--defined as weighing at least 20 percent more than the high side of normal--is on the rise. According to one estimate, the U.S. will be home to 65 million more obese people in 2030 than it is today, leading to an additional six million or more cases of heart disease and stroke and another eight million cases of type 2 diabetes. Many clinicians have already begun seeing families in which the grandparents are healthier and living longer…

• Key Findings on Higgs Boson, Alzheimer's Drugs, Lake Vostok Set to Emerge in 2012

  3 Jan 2012 | 4:00 pm

  Let's talk about Earth [More]

• Is the Shift-Worker Diet an Occupational Hazard?

  28 Dec 2011 | 10:04 pm

  For shift workers, odd hours usually mean strange sleeping habits and unhealthy meals. And now an editorial in the journal Public Library of Science Medicine takes the position that unhealthy eating associated with unusual working hours could be considered a new form of occupational hazard. Because such eating is a risk factor for obesity and diabetes. [" Poor Diet in Shift Workers: A New Occupational Health Hazard? "] [More]

• How Does Meat in the Diet Take an Environmental Toll?

  28 Dec 2011 | 1:00 pm

  Dear EarthTalk : I heard that the less meat one eats, the better it is for the environment. How so? [More]

• 

  Scientific American Topic - Pain

• PAIN Relief: India on Track to Be Declared Polio-Free Next Month

  9 Jan 2012 | 1:30 pm

  In the mid-2000s, when scientists questioned whether the campaign to rid the world of polio could succeed, skeptics pointed to a problem that some called PAIN . [More]

• Silky Micro-Needles Could Make Shots Pain-Free

  29 Dec 2011 | 5:33 pm

  Nobody likes getting shots. But what if you could make the needles so tiny that they broke the skin painlessly? Engineers from Tufts University have created such micro-needles--made from the major protein in silk, fibroin. The work is in the journal Advanced Functional Materials .[Konstantinos Tsioris et al., " Fabrication of Silk Micro-Needles for Controlled-Release Drug Delivery "] [More]

• Common Brain Mechanisms Underlie Supernatural Perceptions (preview)

  29 Dec 2011 | 12:00 pm

  You may have never personally caught sight of Jesus Christ’s face in a potato chip, but you have likely succumbed to an equally improbable belief at some point in your life. Many people claim that ghosts exist or that their dreams can predict the future. Some individuals even think they have seen the face of the Virgin Mary in a grilled cheese sandwich and Mother Teresa in a cinnamon bun. [More]

• It's Plain the Rain Ups Chili Peppers' Pain

  21 Dec 2011 | 10:25 am

  Spiciness is a chili pepper's best defense against seed-attacking microbes. But not all chilies are hot. Because producing that heat comes at a price. So says a study in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B . [David C. Haak et al., " Why are not all chilies hot? A trade-off limits pungency "] [More]

• Fiction Hones Social Skills (preview)

  20 Nov 2011 | 7:00 am

  We recognize Robert Louis Stevenson’s Long John Silver by his commanding presence, his stoicism and the absence of his left leg, cut off below the hip. Although we think we know the roguish Silver, characters such as he are not of this world, as Stevenson himself admitted in Longman’s Magazine in 1884. He described fictional characters as being like circles--abstractions. Scientists use circles to solve problems in physics, and writers and readers likewise use fictional characters to think about people in the social world. [More]

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  Scientific American Topic - Pediatrics

• Baby Monkeys with 6 Genomes Are Scientific First

  6 Jan 2012 | 6:00 pm

  They look like ordinary baby rhesus macaques , but Hex, Roku and Chimero are the world's first chimeric monkeys, each with cells from the genomes of as many as six rhesus monkeys. [More]

• Diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder Is Often Flawed

  4 Jan 2012 | 9:30 am

  This past June renowned clinical psychologist Marsha M. Linehan of the University of Washington made a striking admission. Known for her pioneering work on borderline personality disorder (BPD), a severe and intractable psychiatric condition, 68-year-old Linehan announced that as an adolescent, she had been hospitalized for BPD. Suicidal and self-destructive, the teenage Linehan had slashed her limbs repeatedly with knives and other sharp objects and banged her head violently against the hospital walls. The hospital’s discharge summary in 1963 described her as “one of the most…

• Hit the Gym to Help Hit the Books

  3 Jan 2012 | 7:50 pm

  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. And a worse student. Regular exercise--whether in gym class or less formally in a local park--has been shown to improve kids' mood and short-term focusing abilities. Now a new systematic analysis of numerous studies finds that keeping kids active also boosts their academic performance. The paper is in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine . [Amika Singh et al., " Physical Activity and Performance at School: A Systematic Review of the Literature Including a Methodological Quality Assessment "] [More]

• U.S. Rolls Out Tough Rules on Coal Plant Pollution

  21 Dec 2011 | 5:00 pm

  (Reuters) - The Obama administration on Wednesday unveiled the first-ever standards to slash mercury emissions from coal-fired plants , a move aimed at protecting public health that critics say will kill jobs as plants shut down. [More]

• Could Public Health Benefits Make Combating Climate Change Free?

  21 Dec 2011 | 1:21 pm

  DURBAN, South Africa--Former entomologist Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum of the World Health Organization worries about nosebleeds more than the average person. That's because he's one of the estimated 12 million people worldwide afflicted with leishmaniasis --a potentially fatal parasitic disease characterized most often by lesions on the skin and/or mucus membranes--caused by the bite of a sandfly. [More]

• 

  Scientific American Topic - Respiratory Medicine

• Key Findings on Higgs Boson, Alzheimer's Drugs, Lake Vostok Set to Emerge in 2012

  3 Jan 2012 | 4:00 pm

  Let's talk about Earth [More]

• U.S. Rolls Out Tough Rules on Coal Plant Pollution

  21 Dec 2011 | 5:00 pm

  (Reuters) - The Obama administration on Wednesday unveiled the first-ever standards to slash mercury emissions from coal-fired plants , a move aimed at protecting public health that critics say will kill jobs as plants shut down. [More]

• Could Public Health Benefits Make Combating Climate Change Free?

  21 Dec 2011 | 1:21 pm

  DURBAN, South Africa--Former entomologist Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum of the World Health Organization worries about nosebleeds more than the average person. That's because he's one of the estimated 12 million people worldwide afflicted with leishmaniasis --a potentially fatal parasitic disease characterized most often by lesions on the skin and/or mucus membranes--caused by the bite of a sandfly. [More]

• How Ralph Steinman Raced to Develop a Cancer Vaccine--And Save His Life (preview)

  20 Dec 2011 | 11:04 am

  Peering through a microscope at a plate of cells one day, Ralph M. Steinman spied something no one had ever seen before. It was the early 1970s, and he was a researcher at the Rockefeller University on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. At the time, scientists were still piecing together the basic building blocks of the immune system. They had figured out that there are B cells, white blood cells that help to identify foreign invaders, and T cells, another type of white blood cell that attacks those invaders. What puzzled them, however, was what triggered those T cells and B cells to go to…

• Good Health Depends on More Than Great Doctors and Fine Hospitals

  14 Dec 2011 | 11:00 pm

  As mayor of Kansas City, Kan., Joe Reardon is justifiably proud of the University of Kansas Medical Center, which has trained several generations of physicians and nurses for more than 100 years. After all, the medical center is consistently rated as the best hospital and treatment center in the state, according to a popular ranking of health institutions. So when Mayor Reardon--who heads the government of both the city and Wyandotte County, in which it sits--first learned that Wyandotte had come in dead last among the state’s counties in a rigorous analysis of health measurements in…

• 

  Scientific American Topic - Smoking

• Casual Marijuana Smoking Not Harmful to Lungs

  10 Jan 2012 | 5:25 pm

  It wouldn't have mattered if Bill Clinton inhaled, as far as his lungs are concerned. Smoking up to a joint per day doesn't seem to decrease lung function, according to a study published in Jan. 11 edition of Journal of the American Medical Association. [More]

• Yeti Crabs, Ghost Octopi Found at 1st Antarctic Deep-Sea Vents

  3 Jan 2012 | 6:00 pm

  Scientists doing their first exploring of deep-sea vents in the Antarctic have uncovered a  world unlike anything found around other hydrothermal vents, one populated by new species of anemones, predatory sea stars, and piles of hairy-chested yeti crabs. [More]

• Duh! 11 Obvious Science Findings of 2011

  31 Dec 2011 | 6:00 am

  In science, it's not enough to think something is so. Researchers must show that what  we believe to be true is in fact true, proven through statistically significant and reproducible results. Questioning assumptions is, after all, what science is about . [More]

• Good Health Depends on More Than Great Doctors and Fine Hospitals

  14 Dec 2011 | 11:00 pm

  As mayor of Kansas City, Kan., Joe Reardon is justifiably proud of the University of Kansas Medical Center, which has trained several generations of physicians and nurses for more than 100 years. After all, the medical center is consistently rated as the best hospital and treatment center in the state, according to a popular ranking of health institutions. So when Mayor Reardon--who heads the government of both the city and Wyandotte County, in which it sits--first learned that Wyandotte had come in dead last among the state’s counties in a rigorous analysis of health measurements in…

• Epigenetics Offers New Clues to Mental Illness (preview)

  5 Dec 2011 | 7:30 am

  Matt is a history teacher. his twin brother, greg, is a drug addict. (Their names have been changed to protect their anonymity.) Growing up in the Boston area, both boys did well in high school: they were strong students in the classroom and decent athletes on the field, and they got along with their peers. Like many young people, the brothers snuck the occasional beer or cigarette and experimented with marijuana. Then, in college, they tried cocaine. For Greg, the experience derailed his life. [More]

• 

  Scientific American - Space

• YouTube SpaceLab top 60 Global Finalists Chosen!

  27 Jan 2012 | 2:21 pm

  Take a look at what some clever American teens have come up with as an idea for an experiment on the International Space Station!  [More]

• Apollo 1: The Fire That Shocked NASA

  27 Jan 2012 | 5:52 am

  The Apollo 1 Command Module after the fire that claimed the lives of Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee. Credit: NASA. NASA s Apollo program began with one of the worst disasters the organization has ever faced. A routine prelaunch test turned fatal when a fire ripped through the spacecraft s crew cabin killing all three astronauts. Today marks the 45th anniversary of the Apollo 1 fire, a tragic and preventable accident. There were warning signs, similar accidents that had claimed lives both in the United States and abroad. The Apollo 1 crew could have been saved from a gruesome death.

• #SciAmBlogs Thursday - Actinides, Roy Chapman Andrews, Balloons in Space, Jumping Spiders and more

  26 Jan 2012 | 11:13 pm

  - Christie Wilcox – Blogging Science While Female the Storify   [More]

• Primitive Attraction: Magnetized Moon Rock Points to Lunar Core's Active Past

  26 Jan 2012 | 1:01 pm

  The moon of today is a static orb with little to no internal activity; for all intents and purposes it appears to be a dead, dusty pebble of a world. But billions of years ago the moon may have been a place of far more dynamism--literally. [More]

• Could a Balloon Fly in Outer Space?

  26 Jan 2012 | 12:28 pm

  Here s the sort of crazy idea that animates our office conversation at Scientific American . It all started with my colleague Michael Moyer s joke that a certain politician could build his moon base using a balloon: just capture the hot air and float all the way up. Ha ha, we all know that balloons don t work in outer space.But is that really true? Why couldn t they? [More]

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  Scientific American Topic - Mars

• Storybook Wishes for Martian Rovers

  15 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  The Martian rovers Opportunity and Spirit have represented optimism, hope and even cuteness to millions of people dreaming about discoveries on the Red Planet. [More]

• Three Tiny Exoplanets Suggest Solar System Not So Special

  11 Jan 2012 | 7:30 pm

  Adding to its already long roster of firsts , NASA's Kepler spacecraft has found the three smallest extrasolar planets ever detected -- all of them smaller than Earth, and the most diminutive no larger than Mars. The newly discovered trio forms a miniature planetary system orbiting a cool, dim red dwarf star called KOI-961. [More]

• Man from Mars: Health and Nutrition Research at Mars, Inc., and Beyond

  5 Jan 2012 | 6:02 pm

  [More]

• Key Findings on Higgs Boson, Alzheimer's Drugs, Lake Vostok Set to Emerge in 2012

  3 Jan 2012 | 4:00 pm

  Let's talk about Earth [More]

• Off the Beam: Did a U.S. Radar Research Station Disable Russia's Phobos Probe?

  14 Dec 2011 | 6:00 am

  After 19 attempts over 51 years, Russia has yet to chalk up a fully successful mission to Mars . That includes its ambitious Phobos–Grunt probe , launched November 8 from Kazakhstan and now stranded in low Earth orbit . Unable to regain control of the spacecraft, the Russians now expect it to fall back to Earth around January 9. [More]

• 

  Scientific American - Space

• YouTube SpaceLab top 60 Global Finalists Chosen!

  27 Jan 2012 | 2:21 pm

  Take a look at what some clever American teens have come up with as an idea for an experiment on the International Space Station!  [More]

• Apollo 1: The Fire That Shocked NASA

  27 Jan 2012 | 5:52 am

  The Apollo 1 Command Module after the fire that claimed the lives of Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee. Credit: NASA. NASA s Apollo program began with one of the worst disasters the organization has ever faced. A routine prelaunch test turned fatal when a fire ripped through the spacecraft s crew cabin killing all three astronauts. Today marks the 45th anniversary of the Apollo 1 fire, a tragic and preventable accident. There were warning signs, similar accidents that had claimed lives both in the United States and abroad. The Apollo 1 crew could have been saved from a gruesome death.

• #SciAmBlogs Thursday - Actinides, Roy Chapman Andrews, Balloons in Space, Jumping Spiders and more

  26 Jan 2012 | 11:13 pm

  - Christie Wilcox – Blogging Science While Female the Storify   [More]

• Primitive Attraction: Magnetized Moon Rock Points to Lunar Core's Active Past

  26 Jan 2012 | 1:01 pm

  The moon of today is a static orb with little to no internal activity; for all intents and purposes it appears to be a dead, dusty pebble of a world. But billions of years ago the moon may have been a place of far more dynamism--literally. [More]

• Could a Balloon Fly in Outer Space?

  26 Jan 2012 | 12:28 pm

  Here s the sort of crazy idea that animates our office conversation at Scientific American . It all started with my colleague Michael Moyer s joke that a certain politician could build his moon base using a balloon: just capture the hot air and float all the way up. Ha ha, we all know that balloons don t work in outer space.But is that really true? Why couldn t they? [More]

• 

  Scientific American Topic - Planetary Science

• Binary Stars Have Plenty of Planets

  12 Jan 2012 | 6:19 pm

  Several planets in our solar system have multiple moons. But in other planetary systems the orbital dance can get far more compelling. Astronomers are finding that some faraway worlds orbit multiple suns. [More]

• Three Tiny Exoplanets Suggest Solar System Not So Special

  11 Jan 2012 | 7:30 pm

  Adding to its already long roster of firsts , NASA's Kepler spacecraft has found the three smallest extrasolar planets ever detected -- all of them smaller than Earth, and the most diminutive no larger than Mars. The newly discovered trio forms a miniature planetary system orbiting a cool, dim red dwarf star called KOI-961. [More]

• A Plenitude of Planets: Galactic Search Finds Exoplanets Are More Commonplace Than Stars

  11 Jan 2012 | 1:30 pm

  The next time you look up at the night sky and find yourself marveling at the number of stars overhead, know that you are only seeing part of the magnificent bounty that our galaxy holds. Most of those Milky Way stars are not isolated orbs. Rather an average star has at least one planetary companion , invisible to the naked eye and in most cases as yet unseen by telescopes, according to a new analysis. [More]

• The Top 10 Science Stories of 2011

  22 Dec 2011 | 10:00 am

  Inevitably, year-end lists invite plenty of debate and criticism, and Scientific American 's is no exception. Certainly, we could have included the discovery of new worlds beyond our solar system, including Kepler 22 b, an exoplanet in the "Goldilocks" zone of habitability, as well as the first known Earth-size exoplanets . Or noted the accumulating evidence suggesting that hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, to retrieve natural gas is likely to contaminate water supplies. (Final New York State regulations, expected in mid-2012, could determine the future of fracking in the U.S.)…

• It's a Small World: Kepler Spacecraft Discovers First Known Earth-Size Exoplanets

  20 Dec 2011 | 12:01 pm

  NASA's Kepler spacecraft is starting to put the pieces together in its search for virtual Earth twins in other planetary systems. Kepler, which launched in 2009 , is on the lookout for planets that are about the size of Earth and have temperate surface conditions. One half of that formula was realized on December 5 when mission scientists announced the discovery of a planet in the so-called habitable zone, called Kepler 22 b , a few times larger than Earth. Now Kepler has located its first two Earth-size worlds, and although neither are plausibly hospitable to life, it seems only a matter…

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  Scientific American Topic - Spacecraft

• Catching a Gravity Wave: Canceled Laser Space Antenna May Still Fly

  20 Jan 2012 | 6:00 am

  Ripples in the fabric of spacetime regularly zip across the universe from titanic cosmic events, such as the mergers of supermassive black holes millions to billions of times the mass of the sun. These so-called gravitational waves ought to be ubiquitous but faint, and no experiment has yet registered the disturbance caused by a passing wave. The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna was supposed to do just that. The spaceborne observatory, also known as LISA, was to be a joint mission between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) to detect gravitational waves and give scientists a whole new…

• Solar Swan Song: NASA Satellite Witnesses a Comet's Plunge into the Sun

  19 Jan 2012 | 1:45 pm

  As dramatic exits go, it's on par with Major T. J. "King" Kong riding a falling nuclear bomb like a rodeo bull at the end of Dr. Strangelove . A NASA spacecraft has documented a comet's demise as it plunged toward the sun at 600 kilometers per second, broke apart and vaporized inside the solar atmosphere. [More]

• Is Space Digital? (preview)

  17 Jan 2012 | 10:12 am

  Craig Hogan believes that the world is fuzzy. This is not a metaphor. Hogan, a physicist at the University of Chicago and director of the Fermilab Particle Astrophysics Center near Batavia, Ill., thinks that if we were to peer down at the tiniest subdivisions of space and time, we would find a universe filled with an intrinsic jitter, the busy hum of static. This hum comes not from particles bouncing in and out of being or other kinds of quantum froth that physicists have argued about in the past. Rather Hogan’s noise would come about if space was not, as we have long assumed, smooth…

• Storybook Wishes for Martian Rovers

  15 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  The Martian rovers Opportunity and Spirit have represented optimism, hope and even cuteness to millions of people dreaming about discoveries on the Red Planet. [More]

• Are Physical Constants Really Constant?

  14 Jan 2012 | 11:00 pm

  Some things never change. physicists call them the constants of nature. Such quantities as the velocity of light, c , Newton’s constant of gravitation, G , and the mass of the electron, m e , are assumed to be the same at all places and times in the universe. They form the scaffolding around which the theories of physics are erected, and they define the fabric of our universe. Physics has progressed by making ever more accurate measurements of their values. [More]

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  Scientific American - Technology

• Microbubbles Cut Cost of Algae-Derived Biofuel

  27 Jan 2012 | 6:47 pm

  Algae naturally produce oil. When it’s processed, that oil can be turned into biofuel, an alternative energy source. There’s just one snag--harvesting the oil from algae-filled water is prohibitively expensive. But researchers have come up with an effervescent solution: bubbles smaller than the width of a human hair can help reduce the costs of collecting algae oil. [More]

• How Google's New Privacy Policy Could Affect You

  27 Jan 2012 | 4:00 pm

  You’re on the way to a meeting. Traffic seems to be slowing. A text comes in: “You’re going to be late. Take the next exit for alternate route.” It’s from Google. [More]

• Readers Respond to "Toxins All Around Us" and Other Articles

  27 Jan 2012 | 11:00 am

  CHEMISTRY COMMENTARY [More]

• Can Too Much Information Harm Patients? [Excerpt]

  27 Jan 2012 | 10:00 am

  Editor's Note: The following is an excerpt from The Creative Destruction of Medicine: How the Digital Revolution Will Create Better Health Care (Basic Books, 2012), by Eric Topol, a professor of innovative medicine and the director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute. [More]

• Mourning Digitally

  27 Jan 2012 | 8:19 am

  Sleepy Hollow Graveyard. Photo by KDCosta, December 2011. Ed Note: Another flashback from the archives of AiP this Friday, though a sombre one at that. It’s rainy and dreary here in New York City, and my thoughts are a bit dark today. [More]

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  Scientific American - Energy Technology

• Has Petroleum Production Peaked, Ending the Era of Easy Oil?

  25 Jan 2012 | 3:31 pm

  Despite major oil finds off Brazil's coast, new fields in North Dakota and ongoing increases in the conversion of tar sands to oil in Canada , fresh supplies of petroleum are only just enough to offset the production decline from older fields. At best, the world is now living off an oil plateau--roughly 75 million barrels of oil produced each and every day--since at least 2005, according to a new comment published in Nature on January 26. ( Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.) That is a year earlier than estimated by the International Energy Agency--an energy cartel…

• State of the Union: Research, Technology and Energy

  25 Jan 2012 | 12:00 pm

  Welcome to the Scientific American podcast Science Talk, posted on January 25th, 2012. I’m Steve Mirsky. Last night, President Obama delivered the State of the Union Address. Here is a little more than six minutes of it, the sections dealing with research, technology and energy. Anywhere I’ve made an edit in the audio, you’ll hear a musical interlude. And I’ve lowered the volume on some of the applause for the sake of all of our ears. I think science-interested listeners across the political spectrum can find points of both strong agreement and major disagreement in…

• Worried about Air Pollution? Don't Hide Indoors

  22 Jan 2012 | 8:00 am

  You need to get out more. Whether it's smog or tiny particles of pollution , Americans face the bulk of their health risks from bad air inside. Why? We spend most of our time indoors. [More]

• The Evolving Truth about Fracking for Natural Gas [Updated]

  20 Jan 2012 | 2:36 pm

  [More]

• Recommended: Science on Ice: Four Polar Expeditions (preview)

  20 Jan 2012 | 10:00 am

  Science on Ice: Four Polar Expeditions [More]

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  Scientific American Topic - Green Technology

• Genetically Engineered Stomach Microbe Converts Seaweed into Ethanol

  19 Jan 2012 | 2:01 pm

  Seaweed may well be an ideal plant to turn into biofuel. It grows in much of the two thirds of the planet that is underwater, so it wouldn't crowd out food crops the way corn for ethanol does. Because it draws its own nutrients and water from the sea, it requires no fertilizer or irrigation. Most importantly for would-be biofuel-makers, it contains no lignin--a strong strand of complex sugars that stiffens plant stalks and poses a big obstacle to turning land-based plants such as switchgrass into biofuel . [More]

• Green Chemist: A Q&A with Departing EPA Science Advisor Paul Anastas

  17 Jan 2012 | 1:15 pm

  Editor's Note :  Paul Anastas, the father of green chemistry, is leaving his high-ranking post at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency next month and returning to Yale University . During an interview with Jane Kay of Environmental Health News, Anastas, who will remain at his post for another month or so, said there has been a "growing realization across EPA" that green chemistry "can meet environmental and economic goals simultaneously." During his two years as science advisor and assistant administrator at EPA's Office of Research and Development ,…

• Is Space Digital? (preview)

  17 Jan 2012 | 10:12 am

  Craig Hogan believes that the world is fuzzy. This is not a metaphor. Hogan, a physicist at the University of Chicago and director of the Fermilab Particle Astrophysics Center near Batavia, Ill., thinks that if we were to peer down at the tiniest subdivisions of space and time, we would find a universe filled with an intrinsic jitter, the busy hum of static. This hum comes not from particles bouncing in and out of being or other kinds of quantum froth that physicists have argued about in the past. Rather Hogan’s noise would come about if space was not, as we have long assumed, smooth…

• Gee Whiz, Why Not Recycle Urine for Drinking Water?

  16 Jan 2012 | 10:32 am

  Americans produce 32 billion gallons of sewage every day. And we need to start drinking it. After treating it, of course. So argues a report from the U.S. National Research Council . Why drink reprocessed pee? Because freshwater supplies are getting squeezed .  [More]

• EPA Sees Risks to Water, Workers in New York State Fracking Rules

  14 Jan 2012 | 8:00 am

  New York's emerging plan to regulate natural gas drilling in the gas-rich Marcellus Shale needs to go further to safeguard drinking water, environmentally sensitive areas and gas industry workers, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has informed state officials. [More]

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  Scientific American Topic - How Things Work

• How to Predict the Future of Technology

  18 Jan 2012 | 11:00 am

  As a tech columnist, I’m often asked to speak about the future of technology. Well, sure. Who doesn’t want to know what the future holds? Yet I’d be in much better shape if I were asked to predict the future of politics or bass fishing. Because nothing changes faster, and more unpredictably, than consumer technology. [More]

• Shape-Shifting: Researchers Change How Monkeys See in 3-D

  11 Jan 2012 | 1:00 pm

  At the backs of your eyeballs, on the living projector screens called retinas, your corneas display upside-down 2-D images of the world around you. With some complex mental origami , your brain transforms those flat worlds into a beautiful 3-D model of everything you see. In a new study, researchers changed how monkeys perceived 3-D optical illusions by stimulating particular clusters of neurons in their brains. The researchers think the region they tweaked is where 3-D modeling happens. [More]

• How Siri Makes Computers (and Coders) More Human

  1 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  The most buzzed-about new feature in the latest iPhone is Siri, the virtual minion. You can give her an amazing range of spoken commands, without any training or special syntax, and marvel as she does your bidding. [More]

• How to Make the Food System More Energy Efficient

  29 Dec 2011 | 7:00 am

  For more than 50 years fossil fuels and fertilizers have been the key ingredients in much greater global food production and distribution. The food-energy relationship has been a good one, but it is now entering a new era. Food production is rising sharply, requiring more carbon-based fuels and nitrogen-based fertilizers, both of which exacerbate global warming, river and ocean pollution, and a host of other ills. At the same time, many nations are grappling with how to reduce energy demand, especially demand for fossil fuels. [More]

• The Elephant in the Room: How Contraception Could Save Future Elephants from Culling

  22 Dec 2011 | 5:00 am

  In South Africa they have a problem, a big one: too many elephants. [More]

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  Scientific American Topic - Internet

• SOPA Opera: White House Shuts Down Online Anti-Piracy Bill

  17 Jan 2012 | 4:30 pm

  Rather than deliver an ultimatum to those on either side of the debate, the recent White House statement related to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT IP Act of 2011 (PIPA) encourages the entertainment and technology industries to work together to find a solution. This call for a back-to-the-drawing-board approach to clamping down on Internet intellectual-property piracy while preserving free speech has many wondering whether lawmakers will simply rework SOPA (pdf) and PIPA (pdf) using different language or if they will take anti-SOPA and anti-PIPA concerns to heart. [More]

• Ballot Secrecy Keeps Voting Technology at Bay

  9 Jan 2012 | 6:50 pm

  Voters in the recent Iowa caucuses and Tuesday's New Hampshire primary will rely on paper ballots as they have for generations. In the very next primary on January 21, South Carolinians will vote with backlit touch-screen computers. [More]

• Duh! 11 Obvious Science Findings of 2011

  31 Dec 2011 | 6:00 am

  In science, it's not enough to think something is so. Researchers must show that what  we believe to be true is in fact true, proven through statistically significant and reproducible results. Questioning assumptions is, after all, what science is about . [More]

• Internet Changes How We Remember

  23 Dec 2011 | 11:00 pm

  Four years ago Columbia University psychologist Betsy Sparrow turned to her husband after looking up some movie trivia online and asked, “What did we do before the Internet?” Thus, Sparrow set out to investigate how Google, and all the information it proffers, has changed how people think. Four psychology experiments later Sparrow has her answer, which was published in Science this past August. “[The Web] is an external memory storage space, and we make it responsible for remembering things,” she says. [More]

• Did Steve Jobs Favor or Oppose Internet Freedom?

  30 Nov 2011 | 7:00 am

  In 1977, 22-year-old Steve Jobs introduced the world to one of the first self-contained personal computers, the Apple II. The machine was a bold departure from previous products built to perform specific tasks: turn it on, and there was only a blinking cursor awaiting further instruction. Some owners were inspired to program the machines themselves, but others could load up software written and shared or sold by others more skilled or inspired. [More]

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  Scientific American - Medical Technology

• Can Too Much Information Harm Patients? [Excerpt]

  27 Jan 2012 | 10:00 am

  Editor's Note: The following is an excerpt from The Creative Destruction of Medicine: How the Digital Revolution Will Create Better Health Care (Basic Books, 2012), by Eric Topol, a professor of innovative medicine and the director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute. [More]

• Notion in Motion: Wireless Sensors Monitor Brain Waves on the Fly

  27 Jan 2012 | 6:00 am

  A fighter pilot heads back to base after a long mission, feeling spent. A warning light flashes on the control panel. Has she noticed? If so, is she focused enough to fix the problem? [More]

• Diabetes Mystery: Why Are Type 1 Cases Surging?

  24 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  When public health officials fret about the soaring incidence of diabetes in the U.S. and worldwide, they are generally referring to type 2 diabetes. About 90 percent of the nearly 350 million people around the world who have diabetes suffer from the type 2 form of the illness, which mostly starts causing problems in the 40s and 50s and is tied to the stress that extra pounds place on the body’s ability to regulate blood glucose. About 25 million people in the U.S. have type 2 diabetes, and another million have type 1 diabetes, which typically strikes in childhood and can be controlled…

• 100 Years Ago: Vickers Machine Gun

  21 Jan 2012 | 6:59 am

  February 1962 [More]

• Digital Health Care Puts Control in Consumer Hands

  19 Jan 2012 | 9:51 pm

  For years, do-it-yourself health care meant looking up your symptoms on WebMD. But smart phones are extending our control, with apps that let people plan and track workouts, monitor important health indicators, and even locate nearby clinical trials. Apple's App Store alone offers thousands of mobile health apps. [More]

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  Scientific American Topic - Defense Technology

• Solar Swan Song: NASA Satellite Witnesses a Comet's Plunge into the Sun

  19 Jan 2012 | 1:45 pm

  As dramatic exits go, it's on par with Major T. J. "King" Kong riding a falling nuclear bomb like a rodeo bull at the end of Dr. Strangelove . A NASA spacecraft has documented a comet's demise as it plunged toward the sun at 600 kilometers per second, broke apart and vaporized inside the solar atmosphere. [More]

• Is Space Digital? (preview)

  17 Jan 2012 | 10:12 am

  Craig Hogan believes that the world is fuzzy. This is not a metaphor. Hogan, a physicist at the University of Chicago and director of the Fermilab Particle Astrophysics Center near Batavia, Ill., thinks that if we were to peer down at the tiniest subdivisions of space and time, we would find a universe filled with an intrinsic jitter, the busy hum of static. This hum comes not from particles bouncing in and out of being or other kinds of quantum froth that physicists have argued about in the past. Rather Hogan’s noise would come about if space was not, as we have long assumed, smooth…

• How 3-D Imaging Helped Halt Germany's War Machine in World War II [Video]

  16 Jan 2012 | 8:00 am

  Before satellite images and drones could pinpoint the exact location of enemy targets, warfare was often more like a game of Battleship: a complex series of guesses based on spotty information. [More]

• A Brief History of Clocks

  14 Jan 2012 | 11:00 pm

  Humankind’s efforts to tell time have helped drive the evolution of our technology and science throughout history. The need to gauge the divisions of the day and night led the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans to create sundials, water clocks and other early chronometric tools. Western Europeans adopted these tech­nologies, but by the 13th century, demand for a dependable timekeeping instrument led medieval artisans to invent the mechanical clock. Although this new device satisfied the requirements of monastic and urban communities, it was too inaccurate and unreliable for…

• Patent Watch

  14 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  Airborne power station : As a longtime resident of Seattle, Boeing engineer Brian J. Tillotson had often gazed up at the clouds and wondered how anyone living in such a sun-deprived place could ever hope to take advan­tage of solar power, the main offering of Boeing subsidiary Spectrolab. More than three years ago he came up with the answer: Why not build a power station above the clouds? [More]

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  Scientific American Topic - Defense Technology

• Solar Swan Song: NASA Satellite Witnesses a Comet's Plunge into the Sun

  19 Jan 2012 | 1:45 pm

  As dramatic exits go, it's on par with Major T. J. "King" Kong riding a falling nuclear bomb like a rodeo bull at the end of Dr. Strangelove . A NASA spacecraft has documented a comet's demise as it plunged toward the sun at 600 kilometers per second, broke apart and vaporized inside the solar atmosphere. [More]

• Is Space Digital? (preview)

  17 Jan 2012 | 10:12 am

  Craig Hogan believes that the world is fuzzy. This is not a metaphor. Hogan, a physicist at the University of Chicago and director of the Fermilab Particle Astrophysics Center near Batavia, Ill., thinks that if we were to peer down at the tiniest subdivisions of space and time, we would find a universe filled with an intrinsic jitter, the busy hum of static. This hum comes not from particles bouncing in and out of being or other kinds of quantum froth that physicists have argued about in the past. Rather Hogan’s noise would come about if space was not, as we have long assumed, smooth…

• How 3-D Imaging Helped Halt Germany's War Machine in World War II [Video]

  16 Jan 2012 | 8:00 am

  Before satellite images and drones could pinpoint the exact location of enemy targets, warfare was often more like a game of Battleship: a complex series of guesses based on spotty information. [More]

• A Brief History of Clocks

  14 Jan 2012 | 11:00 pm

  Humankind’s efforts to tell time have helped drive the evolution of our technology and science throughout history. The need to gauge the divisions of the day and night led the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans to create sundials, water clocks and other early chronometric tools. Western Europeans adopted these tech­nologies, but by the 13th century, demand for a dependable timekeeping instrument led medieval artisans to invent the mechanical clock. Although this new device satisfied the requirements of monastic and urban communities, it was too inaccurate and unreliable for…

• Patent Watch

  14 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  Airborne power station : As a longtime resident of Seattle, Boeing engineer Brian J. Tillotson had often gazed up at the clouds and wondered how anyone living in such a sun-deprived place could ever hope to take advan­tage of solar power, the main offering of Boeing subsidiary Spectrolab. More than three years ago he came up with the answer: Why not build a power station above the clouds? [More]

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  Scientific American Topic - Nanotechnology

• Ohm Run: One-Atom-Tall Wires Could Extend Life of Moore's Law

  5 Jan 2012 | 2:05 pm

  There may be a bit more room at the bottom, after all. [More]

• Gingrich Tops Scientific American 's Geek Guide to the 2012 GOP Candidates

  3 Jan 2012 | 4:00 am

  The contenders for the Republican nomination in the 2012 U.S. presidential election may appear to be a fairly uniform group of middle-aged white conservatives, but when it comes to issues of science, technology and overall geek cred, none of these candidates is cut from the same cloth. In fact, Newt Gingrich nudges out Mitt Romney and Ron Paul in Scientific American 's overall ranking, based on the former Congressman's engagement in issues related to energy, the Internet and military weapons, combined with his mastery of top online tools such as Twitter and a healthy appetite for…

• Speaking Out on the "Quiet Crisis" (preview)

  16 Dec 2011 | 7:00 am

  When Shirley Ann Jackson was in elementary school in the 1950s, she would prowl her family’s backyard, collecting bumblebees, yellow jackets and wasps. She would bottle them in mayonnaise jars and test which flowers they liked best and which species were the most aggressive. She dutifully recorded her observations in a notebook, discovering, for instance, that she could alter their daily rhythms by putting them under the dark porch in the middle of the day. The most important lesson she took away from these experiments was not about science but compassion. “Don’t imprison…

• World-Changing Ideas (preview)

  15 Nov 2011 | 10:30 am

  Revolutions often spring from the simplest of ideas. When a young inventor named Steve Jobs wanted to provide computing power to “people who have no computer experience and don’t particularly care to gain any,” he ushered us from the cumbersome technology of mainframes and command-line prompts to the breezy advances of the Macintosh and iPhone. His idea helped to forever change our relationship with technology. [More]

• Taut-Tech: Smaller, Softer Artificial Muscles to Help Bring Power to Toys and Cell Phones

  9 Nov 2011 | 2:00 pm

  Artificial muscles already help human eyes blink , robotic fish swim and mechanical arms in space replace solar panels. Now a new, potentially wearable type of artificial muscle is expected to do all of those things while being lighter, smaller, softer and cheaper. [More]

• 

  Scientific American Topic - Optical Physics

• The Science of the Glory (preview)

  16 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  On a daytime flight pick a window seat that will allow you to locate the shadow of the airplane on the clouds; this requires figuring out the direction of travel relative to the position of the sun. If you are lucky, you may be rewarded with one of the most beautiful of all meteorological sights: a multicolored-light halo surrounding the shadow. Its iridescent rings are not those of a rainbow but of a different and more subtle effect called a glory. It is most striking when the clouds are closest because then it dominates the whole horizon. [More]

• A Brief History of Clocks

  14 Jan 2012 | 11:00 pm

  Humankind’s efforts to tell time have helped drive the evolution of our technology and science throughout history. The need to gauge the divisions of the day and night led the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans to create sundials, water clocks and other early chronometric tools. Western Europeans adopted these tech­nologies, but by the 13th century, demand for a dependable timekeeping instrument led medieval artisans to invent the mechanical clock. Although this new device satisfied the requirements of monastic and urban communities, it was too inaccurate and unreliable for…

• Future Studies Will Extend Census of Middleweight Black Holes

  12 Jan 2012 | 7:05 am

  Editor's note: In her article, " Goldilocks Black Holes ," Jenny E. Greene discusses the search for black holes with masses ranging from roughly 1,000 suns to a million suns--middleweights on the cosmic scale. These intermediate-mass holes may provide clues about the origins of galaxies and the supermassive black holes (millions to billions of suns in mass) found at galaxy centers. Astronomers have now found hundreds of middleweight holes, in particular by analyzing data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, which has been recording light from galaxies across a large area of the…

• Middleweight Black Holes: Clues to the Universe's Evolution (preview)

  12 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  Astronomers have known for some 10 years that nearly every large galaxy contains at its core an immense black hole--an object having such intense gravity that even light cannot escape. The death of stars can produce small black holes--with masses ranging from about three to 100 times the mass of the sun--but such stellar-mass black holes are tiny compared with the behemoths at the centers of galaxies, measuring millions to billions of solar masses. [More]

• A Plenitude of Planets: Galactic Search Finds Exoplanets Are More Commonplace Than Stars

  11 Jan 2012 | 1:30 pm

  The next time you look up at the night sky and find yourself marveling at the number of stars overhead, know that you are only seeing part of the magnificent bounty that our galaxy holds. Most of those Milky Way stars are not isolated orbs. Rather an average star has at least one planetary companion , invisible to the naked eye and in most cases as yet unseen by telescopes, according to a new analysis. [More]

• 

  Scientific American Topic - Stem Cells

• Baby Monkeys with 6 Genomes Are Scientific First

  6 Jan 2012 | 6:00 pm

  They look like ordinary baby rhesus macaques , but Hex, Roku and Chimero are the world's first chimeric monkeys, each with cells from the genomes of as many as six rhesus monkeys. [More]

• November 2011 Advances Section Additional Resources

  11 Nov 2011 | 10:00 am

  The Advances section of Scientific American 's November issue took readers into the air with the world's highest flying geese, back in time with an unlikely ancestor, into space to rendezvous with some garbage, to the Internet for a new way of conducting clinical trials, and beyond. For readers interested in learning more about the developments described in this section, a list of further background material follows: "On the Trail of Space Trash" [More]

• You Say Embryo, I Say Parthenote

  4 Nov 2011 | 8:00 am

  U.S. stem cell scientists breathed a sigh of relief this July when a federal judge upheld the Obama administration’s expansion of stem cell research. He ruled that work on existing embryonic stem cell lines derived outside federally funded labs did not violate a ban on the destruction of embryos. Despite the legal victory, however, many investigators remain frustrated that a newer method for creating stem cells remains off-limits for funding.Human embryonic stem cells typically come from fertilized eggs. In 2007, however, scientists at International Stem Cell, a California-based biotech…

• Mississippi to Vote on "Personhood" of Fertilized Eggs

  1 Nov 2011 | 3:20 pm

  "When do you believe life begins?" Johnny DuPree, Democratic candidate for governor of Mississippi, asked during a public debate on October 14. The question was rhetorical, and DuPree's answer--not a surprise in one of the most socially conservative US states--was the same as that of his Republican opponent: "I believe life begins at conception." [More]

• Preliminary Human Experiments to Test Safety of Nerve Cell Transplants for Spinal Cord Paralysis

  19 Oct 2011 | 12:25 pm

  ROCKVILLE, Md.--A new experiment aimed at achieving actor Christopher Reeve's dream of finding an effective treatment for spinal paralysis was announced this week at an international meeting of scientists and people with spinal cord injury sponsored by the United 2 Fight Paralysis Foundation. The approach, which already is shown to be promising in animals and avoids the need for patients to take immunosuppressive drugs, has not yet been proved effective in humans. Nonetheless, patients are excited to see this advance as they have been frustrated waiting for the first human trials of the new…

• 

  Scientific American - Biology

• Microbubbles Cut Cost of Algae-Derived Biofuel

  27 Jan 2012 | 6:47 pm

  Algae naturally produce oil. When it’s processed, that oil can be turned into biofuel, an alternative energy source. There’s just one snag--harvesting the oil from algae-filled water is prohibitively expensive. But researchers have come up with an effervescent solution: bubbles smaller than the width of a human hair can help reduce the costs of collecting algae oil. [More]

• Readers Respond to "Toxins All Around Us" and Other Articles

  27 Jan 2012 | 11:00 am

  CHEMISTRY COMMENTARY [More]

• Can Too Much Information Harm Patients? [Excerpt]

  27 Jan 2012 | 10:00 am

  Editor's Note: The following is an excerpt from The Creative Destruction of Medicine: How the Digital Revolution Will Create Better Health Care (Basic Books, 2012), by Eric Topol, a professor of innovative medicine and the director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute. [More]

• Notion in Motion: Wireless Sensors Monitor Brain Waves on the Fly

  27 Jan 2012 | 6:00 am

  A fighter pilot heads back to base after a long mission, feeling spent. A warning light flashes on the control panel. Has she noticed? If so, is she focused enough to fix the problem? [More]

• Designers of Exotic Materials Learn New Tricks from Animals (preview)

  26 Jan 2012 | 7:45 am

  Among the first things you notice when you step into the corner office of Harvard University professor Joanna Aizenberg are the playthings. Behind her desk sit a sand dollar, an azure butterfly mounted in a box, a plastic stand with long fibers that erupt in color when a switch is pulled, and haphazard rows of toys. Especially numerous are the Rubik’s cubes--the classic three-by-three, of course, but also ones with four, five, six and even seven mini cubes along each edge. An eight-year-old would be in heaven. [More]

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  Scientific American Topic - Allergies

• Digital Health Care Puts Control in Consumer Hands

  19 Jan 2012 | 9:51 pm

  For years, do-it-yourself health care meant looking up your symptoms on WebMD. But smart phones are extending our control, with apps that let people plan and track workouts, monitor important health indicators, and even locate nearby clinical trials. Apple's App Store alone offers thousands of mobile health apps. [More]

• Could Public Health Benefits Make Combating Climate Change Free?

  21 Dec 2011 | 1:21 pm

  DURBAN, South Africa--Former entomologist Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum of the World Health Organization worries about nosebleeds more than the average person. That's because he's one of the estimated 12 million people worldwide afflicted with leishmaniasis --a potentially fatal parasitic disease characterized most often by lesions on the skin and/or mucus membranes--caused by the bite of a sandfly. [More]

• Should Scientists Use Genetically Modified Insects to Fight Disease?

  24 Oct 2011 | 10:00 am

  In the November 2011 issue of Scientific American, author Bijal Trivedi looks at the ongoing controversies surrounding the use of genetically modified mosquitoes to fight dengue fever. We asked biologist Mark Q. Benedict and Helen Wallace, the director of GeneWatch UK , to illuminate the issues surrounding the release of genetically modified insects into the wild. Genetically Modified Mosquitoes Could Be an Important Tool in the Fight against Disease [More]

• The Wipeout Gene (preview)

  24 Oct 2011 | 8:00 am

  Outside Tapachula, Chiapas, Mexico--10 miles from Guatemala. To reach the cages, we follow the main highway out of town, driving past soy, cocoa, banana and lustrous dark-green mango plantations thriving in the rich volcanic soil. Past the tiny village of Rio Florido the road degenerates into an undulating dirt tract. We bump along on waves of baked mud until we reach a security checkpoint, guard at the ready. A sign posted on the barbed wire–enclosed compound pictures a mosquito flanked by a man and woman: Estos mosquitos genéticamente modificados requieren un manejo especial ,…

• Chlorine Accidents Take a Big Human Toll

  20 Oct 2011 | 11:15 am

  Beverly Martinez was sitting at her desk in the office of a California scrap metal recycling plant when she felt the blast rattle her window.One of her co-workers, Leonardo Morales Zavala, rushed through her door, struggling to breathe. “Run!” he yelled. He had just cut into a one-ton tank to recycle it in the yard – a football field away – and out poured a noxious substance. He didn't know what it was. [More]

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  Scientific American Topic - Autoimmune Disorders

• Five Hidden Dangers of Obesity (preview)

  10 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  By now it is common knowledge that being severely overweight puts people at increased risk of suffering from heart disease, stroke and diabetes and that obesity--defined as weighing at least 20 percent more than the high side of normal--is on the rise. According to one estimate, the U.S. will be home to 65 million more obese people in 2030 than it is today, leading to an additional six million or more cases of heart disease and stroke and another eight million cases of type 2 diabetes. Many clinicians have already begun seeing families in which the grandparents are healthier and living longer…

• Unusual Flavors Can Dampen Immune Response

  8 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  More than 100 years ago Ivan Pavlov famously observed that a dog salivated not only when fed but also on hearing a stimulus it associated with food. Since then, scientists have discovered many other seemingly autonomous processes that can be trained with sensory stimuli--including, most recently, our immune system. [More]

• Is the Shift-Worker Diet an Occupational Hazard?

  28 Dec 2011 | 10:04 pm

  For shift workers, odd hours usually mean strange sleeping habits and unhealthy meals. And now an editorial in the journal Public Library of Science Medicine takes the position that unhealthy eating associated with unusual working hours could be considered a new form of occupational hazard. Because such eating is a risk factor for obesity and diabetes. [" Poor Diet in Shift Workers: A New Occupational Health Hazard? "] [More]

• A New Path to Longevity (preview)

  20 Dec 2011 | 12:15 pm

  On a clear November morning in 1964 the Royal Canadian Navy’s Cape Scott embarked from Halifax, Nova Scotia, on a four-month expedition. Led by the late Stanley Skoryna, an enterprising McGill University professor, a team of 38 scientists onboard headed for Easter Island, a volcanic speck that juts out from the Pacific 2,200 miles west of Chile. Plans were afoot to build an airport on the remote island, famous for its mysterious sculptures of enormous heads, and the group wanted to study the people, flora and fauna while they remained largely untouched by modernity. [More]

• Good Health Depends on More Than Great Doctors and Fine Hospitals

  14 Dec 2011 | 11:00 pm

  As mayor of Kansas City, Kan., Joe Reardon is justifiably proud of the University of Kansas Medical Center, which has trained several generations of physicians and nurses for more than 100 years. After all, the medical center is consistently rated as the best hospital and treatment center in the state, according to a popular ranking of health institutions. So when Mayor Reardon--who heads the government of both the city and Wyandotte County, in which it sits--first learned that Wyandotte had come in dead last among the state’s counties in a rigorous analysis of health measurements in…

• 

  Scientific American - Biotechnology

• Can Too Much Information Harm Patients? [Excerpt]

  27 Jan 2012 | 10:00 am

  Editor's Note: The following is an excerpt from The Creative Destruction of Medicine: How the Digital Revolution Will Create Better Health Care (Basic Books, 2012), by Eric Topol, a professor of innovative medicine and the director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute. [More]

• Notion in Motion: Wireless Sensors Monitor Brain Waves on the Fly

  27 Jan 2012 | 6:00 am

  A fighter pilot heads back to base after a long mission, feeling spent. A warning light flashes on the control panel. Has she noticed? If so, is she focused enough to fix the problem? [More]

• Diabetes Mystery: Why Are Type 1 Cases Surging?

  24 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  When public health officials fret about the soaring incidence of diabetes in the U.S. and worldwide, they are generally referring to type 2 diabetes. About 90 percent of the nearly 350 million people around the world who have diabetes suffer from the type 2 form of the illness, which mostly starts causing problems in the 40s and 50s and is tied to the stress that extra pounds place on the body’s ability to regulate blood glucose. About 25 million people in the U.S. have type 2 diabetes, and another million have type 1 diabetes, which typically strikes in childhood and can be controlled…

• New Target Discovered for Pain Relief

  22 Jan 2012 | 8:30 pm

  An uncharted trawl through thousands of small molecules involved in the body's metabolism may have uncovered a potential route to treating pain caused by nerve damage. [More]

• Scientists Call for 60-Day Suspension of Mutant Flu Research

  20 Jan 2012 | 1:50 pm

  Reprinted from Nature magazine [More]

• 

  Scientific American Topic - Influenza

• Is Space Digital? (preview)

  17 Jan 2012 | 10:12 am

  Craig Hogan believes that the world is fuzzy. This is not a metaphor. Hogan, a physicist at the University of Chicago and director of the Fermilab Particle Astrophysics Center near Batavia, Ill., thinks that if we were to peer down at the tiniest subdivisions of space and time, we would find a universe filled with an intrinsic jitter, the busy hum of static. This hum comes not from particles bouncing in and out of being or other kinds of quantum froth that physicists have argued about in the past. Rather Hogan’s noise would come about if space was not, as we have long assumed, smooth…

• A Man-Made Contagion

  15 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  It’s a rare kind of research that incites a frenzied panic before it is even published. But it’s flu season, and influenza science has a way of causing a stir this time of year. [More]

• Can a Vaccine Cure Haiti's Cholera?

  12 Jan 2012 | 5:00 am

  The cholera epidemic in Haiti has cast a stark light on deep development holes and disagreements about whether a short-term patch--in the form of a cholera vaccine--can help in the long-term fight for better health. [More]

• Doomsday Clock Moved 1 Minute Closer to Midnight

  10 Jan 2012 | 3:15 pm

  In a sign of pessimism about humanity's future , scientists today set the hands of the infamous "Doomsday Clock" forward one minute from two years ago. [More]

• Call to Censor Bird Flu Studies Draws Fire

  3 Jan 2012 | 3:30 pm

  “I don’t like to scare people,” says microbiologist Paul Keim. “But the worst-case scenarios here are just enormous.” [More]

• 

  Scientific American Topic - Heart Disease

• Gumming Up Appetite

  15 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  Losing weight is not always about anticipating swimsuit season or squeezing into skinny jeans--for the  obese, losing weight is about fighting serious illness and reclaiming health. Yet the primal part of the brain that regulates appetite will not place a moratorium on hunger just because someone has acknowledged the need to lose weight. Researchers at Syracuse University are working toward a unique solution: chewing gum that suppresses appetite. [More]

• Five Hidden Dangers of Obesity (preview)

  10 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  By now it is common knowledge that being severely overweight puts people at increased risk of suffering from heart disease, stroke and diabetes and that obesity--defined as weighing at least 20 percent more than the high side of normal--is on the rise. According to one estimate, the U.S. will be home to 65 million more obese people in 2030 than it is today, leading to an additional six million or more cases of heart disease and stroke and another eight million cases of type 2 diabetes. Many clinicians have already begun seeing families in which the grandparents are healthier and living longer…

• Unusual Flavors Can Dampen Immune Response

  8 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  More than 100 years ago Ivan Pavlov famously observed that a dog salivated not only when fed but also on hearing a stimulus it associated with food. Since then, scientists have discovered many other seemingly autonomous processes that can be trained with sensory stimuli--including, most recently, our immune system. [More]

• Could Public Health Benefits Make Combating Climate Change Free?

  21 Dec 2011 | 1:21 pm

  DURBAN, South Africa--Former entomologist Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum of the World Health Organization worries about nosebleeds more than the average person. That's because he's one of the estimated 12 million people worldwide afflicted with leishmaniasis --a potentially fatal parasitic disease characterized most often by lesions on the skin and/or mucus membranes--caused by the bite of a sandfly. [More]

• Neurons Offer Clues to Suicide

  21 Dec 2011 | 7:00 am

  A certain type of brain cell may be linked with suicide, according to a recent investigation. People who take their own lives have more densely packed von Economo neurons, large spindle-shaped cells that have dramatically increased in density over the course of human evolution. [More]

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  Scientific American Topic - Extrasolar Planets

• Three Tiny Exoplanets Suggest Solar System Not So Special

  11 Jan 2012 | 7:30 pm

  Adding to its already long roster of firsts , NASA's Kepler spacecraft has found the three smallest extrasolar planets ever detected -- all of them smaller than Earth, and the most diminutive no larger than Mars. The newly discovered trio forms a miniature planetary system orbiting a cool, dim red dwarf star called KOI-961. [More]

• A Plenitude of Planets: Galactic Search Finds Exoplanets Are More Commonplace Than Stars

  11 Jan 2012 | 1:30 pm

  The next time you look up at the night sky and find yourself marveling at the number of stars overhead, know that you are only seeing part of the magnificent bounty that our galaxy holds. Most of those Milky Way stars are not isolated orbs. Rather an average star has at least one planetary companion , invisible to the naked eye and in most cases as yet unseen by telescopes, according to a new analysis. [More]

• Key Findings on Higgs Boson, Alzheimer's Drugs, Lake Vostok Set to Emerge in 2012

  3 Jan 2012 | 4:00 pm

  Let's talk about Earth [More]

• The Top 10 Science Stories of 2011

  22 Dec 2011 | 10:00 am

  Inevitably, year-end lists invite plenty of debate and criticism, and Scientific American 's is no exception. Certainly, we could have included the discovery of new worlds beyond our solar system, including Kepler 22 b, an exoplanet in the "Goldilocks" zone of habitability, as well as the first known Earth-size exoplanets . Or noted the accumulating evidence suggesting that hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, to retrieve natural gas is likely to contaminate water supplies. (Final New York State regulations, expected in mid-2012, could determine the future of fracking in the U.S.)…

• Bright Exoplanet Lighting Could Indicate Intelligent Life

  15 Nov 2011 | 1:57 pm

  There's probably no intelligent life in the outer solar system. But it couldn't hurt to check. [More]

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  Scientific American Topic - Gene Therapy

• How Has Stephen Hawking Lived to 70 with ALS?

  7 Jan 2012 | 5:00 am

  Stephen Hawking turns 70 on Sunday, beating the odds of a daunting diagnosis by nearly half a century. [More]

• Baby Monkeys with 6 Genomes Are Scientific First

  6 Jan 2012 | 6:00 pm

  They look like ordinary baby rhesus macaques , but Hex, Roku and Chimero are the world's first chimeric monkeys, each with cells from the genomes of as many as six rhesus monkeys. [More]

• The Top 10 Science Stories of 2011

  22 Dec 2011 | 10:00 am

  Inevitably, year-end lists invite plenty of debate and criticism, and Scientific American 's is no exception. Certainly, we could have included the discovery of new worlds beyond our solar system, including Kepler 22 b, an exoplanet in the "Goldilocks" zone of habitability, as well as the first known Earth-size exoplanets . Or noted the accumulating evidence suggesting that hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, to retrieve natural gas is likely to contaminate water supplies. (Final New York State regulations, expected in mid-2012, could determine the future of fracking in the U.S.)…

• He's No Gregory House--Which Is a Good Thing (preview)

  14 Nov 2011 | 8:30 am

  The patient had endured 20 years of pain: her calves had turned into two bricks,  and she now had trouble walking. A slew of doctors had failed to treat, let alone diagnose, her unusual condition. So when her x-rays finally landed on William A. Gahl’s desk at the National Institutes of Health, he knew immediately that he had to take her case.Gahl is the scientist and physician who leads the Undiagnosed Diseases Program, which tries to unravel the underlying causes of, and find therapies for, mysterious maladies and known but rare conditions. Louise Benge’s x-rays had revealed…

• Calendar: MIND Events in November and December

  1 Nov 2011 | 9:00 am

  NOVEMBER 4–5 According to the World Health Organization, one in four of us will develop at least one mental illness or behavioral disorder in our lifetime. Depression alone affects an estimated 121 million people worldwide. At the two-day EMBO/EMBL Science and Society Conference , biologists, psychologists and neuroscientists will explore the ethical and social implications of major mental illnesses as well as their causes and treatment. Attendees will debate the definitions of mental disorders, financial interests in the refinement of both diagnoses and drugs, and controversial new…

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  Scientific American Topic - Genetic Engineering

• Genetically Engineered Stomach Microbe Converts Seaweed into Ethanol

  19 Jan 2012 | 2:01 pm

  Seaweed may well be an ideal plant to turn into biofuel. It grows in much of the two thirds of the planet that is underwater, so it wouldn't crowd out food crops the way corn for ethanol does. Because it draws its own nutrients and water from the sea, it requires no fertilizer or irrigation. Most importantly for would-be biofuel-makers, it contains no lignin--a strong strand of complex sugars that stiffens plant stalks and poses a big obstacle to turning land-based plants such as switchgrass into biofuel . [More]

• How Scientists Are Tackling the Bed Bug Nightmare (preview)

  19 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  The elderly man lived by himself in a low-income apartment near Cincinnati. But he was not alone. After dark the bed bugs would emerge from his recliner and tattered box-spring mattress to feed on his blood. Judging from the thousands of insects I found in his home, I would venture that it had been this way for many months. Imprisoned by poverty and infirmity, the man had nourished generations of these pests, enduring their bites night after night while their numbers swelled. [More]

• The Impracticality of a Cheeseburger

  15 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  What does the cheeseburger say about our modern food economy? A lot, actually. Over the past several years blogger Waldo Jaquith ( http://waldo.jaquith.org ) set out to make a cheeseburger from scratch, to no avail. “Further reflection revealed that it’s quite impractical--nearly impossible--to make a cheeseburger from scratch,” he writes. “Tomatoes are in season in the late summer. Lettuce is in season in spring and fall. Large mammals are slaughtered in early winter. The process of making such a burger would take nearly a year and would inherently involve omitting…

• Scientists Tweak Photosynthesis in Pursuit of a Better Biofuel

  13 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  For years researchers have been trying to figure out the best ways of making plants produce biofuels. But there is a funda­mental problem: photosynthesis, the process by which plants convert sunlight into stored chemical energy, is highly inefficient. Plants turn only 1 to 3 percent of sunlight into carbohydrates. That is one reason why so much land has to be devoted to growing corn for ethanol, among other bad biofuel ideas. And yet plants also have many advantages: they absorb carbon dioxide at low concen­trations directly from the atmosphere, and each plant cell can repair itself…

• Anti-GM Groups Attempt to Sully Transgenic Control of Dengue Fever

  12 Jan 2012 | 1:00 pm

  Genetically engineered mosquitoes developed by British biotech firm Oxitec as an approach to controlling dengue fever have been caught up in controversy since 6,000 of them were deliberately released to an uninhabited forest in Malaysia in a trial in December 2010. [More]

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  Scientific American Topic - Genetics

• Shelf-Preservation: Researchers Tap Century-Old Brain Tissue for Clues to Mental Illness

  9 Jan 2012 | 6:00 am

  Among the bloodletting boxes, ether inhalers, kangaroo-tendon sutures and other artifacts stored at the Indiana Medical History Museum in Indianapolis are hundreds of scuffed-up canning jars full of dingy yellow liquid and chunks of human brains. [More]

• DNA in a Cup of Water Reveals Lake Denizens

  18 Dec 2011 | 11:03 pm

  To monitor the biodiversity of a freshwater habitat, you could camp out by the water and count the rare wildlife. Or you could just scoop up a cup of water. A new Dutch study has found that the DNA traces in a small sample of a body of water can reveal the species that live in it. The work is in the journal Molecular Ecology . [Philip Francis Thomsen et al., " Monitoring endangered freshwater biodiversity using environmental DNA "] [More]

• Gray Area: Does a "Longevity" Gene Increase Alzheimer's Risk?

  13 Dec 2011 | 6:00 am

    [More]

• Electric Eye: Retina Implant Research Expands in Europe, Seeks FDA Approval in U.S.

  12 Dec 2011 | 6:00 am

  Promising treatments for those blinded by an often-hereditary, retina-damaging disease are expanding throughout Europe and making their way across the pond, offering a ray of hope for the hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. left in the dark by retinitis pigmentosa . The disease--which affects about one in 4,000 people in the U.S. and about 1.5 million people worldwide --kills the retina's photoreceptors, the rod and cone cells that convert light into electrical signals, which are transmitted via the optic nerve to the brain's visual cortex for processing. [More]

• Genetics Explain How Bedbugs Infest a Building--or a Country

  7 Dec 2011 | 7:20 pm

  PHILADELPHIA--When you have bedbugs ( Cimex lectularius ), less interesting is the question of how they got there than the conundrum of how best to get them out. Ridding homes and businesses of these pests has become a multimillion dollar industry in many cities in the U.S. and throughout the world. [More]

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  Scientific American Topic - Microbiology

• How Scientists Are Tackling the Bed Bug Nightmare (preview)

  19 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  The elderly man lived by himself in a low-income apartment near Cincinnati. But he was not alone. After dark the bed bugs would emerge from his recliner and tattered box-spring mattress to feed on his blood. Judging from the thousands of insects I found in his home, I would venture that it had been this way for many months. Imprisoned by poverty and infirmity, the man had nourished generations of these pests, enduring their bites night after night while their numbers swelled. [More]

• Endangered Desert Microbes Protect against Coughs, Sneezes and Red Eye (preview)

  9 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  One fine afternoon last may, Jayne Belnap drove north out of Moab, Utah, in her beige Lexus SUV when the highway vanished. In an instant, a 100-foot-tall cloud of dust had swallowed up her vehicle. She wanted to brake, but she worried about another car slamming into her from behind. She tried to pull over, but she couldn’t see the shoulder. So Belnap split the difference: “I figured if I just crept slowly enough that I’d eventually get out of there or fall off the road.” [More]

• Call to Censor Bird Flu Studies Draws Fire

  3 Jan 2012 | 3:30 pm

  “I don’t like to scare people,” says microbiologist Paul Keim. “But the worst-case scenarios here are just enormous.” [More]

• When Viruses Invade the Brain

  28 Dec 2011 | 8:00 am

  Neurodegenerative diseases were once considered disorders of the mind, rooted in psychology. Now viruses rank among the environmental factors thought to trigger brain-ravaging diseases such as multiple sclerosis (MS) and Alzheimer’s disease. Human herpesvirus-6 (HHV-6), in particular, has been linked to MS in past studies. Neuroscientist Steven Jacobson and his colleagues at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke have determined that the virus makes its entry to the human brain through the olfactory pathway, right along with the odors wafting into our nose. [More]

• Magnetic Sense Shows Many Animals the Way to Go (preview)

  27 Dec 2011 | 7:00 am

  For what must have felt like an interminable six months back in 2007, Sabine Begall spent her evenings at her computer, staring at photographs of grazing cattle. She would download a satellite image of a cattle range from Google Earth, tag the cows one by one, then pull up the next image. With the help of her collaborators, Begall, a zoologist at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany, ultimately found that the unassuming ruminants were on to something. On average, they appeared to align their bodies with a slight preference toward the north-south axis. But they were not pointing to true…

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  Scientific American Topic - Molecular Biology

• Shelf-Preservation: Researchers Tap Century-Old Brain Tissue for Clues to Mental Illness

  9 Jan 2012 | 6:00 am

  Among the bloodletting boxes, ether inhalers, kangaroo-tendon sutures and other artifacts stored at the Indiana Medical History Museum in Indianapolis are hundreds of scuffed-up canning jars full of dingy yellow liquid and chunks of human brains. [More]

• How Ralph Steinman Raced to Develop a Cancer Vaccine--And Save His Life (preview)

  20 Dec 2011 | 11:04 am

  Peering through a microscope at a plate of cells one day, Ralph M. Steinman spied something no one had ever seen before. It was the early 1970s, and he was a researcher at the Rockefeller University on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. At the time, scientists were still piecing together the basic building blocks of the immune system. They had figured out that there are B cells, white blood cells that help to identify foreign invaders, and T cells, another type of white blood cell that attacks those invaders. What puzzled them, however, was what triggered those T cells and B cells to go to…

• DNA in a Cup of Water Reveals Lake Denizens

  18 Dec 2011 | 11:03 pm

  To monitor the biodiversity of a freshwater habitat, you could camp out by the water and count the rare wildlife. Or you could just scoop up a cup of water. A new Dutch study has found that the DNA traces in a small sample of a body of water can reveal the species that live in it. The work is in the journal Molecular Ecology . [Philip Francis Thomsen et al., " Monitoring endangered freshwater biodiversity using environmental DNA "] [More]

• Tiny Biocomputers Move Closer to Reality

  15 Dec 2011 | 7:00 am

  Researchers in nanomedicine have long dreamed of an age when molecular-scale computing devices could be embedded in our bodies to monitor health and treat diseases before they progress. The advantage of such computers, which would be made of biological materials, would lie in their ability to speak the biochemical language of life. [More]

• December 2011 Advances: Additional Resources

  10 Dec 2011 | 7:00 am

  The Advances section of Scientific American 's December issue helps parents find educational toys for the holidays, pushes cooking into the future, remembers Steve Jobs, takes a look at faster-than-light neutrinos, investigates turtle yawning and more. For those interested in learning more about the developments described in this section, a list of selected further reading follows.   [More]

• 

  Scientific American - Mind & Brain

• Readers Respond to "Toxins All Around Us" and Other Articles

  27 Jan 2012 | 11:00 am

  CHEMISTRY COMMENTARY [More]

• Are Wallabies Left or Right Handed? Both! (Sometimes)

  27 Jan 2012 | 8:30 am

  Which limb do you prefer? If you’re like most members of our species, you prefer your right hand for most tasks. If you’re like a smaller minority of our species, you might prefer your left hand. Very, very few of us are truly ambidextrous. Most of us have at least a minor preference for one hand over the other. So do wallabies.On the one hand (ha!), this shouldn’t be all that surprising. Nervous systems became lateralized quite early in the evolution of vertebrates. For example, there is research showing that fish show a preference for touching the sides of aquariums with…

• Mourning Digitally

  27 Jan 2012 | 8:19 am

  Sleepy Hollow Graveyard. Photo by KDCosta, December 2011. Ed Note: Another flashback from the archives of AiP this Friday, though a sombre one at that. It’s rainy and dreary here in New York City, and my thoughts are a bit dark today. [More]

• MIND Reviews: Thinking, Fast and Slow

  27 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  Thinking, Fast and Slow [More]

• Notion in Motion: Wireless Sensors Monitor Brain Waves on the Fly

  27 Jan 2012 | 6:00 am

  A fighter pilot heads back to base after a long mission, feeling spent. A warning light flashes on the control panel. Has she noticed? If so, is she focused enough to fix the problem? [More]

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  Scientific American Topic - Alzheimer's Disease

• Shelf-Preservation: Researchers Tap Century-Old Brain Tissue for Clues to Mental Illness

  9 Jan 2012 | 6:00 am

  Among the bloodletting boxes, ether inhalers, kangaroo-tendon sutures and other artifacts stored at the Indiana Medical History Museum in Indianapolis are hundreds of scuffed-up canning jars full of dingy yellow liquid and chunks of human brains. [More]

• How Has Stephen Hawking Lived to 70 with ALS?

  7 Jan 2012 | 5:00 am

  Stephen Hawking turns 70 on Sunday, beating the odds of a daunting diagnosis by nearly half a century. [More]

• Key Findings on Higgs Boson, Alzheimer's Drugs, Lake Vostok Set to Emerge in 2012

  3 Jan 2012 | 4:00 pm

  Let's talk about Earth [More]

• Forgetting is Key to a Healthy Mind (preview)

  23 Dec 2011 | 12:35 pm

  Solomon Shereshevsky could recite entire speeches, word for word, after hearing them once. In minutes, he memorized complex math formulas, passages in foreign languages and tables consisting of 50 numbers or nonsense syllables. The traces of these sequences were so durably etched in his brain that he could reproduce them years later, according to Russian psychologist Alexander R. Luria, who wrote about the man he called, simply, “S” in The Mind of a Mnemonist. [More]

• Photographic Memory: Wearable Cam Could Help Patients Stave Off Effects of Impaired Recall

  22 Dec 2011 | 2:00 pm

  Hopes for new drugs that would slow or stop the inexorable decline of Alzheimer’s patients have repeatedly found­ered in recent years. In one example, Eli Lilly had to halt the trial of a drug designed to prevent the production of toxic proteins in the brain because patients’ cognition actually worsened while they were taking it. [More]

• 

  Scientific American - More Science

• Microbubbles Cut Cost of Algae-Derived Biofuel

  27 Jan 2012 | 6:47 pm

  Algae naturally produce oil. When it’s processed, that oil can be turned into biofuel, an alternative energy source. There’s just one snag--harvesting the oil from algae-filled water is prohibitively expensive. But researchers have come up with an effervescent solution: bubbles smaller than the width of a human hair can help reduce the costs of collecting algae oil. [More]

• Microcartography

  27 Jan 2012 | 5:44 pm

  Feet smell like feet and armpits smell like armpits because they each harbor unique species of bacteria with unique metabolisms that produce unique volatiles. Human skin is covered in a patchwork of many different microbes and microbial communities, collectively known as the microbiome , a layer of our bodies that is still very poorly understood. Research initiatives like the Human Microbiome Project aim to catalog and characterize the species of microbes living on different body parts or in our gut, to better understand the role they play in health and disease. Maps showing the composition…

• A Marine Biologist's Story (#IAmScience)

  27 Jan 2012 | 3:38 pm

  In the wake of Science Online 2012, a new hashtag has emerged on twitter: #Iamscience. [ View the story "A quick storify: #IAmScience" on Storify ] [More]

• Should YouTube Ban Videos of the Adorable but Endangered Slow Loris?

  27 Jan 2012 | 1:40 pm

  Like hundreds of thousands of other people, my first encounter with a slow loris occurred online when I watched the now-famous 57-second video of one of these adorable primates being tickled and throwing up its arms in apparent glee. That video has been viewed more than nine million times since it was posted in June 2009.But some conservationists argue that videos like this create a false impression of the slow loris in viewers’ minds, and in the process fuel the illegal pet trade that brutally mangles the tiny creatures and puts them at risk of extinction in the wild. [More]

• Readers Respond to "Toxins All Around Us" and Other Articles

  27 Jan 2012 | 11:00 am

  CHEMISTRY COMMENTARY [More]

• 

  Scientific American Topic - Eyesight and Eye Health

• How Has Stephen Hawking Lived to 70 with ALS?

  7 Jan 2012 | 5:00 am

  Stephen Hawking turns 70 on Sunday, beating the odds of a daunting diagnosis by nearly half a century. [More]

• Readers Respond to "Fight the Frazzled Mind"--and More

  6 Jan 2012 | 10:00 am

  Older and More Stressed [More]

• Case Closed? Columbus Introduced Syphilis to Europe

  27 Dec 2011 | 2:00 pm

  In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue, but when he returned from 'cross the seas, did he bring with him a new disease? [More]

• A New Path to Longevity (preview)

  20 Dec 2011 | 12:15 pm

  On a clear November morning in 1964 the Royal Canadian Navy’s Cape Scott embarked from Halifax, Nova Scotia, on a four-month expedition. Led by the late Stanley Skoryna, an enterprising McGill University professor, a team of 38 scientists onboard headed for Easter Island, a volcanic speck that juts out from the Pacific 2,200 miles west of Chile. Plans were afoot to build an airport on the remote island, famous for its mysterious sculptures of enormous heads, and the group wanted to study the people, flora and fauna while they remained largely untouched by modernity. [More]

• Electric Eye: Retina Implant Research Expands in Europe, Seeks FDA Approval in U.S.

  12 Dec 2011 | 6:00 am

  Promising treatments for those blinded by an often-hereditary, retina-damaging disease are expanding throughout Europe and making their way across the pond, offering a ray of hope for the hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. left in the dark by retinitis pigmentosa . The disease--which affects about one in 4,000 people in the U.S. and about 1.5 million people worldwide --kills the retina's photoreceptors, the rod and cone cells that convert light into electrical signals, which are transmitted via the optic nerve to the brain's visual cortex for processing. [More]

• 

  Scientific American Topic - Stress

• Anti-GM Groups Attempt to Sully Transgenic Control of Dengue Fever

  12 Jan 2012 | 1:00 pm

  Genetically engineered mosquitoes developed by British biotech firm Oxitec as an approach to controlling dengue fever have been caught up in controversy since 6,000 of them were deliberately released to an uninhabited forest in Malaysia in a trial in December 2010. [More]

• Emotion Selectively Distorts Our Recollections (preview)

  12 Jan 2012 | 6:00 am

  On September 11, 2001, Elizabeth A. Phelps stepped outside her apartment in lower Manhattan and noticed a man staring toward the World Trade Center, about two miles away. Looking up, “I just saw this big, burning hole,” Phelps recalls. The man told her that he had just seen a large airplane crash into one of the skyscrapers. Thinking it was a horrible accident, Phelps started walking to work, a few blocks away, for a 9 a.m. telephone meeting. By the time she reached her eighth-floor office at New York University, a second jet had struck the other tower, which collapsed after an…

• Readers Respond to "Fight the Frazzled Mind"--and More

  6 Jan 2012 | 10:00 am

  Older and More Stressed [More]

• Two Big Myths about Grief

  5 Jan 2012 | 10:00 am

  Virtually all of us experience the loss of a loved one at some point in our life. So it is surprising that the serious study of grief is not much more than 30 years old. Yet in that time, we have made significant discoveries that have deepened our understanding of this phenomenon--and challenged widely held assumptions. [More]

• Workplace Rudeness Has a Ripple Effect

  3 Jan 2012 | 6:00 am

  If you think that nasty co-worker is creating problems for you alone, think again. His rudeness may have a ripple effect that extends as far as your spouse’s workplace. A recent study at Baylor University found that working with horrible colleagues can generate far-reaching stress that follows you home, causing unhappiness for your spouse and family and ultimately affecting your partner’s job. The study was published in August in the Journal of Organizational Behavior . [More]

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  Scientific American Topic - The Senses

• Dirty Dancing: Dung Beetles Get Down to Walk the Line

  18 Jan 2012 | 4:00 pm

  As a dung beetle rolls its planet of poop along the ground it periodically stops, climbs onto the ball and does a little dance. Why? It's probably getting its bearings. A series of experiments published in the January 18 issue of PLoS ONE shows that the beetles are much more likely to perform their dance when they wander off course or encounter an obstacle. Until now, no one had any idea what a jitterbugging dung beetle was up to. [More]

• A Brief History of Clocks

  14 Jan 2012 | 11:00 pm

  Humankind’s efforts to tell time have helped drive the evolution of our technology and science throughout history. The need to gauge the divisions of the day and night led the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans to create sundials, water clocks and other early chronometric tools. Western Europeans adopted these tech­nologies, but by the 13th century, demand for a dependable timekeeping instrument led medieval artisans to invent the mechanical clock. Although this new device satisfied the requirements of monastic and urban communities, it was too inaccurate and unreliable for…

• Attraction with Static Electricity

  12 Jan 2012 | 9:00 am

  Key concepts [More]

• Emotion Selectively Distorts Our Recollections (preview)

  12 Jan 2012 | 6:00 am

  On September 11, 2001, Elizabeth A. Phelps stepped outside her apartment in lower Manhattan and noticed a man staring toward the World Trade Center, about two miles away. Looking up, “I just saw this big, burning hole,” Phelps recalls. The man told her that he had just seen a large airplane crash into one of the skyscrapers. Thinking it was a horrible accident, Phelps started walking to work, a few blocks away, for a 9 a.m. telephone meeting. By the time she reached her eighth-floor office at New York University, a second jet had struck the other tower, which collapsed after an…

• Shape-Shifting: Researchers Change How Monkeys See in 3-D

  11 Jan 2012 | 1:00 pm

  At the backs of your eyeballs, on the living projector screens called retinas, your corneas display upside-down 2-D images of the world around you. With some complex mental origami , your brain transforms those flat worlds into a beautiful 3-D model of everything you see. In a new study, researchers changed how monkeys perceived 3-D optical illusions by stimulating particular clusters of neurons in their brains. The researchers think the region they tweaked is where 3-D modeling happens. [More]

• 

  Scientific American - Environment

• Microbubbles Cut Cost of Algae-Derived Biofuel

  27 Jan 2012 | 6:47 pm

  Algae naturally produce oil. When it’s processed, that oil can be turned into biofuel, an alternative energy source. There’s just one snag--harvesting the oil from algae-filled water is prohibitively expensive. But researchers have come up with an effervescent solution: bubbles smaller than the width of a human hair can help reduce the costs of collecting algae oil. [More]

• Readers Respond to "Toxins All Around Us" and Other Articles

  27 Jan 2012 | 11:00 am

  CHEMISTRY COMMENTARY [More]

• Designers of Exotic Materials Learn New Tricks from Animals (preview)

  26 Jan 2012 | 7:45 am

  Among the first things you notice when you step into the corner office of Harvard University professor Joanna Aizenberg are the playthings. Behind her desk sit a sand dollar, an azure butterfly mounted in a box, a plastic stand with long fibers that erupt in color when a switch is pulled, and haphazard rows of toys. Especially numerous are the Rubik’s cubes--the classic three-by-three, of course, but also ones with four, five, six and even seven mini cubes along each edge. An eight-year-old would be in heaven. [More]

• Children May Be Exposed to Higher Chemical Concentrations Than Their Mothers

  26 Jan 2012 | 6:00 am

  Children living near DuPont’s plant in West Virginia are exposed to much higher concentrations of an industrial chemical than their mothers, according to a newly published study. [More]

• Has Petroleum Production Peaked, Ending the Era of Easy Oil?

  25 Jan 2012 | 3:31 pm

  Despite major oil finds off Brazil's coast, new fields in North Dakota and ongoing increases in the conversion of tar sands to oil in Canada , fresh supplies of petroleum are only just enough to offset the production decline from older fields. At best, the world is now living off an oil plateau--roughly 75 million barrels of oil produced each and every day--since at least 2005, according to a new comment published in Nature on January 26. ( Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.) That is a year earlier than estimated by the International Energy Agency--an energy cartel…

• 

  Scientific American Topic - Atmospheric Sciences

• Green Chemist: A Q&A with Departing EPA Science Advisor Paul Anastas

  17 Jan 2012 | 1:15 pm

  Editor's Note :  Paul Anastas, the father of green chemistry, is leaving his high-ranking post at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency next month and returning to Yale University . During an interview with Jane Kay of Environmental Health News, Anastas, who will remain at his post for another month or so, said there has been a "growing realization across EPA" that green chemistry "can meet environmental and economic goals simultaneously." During his two years as science advisor and assistant administrator at EPA's Office of Research and Development ,…

• The Science of the Glory (preview)

  16 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  On a daytime flight pick a window seat that will allow you to locate the shadow of the airplane on the clouds; this requires figuring out the direction of travel relative to the position of the sun. If you are lucky, you may be rewarded with one of the most beautiful of all meteorological sights: a multicolored-light halo surrounding the shadow. Its iridescent rings are not those of a rainbow but of a different and more subtle effect called a glory. It is most striking when the clouds are closest because then it dominates the whole horizon. [More]

• Jet Lag: What's Causing One of the Driest, Warmest Winters in History?

  12 Jan 2012 | 4:15 pm

  A little snow and rain are falling in a few states today, but the 2011–12 winter has been extremely warm and dry across the continental U.S. Meteorologists think they have figured out why. [More]

• Attraction with Static Electricity

  12 Jan 2012 | 9:00 am

  Key concepts [More]

• Michael Mann Defends Climate Computer Models

  10 Jan 2012 | 9:27 am

  Fair warning: the following is more than 60 seconds, and it’s about climate change. [More]

• 

  Scientific American - Clean Air Policy

• Worried about Air Pollution? Don't Hide Indoors

  22 Jan 2012 | 8:00 am

  You need to get out more. Whether it's smog or tiny particles of pollution , Americans face the bulk of their health risks from bad air inside. Why? We spend most of our time indoors. [More]

• Green Chemist: A Q&A with Departing EPA Science Advisor Paul Anastas

  17 Jan 2012 | 1:15 pm

  Editor's Note :  Paul Anastas, the father of green chemistry, is leaving his high-ranking post at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency next month and returning to Yale University . During an interview with Jane Kay of Environmental Health News, Anastas, who will remain at his post for another month or so, said there has been a "growing realization across EPA" that green chemistry "can meet environmental and economic goals simultaneously." During his two years as science advisor and assistant administrator at EPA's Office of Research and Development ,…

• How to Buy Time in the Fight against Climate Change: Mobilize to Stop Soot and Methane

  12 Jan 2012 | 3:01 pm

  Humanity has done little to address climate change. Global emissions of carbon dioxide reached (another) all-time peak in 2010. The most recent international talks to craft a global treaty to address the problem pushed off major action until 2020. Fortunately, there's an alternative-- curbing the other greenhouse gases . [More]

• What Are the Chances of a White Christmas?

  25 Dec 2011 | 8:00 am

  I am dreaming of a white Christmas. Certainly, they were rare in Saint Louis where I grew up. [More]

• U.S. Rolls Out Tough Rules on Coal Plant Pollution

  21 Dec 2011 | 5:00 pm

  (Reuters) - The Obama administration on Wednesday unveiled the first-ever standards to slash mercury emissions from coal-fired plants , a move aimed at protecting public health that critics say will kill jobs as plants shut down. [More]

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  Scientific American Topic - Earth Science

• Trumpeter Swans Rebound, with an Assist from Global Warming

  18 Jan 2012 | 10:55 am

  ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Outside Alaska's largest city, where wildlife is more common than pigeons, locals bearing field glasses turn out every year to watch blazingly white trumpeter swans stop to feed on their way south for the winter. [More]

• How to Buy Time in the Fight against Climate Change: Mobilize to Stop Soot and Methane

  12 Jan 2012 | 3:01 pm

  Humanity has done little to address climate change. Global emissions of carbon dioxide reached (another) all-time peak in 2010. The most recent international talks to craft a global treaty to address the problem pushed off major action until 2020. Fortunately, there's an alternative-- curbing the other greenhouse gases . [More]

• Can a Vaccine Cure Haiti's Cholera?

  12 Jan 2012 | 5:00 am

  The cholera epidemic in Haiti has cast a stark light on deep development holes and disagreements about whether a short-term patch--in the form of a cholera vaccine--can help in the long-term fight for better health. [More]

• Social Media Tracks Disease Spread

  9 Jan 2012 | 4:28 pm

  After Haiti’s earthquake two years ago, cholera swept the country. And within a month, the same strain had spread to the Dominican Republic and the U.S., and then to Venezuela, Mexico, Spain, and Canada. [More]

• Ohio Earthquake Likely Caused by Fracking Wastewater

  4 Jan 2012 | 5:00 pm

  Residents of Youngstown, Ohio, received an extra surprise on Christmas Eve and again on New Year's Eve--earthquakes, measuring 2.7 and 4.0 on the Richter scale, respectively. No one was injured and only a few cases of minor damage were reported after the Dec. 31 event. [More]

• 

  Scientific American Topic - Environmental Policy

• Green Chemist: A Q&A with Departing EPA Science Advisor Paul Anastas

  17 Jan 2012 | 1:15 pm

  Editor's Note :  Paul Anastas, the father of green chemistry, is leaving his high-ranking post at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency next month and returning to Yale University . During an interview with Jane Kay of Environmental Health News, Anastas, who will remain at his post for another month or so, said there has been a "growing realization across EPA" that green chemistry "can meet environmental and economic goals simultaneously." During his two years as science advisor and assistant administrator at EPA's Office of Research and Development ,…

• EPA Sees Risks to Water, Workers in New York State Fracking Rules

  14 Jan 2012 | 8:00 am

  New York's emerging plan to regulate natural gas drilling in the gas-rich Marcellus Shale needs to go further to safeguard drinking water, environmentally sensitive areas and gas industry workers, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has informed state officials. [More]

• Gingrich Tops Scientific American 's Geek Guide to the 2012 GOP Candidates

  3 Jan 2012 | 4:00 am

  The contenders for the Republican nomination in the 2012 U.S. presidential election may appear to be a fairly uniform group of middle-aged white conservatives, but when it comes to issues of science, technology and overall geek cred, none of these candidates is cut from the same cloth. In fact, Newt Gingrich nudges out Mitt Romney and Ron Paul in Scientific American 's overall ranking, based on the former Congressman's engagement in issues related to energy, the Internet and military weapons, combined with his mastery of top online tools such as Twitter and a healthy appetite for…

• How Does Mercury Get Into Fish?

  30 Dec 2011 | 1:00 pm

  Dear EarthTalk : I know that large fish contain a lot of mercury, but where does it come from? And what are we doing to prevent this contamination? [More]

• How to Make the Food System More Energy Efficient

  29 Dec 2011 | 7:00 am

  For more than 50 years fossil fuels and fertilizers have been the key ingredients in much greater global food production and distribution. The food-energy relationship has been a good one, but it is now entering a new era. Food production is rising sharply, requiring more carbon-based fuels and nitrogen-based fertilizers, both of which exacerbate global warming, river and ocean pollution, and a host of other ills. At the same time, many nations are grappling with how to reduce energy demand, especially demand for fossil fuels. [More]

• 

  Scientific American Topic - Global Warming

• Trumpeter Swans Rebound, with an Assist from Global Warming

  18 Jan 2012 | 10:55 am

  ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Outside Alaska's largest city, where wildlife is more common than pigeons, locals bearing field glasses turn out every year to watch blazingly white trumpeter swans stop to feed on their way south for the winter. [More]

• A Second Science Front: Evolution Champions Rise to Climate Science Defense

  16 Jan 2012 | 3:35 pm

  Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education , long the nation's leading defender of evolution education, discusses the NCSE's new initiative for climate science education. [More]

• Jet Lag: What's Causing One of the Driest, Warmest Winters in History?

  12 Jan 2012 | 4:15 pm

  A little snow and rain are falling in a few states today, but the 2011–12 winter has been extremely warm and dry across the continental U.S. Meteorologists think they have figured out why. [More]

• How to Buy Time in the Fight against Climate Change: Mobilize to Stop Soot and Methane

  12 Jan 2012 | 3:01 pm

  Humanity has done little to address climate change. Global emissions of carbon dioxide reached (another) all-time peak in 2010. The most recent international talks to craft a global treaty to address the problem pushed off major action until 2020. Fortunately, there's an alternative-- curbing the other greenhouse gases . [More]

• Michael Mann Defends Climate Computer Models

  10 Jan 2012 | 9:27 am

  Fair warning: the following is more than 60 seconds, and it’s about climate change. [More]

• 

  Scientific American Topic - Oceanography

• Catching a Gravity Wave: Canceled Laser Space Antenna May Still Fly

  20 Jan 2012 | 6:00 am

  Ripples in the fabric of spacetime regularly zip across the universe from titanic cosmic events, such as the mergers of supermassive black holes millions to billions of times the mass of the sun. These so-called gravitational waves ought to be ubiquitous but faint, and no experiment has yet registered the disturbance caused by a passing wave. The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna was supposed to do just that. The spaceborne observatory, also known as LISA, was to be a joint mission between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) to detect gravitational waves and give scientists a whole new…

• Green Chemist: A Q&A with Departing EPA Science Advisor Paul Anastas

  17 Jan 2012 | 1:15 pm

  Editor's Note :  Paul Anastas, the father of green chemistry, is leaving his high-ranking post at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency next month and returning to Yale University . During an interview with Jane Kay of Environmental Health News, Anastas, who will remain at his post for another month or so, said there has been a "growing realization across EPA" that green chemistry "can meet environmental and economic goals simultaneously." During his two years as science advisor and assistant administrator at EPA's Office of Research and Development ,…

• Is Space Digital? (preview)

  17 Jan 2012 | 10:12 am

  Craig Hogan believes that the world is fuzzy. This is not a metaphor. Hogan, a physicist at the University of Chicago and director of the Fermilab Particle Astrophysics Center near Batavia, Ill., thinks that if we were to peer down at the tiniest subdivisions of space and time, we would find a universe filled with an intrinsic jitter, the busy hum of static. This hum comes not from particles bouncing in and out of being or other kinds of quantum froth that physicists have argued about in the past. Rather Hogan’s noise would come about if space was not, as we have long assumed, smooth…

• The Science of the Glory (preview)

  16 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  On a daytime flight pick a window seat that will allow you to locate the shadow of the airplane on the clouds; this requires figuring out the direction of travel relative to the position of the sun. If you are lucky, you may be rewarded with one of the most beautiful of all meteorological sights: a multicolored-light halo surrounding the shadow. Its iridescent rings are not those of a rainbow but of a different and more subtle effect called a glory. It is most striking when the clouds are closest because then it dominates the whole horizon. [More]

• Oral Exam

  15 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  Personal oral hygiene notwithstanding, your mouth is teeming with hundreds of species of microorganisms. Until now, researchers have had a tough time sorting out all these small species--and how they interact. A new multicolor fluorescent-labeling technology is allowing microbiologists to peer into the human mouth’s microscopic jungle and discover new dynamics among several key groups. The findings were presented last December at the American Society for Cell Biology’s annual meeting in Denver. [More]

• 

  Scientific American Topic - Earth Science

• Trumpeter Swans Rebound, with an Assist from Global Warming

  18 Jan 2012 | 10:55 am

  ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Outside Alaska's largest city, where wildlife is more common than pigeons, locals bearing field glasses turn out every year to watch blazingly white trumpeter swans stop to feed on their way south for the winter. [More]

• How to Buy Time in the Fight against Climate Change: Mobilize to Stop Soot and Methane

  12 Jan 2012 | 3:01 pm

  Humanity has done little to address climate change. Global emissions of carbon dioxide reached (another) all-time peak in 2010. The most recent international talks to craft a global treaty to address the problem pushed off major action until 2020. Fortunately, there's an alternative-- curbing the other greenhouse gases . [More]

• Can a Vaccine Cure Haiti's Cholera?

  12 Jan 2012 | 5:00 am

  The cholera epidemic in Haiti has cast a stark light on deep development holes and disagreements about whether a short-term patch--in the form of a cholera vaccine--can help in the long-term fight for better health. [More]

• Social Media Tracks Disease Spread

  9 Jan 2012 | 4:28 pm

  After Haiti’s earthquake two years ago, cholera swept the country. And within a month, the same strain had spread to the Dominican Republic and the U.S., and then to Venezuela, Mexico, Spain, and Canada. [More]

• Ohio Earthquake Likely Caused by Fracking Wastewater

  4 Jan 2012 | 5:00 pm

  Residents of Youngstown, Ohio, received an extra surprise on Christmas Eve and again on New Year's Eve--earthquakes, measuring 2.7 and 4.0 on the Richter scale, respectively. No one was injured and only a few cases of minor damage were reported after the Dec. 31 event. [More]

• 

  Scientific American - Environment

• Microbubbles Cut Cost of Algae-Derived Biofuel

  27 Jan 2012 | 6:47 pm

  Algae naturally produce oil. When it’s processed, that oil can be turned into biofuel, an alternative energy source. There’s just one snag--harvesting the oil from algae-filled water is prohibitively expensive. But researchers have come up with an effervescent solution: bubbles smaller than the width of a human hair can help reduce the costs of collecting algae oil. [More]

• Readers Respond to "Toxins All Around Us" and Other Articles

  27 Jan 2012 | 11:00 am

  CHEMISTRY COMMENTARY [More]

• Designers of Exotic Materials Learn New Tricks from Animals (preview)

  26 Jan 2012 | 7:45 am

  Among the first things you notice when you step into the corner office of Harvard University professor Joanna Aizenberg are the playthings. Behind her desk sit a sand dollar, an azure butterfly mounted in a box, a plastic stand with long fibers that erupt in color when a switch is pulled, and haphazard rows of toys. Especially numerous are the Rubik’s cubes--the classic three-by-three, of course, but also ones with four, five, six and even seven mini cubes along each edge. An eight-year-old would be in heaven. [More]

• Children May Be Exposed to Higher Chemical Concentrations Than Their Mothers

  26 Jan 2012 | 6:00 am

  Children living near DuPont’s plant in West Virginia are exposed to much higher concentrations of an industrial chemical than their mothers, according to a newly published study. [More]

• Has Petroleum Production Peaked, Ending the Era of Easy Oil?

  25 Jan 2012 | 3:31 pm

  Despite major oil finds off Brazil's coast, new fields in North Dakota and ongoing increases in the conversion of tar sands to oil in Canada , fresh supplies of petroleum are only just enough to offset the production decline from older fields. At best, the world is now living off an oil plateau--roughly 75 million barrels of oil produced each and every day--since at least 2005, according to a new comment published in Nature on January 26. ( Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.) That is a year earlier than estimated by the International Energy Agency--an energy cartel…

• 

  Scientific American Topic - Global Warming

• Trumpeter Swans Rebound, with an Assist from Global Warming

  18 Jan 2012 | 10:55 am

  ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Outside Alaska's largest city, where wildlife is more common than pigeons, locals bearing field glasses turn out every year to watch blazingly white trumpeter swans stop to feed on their way south for the winter. [More]

• A Second Science Front: Evolution Champions Rise to Climate Science Defense

  16 Jan 2012 | 3:35 pm

  Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education , long the nation's leading defender of evolution education, discusses the NCSE's new initiative for climate science education. [More]

• Jet Lag: What's Causing One of the Driest, Warmest Winters in History?

  12 Jan 2012 | 4:15 pm

  A little snow and rain are falling in a few states today, but the 2011–12 winter has been extremely warm and dry across the continental U.S. Meteorologists think they have figured out why. [More]

• How to Buy Time in the Fight against Climate Change: Mobilize to Stop Soot and Methane

  12 Jan 2012 | 3:01 pm

  Humanity has done little to address climate change. Global emissions of carbon dioxide reached (another) all-time peak in 2010. The most recent international talks to craft a global treaty to address the problem pushed off major action until 2020. Fortunately, there's an alternative-- curbing the other greenhouse gases . [More]

• Michael Mann Defends Climate Computer Models

  10 Jan 2012 | 9:27 am

  Fair warning: the following is more than 60 seconds, and it’s about climate change. [More]

• 

  Scientific American Topic - PTSD

• Emotion Selectively Distorts Our Recollections (preview)

  12 Jan 2012 | 6:00 am

  On September 11, 2001, Elizabeth A. Phelps stepped outside her apartment in lower Manhattan and noticed a man staring toward the World Trade Center, about two miles away. Looking up, “I just saw this big, burning hole,” Phelps recalls. The man told her that he had just seen a large airplane crash into one of the skyscrapers. Thinking it was a horrible accident, Phelps started walking to work, a few blocks away, for a 9 a.m. telephone meeting. By the time she reached her eighth-floor office at New York University, a second jet had struck the other tower, which collapsed after an…

• Forgetting is Key to a Healthy Mind (preview)

  23 Dec 2011 | 12:35 pm

  Solomon Shereshevsky could recite entire speeches, word for word, after hearing them once. In minutes, he memorized complex math formulas, passages in foreign languages and tables consisting of 50 numbers or nonsense syllables. The traces of these sequences were so durably etched in his brain that he could reproduce them years later, according to Russian psychologist Alexander R. Luria, who wrote about the man he called, simply, “S” in The Mind of a Mnemonist. [More]

• Fearless Youth: Prozac Extinguishes Anxiety by Rejuvenating the Brain

  22 Dec 2011 | 1:44 pm

  Once adult lab mice learn to associate a particular stimulus--a sound, a flash of light--with the pain of an electric shock, they don't easily forget it, even when researchers stop the shocks. But a new study in the December 23 issue of Science shows that the antidepressant Prozac (fluoxetine) gives mice the youthful brain plasticity they need to learn that a once-threatening stimulus is now benign. The research may help explain why a combination of therapy and antidepressants is more effective at treating depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) than either drugs or…

• Calendar: MIND Events in November and December

  1 Nov 2011 | 9:00 am

  NOVEMBER 4–5 According to the World Health Organization, one in four of us will develop at least one mental illness or behavioral disorder in our lifetime. Depression alone affects an estimated 121 million people worldwide. At the two-day EMBO/EMBL Science and Society Conference , biologists, psychologists and neuroscientists will explore the ethical and social implications of major mental illnesses as well as their causes and treatment. Attendees will debate the definitions of mental disorders, financial interests in the refinement of both diagnoses and drugs, and controversial new…

• Chlorine Accidents Take a Big Human Toll

  20 Oct 2011 | 11:15 am

  Beverly Martinez was sitting at her desk in the office of a California scrap metal recycling plant when she felt the blast rattle her window.One of her co-workers, Leonardo Morales Zavala, rushed through her door, struggling to breathe. “Run!” he yelled. He had just cut into a one-ton tank to recycle it in the yard – a football field away – and out poured a noxious substance. He didn't know what it was. [More]

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  Scientific American Topic - Vaccines

• Can a Vaccine Cure Haiti's Cholera?

  12 Jan 2012 | 5:00 am

  The cholera epidemic in Haiti has cast a stark light on deep development holes and disagreements about whether a short-term patch--in the form of a cholera vaccine--can help in the long-term fight for better health. [More]

• PAIN Relief: India on Track to Be Declared Polio-Free Next Month

  9 Jan 2012 | 1:30 pm

  In the mid-2000s, when scientists questioned whether the campaign to rid the world of polio could succeed, skeptics pointed to a problem that some called PAIN . [More]

• The Elephant in the Room: How Contraception Could Save Future Elephants from Culling

  22 Dec 2011 | 5:00 am

  In South Africa they have a problem, a big one: too many elephants. [More]

• How Ralph Steinman Raced to Develop a Cancer Vaccine--And Save His Life (preview)

  20 Dec 2011 | 11:04 am

  Peering through a microscope at a plate of cells one day, Ralph M. Steinman spied something no one had ever seen before. It was the early 1970s, and he was a researcher at the Rockefeller University on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. At the time, scientists were still piecing together the basic building blocks of the immune system. They had figured out that there are B cells, white blood cells that help to identify foreign invaders, and T cells, another type of white blood cell that attacks those invaders. What puzzled them, however, was what triggered those T cells and B cells to go to…

• Discredited Vaccine-Autism Researcher Defended by Whistleblower Group

  9 Nov 2011 | 10:47 pm

  It is one of the most serious allegations that could be made about a doctor: manipulating patients' histories to make money. So it is no wonder that the charges, levied by editors of the British Medical Journal (BMJ) in January against medical researcher Andrew Wakefield, are still getting close scrutiny. Now an American whistleblower advocacy group has joined the fray over Wakefield, who in 1998 hypothesized a link, now scientifically disproven, between the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine (MMR) and autism. [More]

• 

  Scientific American - Environment

• Microbubbles Cut Cost of Algae-Derived Biofuel

  27 Jan 2012 | 6:47 pm

  Algae naturally produce oil. When it’s processed, that oil can be turned into biofuel, an alternative energy source. There’s just one snag--harvesting the oil from algae-filled water is prohibitively expensive. But researchers have come up with an effervescent solution: bubbles smaller than the width of a human hair can help reduce the costs of collecting algae oil. [More]

• Readers Respond to "Toxins All Around Us" and Other Articles

  27 Jan 2012 | 11:00 am

  CHEMISTRY COMMENTARY [More]

• Designers of Exotic Materials Learn New Tricks from Animals (preview)

  26 Jan 2012 | 7:45 am

  Among the first things you notice when you step into the corner office of Harvard University professor Joanna Aizenberg are the playthings. Behind her desk sit a sand dollar, an azure butterfly mounted in a box, a plastic stand with long fibers that erupt in color when a switch is pulled, and haphazard rows of toys. Especially numerous are the Rubik’s cubes--the classic three-by-three, of course, but also ones with four, five, six and even seven mini cubes along each edge. An eight-year-old would be in heaven. [More]

• Children May Be Exposed to Higher Chemical Concentrations Than Their Mothers

  26 Jan 2012 | 6:00 am

  Children living near DuPont’s plant in West Virginia are exposed to much higher concentrations of an industrial chemical than their mothers, according to a newly published study. [More]

• Has Petroleum Production Peaked, Ending the Era of Easy Oil?

  25 Jan 2012 | 3:31 pm

  Despite major oil finds off Brazil's coast, new fields in North Dakota and ongoing increases in the conversion of tar sands to oil in Canada , fresh supplies of petroleum are only just enough to offset the production decline from older fields. At best, the world is now living off an oil plateau--roughly 75 million barrels of oil produced each and every day--since at least 2005, according to a new comment published in Nature on January 26. ( Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.) That is a year earlier than estimated by the International Energy Agency--an energy cartel…

• 

  Scientific American - Environment

• Microbubbles Cut Cost of Algae-Derived Biofuel

  27 Jan 2012 | 6:47 pm

  Algae naturally produce oil. When it’s processed, that oil can be turned into biofuel, an alternative energy source. There’s just one snag--harvesting the oil from algae-filled water is prohibitively expensive. But researchers have come up with an effervescent solution: bubbles smaller than the width of a human hair can help reduce the costs of collecting algae oil. [More]

• Readers Respond to "Toxins All Around Us" and Other Articles

  27 Jan 2012 | 11:00 am

  CHEMISTRY COMMENTARY [More]

• Designers of Exotic Materials Learn New Tricks from Animals (preview)

  26 Jan 2012 | 7:45 am

  Among the first things you notice when you step into the corner office of Harvard University professor Joanna Aizenberg are the playthings. Behind her desk sit a sand dollar, an azure butterfly mounted in a box, a plastic stand with long fibers that erupt in color when a switch is pulled, and haphazard rows of toys. Especially numerous are the Rubik’s cubes--the classic three-by-three, of course, but also ones with four, five, six and even seven mini cubes along each edge. An eight-year-old would be in heaven. [More]

• Children May Be Exposed to Higher Chemical Concentrations Than Their Mothers

  26 Jan 2012 | 6:00 am

  Children living near DuPont’s plant in West Virginia are exposed to much higher concentrations of an industrial chemical than their mothers, according to a newly published study. [More]

• Has Petroleum Production Peaked, Ending the Era of Easy Oil?

  25 Jan 2012 | 3:31 pm

  Despite major oil finds off Brazil's coast, new fields in North Dakota and ongoing increases in the conversion of tar sands to oil in Canada , fresh supplies of petroleum are only just enough to offset the production decline from older fields. At best, the world is now living off an oil plateau--roughly 75 million barrels of oil produced each and every day--since at least 2005, according to a new comment published in Nature on January 26. ( Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.) That is a year earlier than estimated by the International Energy Agency--an energy cartel…

• 

  Scientific American - Environment

• Microbubbles Cut Cost of Algae-Derived Biofuel

  27 Jan 2012 | 6:47 pm

  Algae naturally produce oil. When it’s processed, that oil can be turned into biofuel, an alternative energy source. There’s just one snag--harvesting the oil from algae-filled water is prohibitively expensive. But researchers have come up with an effervescent solution: bubbles smaller than the width of a human hair can help reduce the costs of collecting algae oil. [More]

• Readers Respond to "Toxins All Around Us" and Other Articles

  27 Jan 2012 | 11:00 am

  CHEMISTRY COMMENTARY [More]

• Designers of Exotic Materials Learn New Tricks from Animals (preview)

  26 Jan 2012 | 7:45 am

  Among the first things you notice when you step into the corner office of Harvard University professor Joanna Aizenberg are the playthings. Behind her desk sit a sand dollar, an azure butterfly mounted in a box, a plastic stand with long fibers that erupt in color when a switch is pulled, and haphazard rows of toys. Especially numerous are the Rubik’s cubes--the classic three-by-three, of course, but also ones with four, five, six and even seven mini cubes along each edge. An eight-year-old would be in heaven. [More]

• Children May Be Exposed to Higher Chemical Concentrations Than Their Mothers

  26 Jan 2012 | 6:00 am

  Children living near DuPont’s plant in West Virginia are exposed to much higher concentrations of an industrial chemical than their mothers, according to a newly published study. [More]

• Has Petroleum Production Peaked, Ending the Era of Easy Oil?

  25 Jan 2012 | 3:31 pm

  Despite major oil finds off Brazil's coast, new fields in North Dakota and ongoing increases in the conversion of tar sands to oil in Canada , fresh supplies of petroleum are only just enough to offset the production decline from older fields. At best, the world is now living off an oil plateau--roughly 75 million barrels of oil produced each and every day--since at least 2005, according to a new comment published in Nature on January 26. ( Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.) That is a year earlier than estimated by the International Energy Agency--an energy cartel…

• 

  Scientific American Topic - Science Ethics

• Dirty Dancing: Dung Beetles Get Down to Walk the Line

  18 Jan 2012 | 4:00 pm

  As a dung beetle rolls its planet of poop along the ground it periodically stops, climbs onto the ball and does a little dance. Why? It's probably getting its bearings. A series of experiments published in the January 18 issue of PLoS ONE shows that the beetles are much more likely to perform their dance when they wander off course or encounter an obstacle. Until now, no one had any idea what a jitterbugging dung beetle was up to. [More]

• Doomsday Clock Moved 1 Minute Closer to Midnight

  10 Jan 2012 | 3:15 pm

  In a sign of pessimism about humanity's future , scientists today set the hands of the infamous "Doomsday Clock" forward one minute from two years ago. [More]

• Ballot Secrecy Keeps Voting Technology at Bay

  9 Jan 2012 | 6:50 pm

  Voters in the recent Iowa caucuses and Tuesday's New Hampshire primary will rely on paper ballots as they have for generations. In the very next primary on January 21, South Carolinians will vote with backlit touch-screen computers. [More]

• Baby Monkeys with 6 Genomes Are Scientific First

  6 Jan 2012 | 6:00 pm

  They look like ordinary baby rhesus macaques , but Hex, Roku and Chimero are the world's first chimeric monkeys, each with cells from the genomes of as many as six rhesus monkeys. [More]

• Call to Censor Bird Flu Studies Draws Fire

  3 Jan 2012 | 3:30 pm

  “I don’t like to scare people,” says microbiologist Paul Keim. “But the worst-case scenarios here are just enormous.” [More]

• 

  Scientific American - Everyday Science

• How Google's New Privacy Policy Could Affect You

  27 Jan 2012 | 4:00 pm

  You’re on the way to a meeting. Traffic seems to be slowing. A text comes in: “You’re going to be late. Take the next exit for alternate route.” It’s from Google. [More]

• Readers Respond to "Toxins All Around Us" and Other Articles

  27 Jan 2012 | 11:00 am

  CHEMISTRY COMMENTARY [More]

• Can Too Much Information Harm Patients? [Excerpt]

  27 Jan 2012 | 10:00 am

  Editor's Note: The following is an excerpt from The Creative Destruction of Medicine: How the Digital Revolution Will Create Better Health Care (Basic Books, 2012), by Eric Topol, a professor of innovative medicine and the director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute. [More]

• Notion in Motion: Wireless Sensors Monitor Brain Waves on the Fly

  27 Jan 2012 | 6:00 am

  A fighter pilot heads back to base after a long mission, feeling spent. A warning light flashes on the control panel. Has she noticed? If so, is she focused enough to fix the problem? [More]

• Bosses Who Work Out Are Nicer

  26 Jan 2012 | 8:25 pm

  We've all heard exercise is good for your physical and mental well-being. But a good workout can actually influence the mental well-being of others, too. Because bosses who hit the gym tend to be less abusive to their employees. That's according to a study in the Journal of Business and Psychology . [James P. Burton, Jenny M. Hoobler and Melinda L. Scheuer, " Supervisor Workplace Stress and Abusive Supervision: The Buffering Effect of Exercise " ] [More]

• 

  Scientific American - Archaeology & Paleontology

• Readers Respond to "Toxins All Around Us" and Other Articles

  27 Jan 2012 | 11:00 am

  CHEMISTRY COMMENTARY [More]

• 1,300-Year-Old Flask Holds Mayan Tobacco Remains

  17 Jan 2012 | 6:37 pm

  People have used tobacco for well over a thousand years. And researchers recently found unique physical evidence of the ancient habit. They detected traces of tobacco in a 1300-year-old Mayan container. The work is in the journal Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry . [Dmitri V. Zagorevski and Jennifer A. Loughmiller-Newman, " The detection of nicotine in a Late Mayan period flask by gas chromatography and liquid chromatography mass spectrometry methods "] [More]

• Test Tube Yeast Evolve Multicellularity

  16 Jan 2012 | 2:00 pm

  The transition from single-celled to multicellular organisms was one of the most significant developments in the history of life on Earth. Without it, all living things would still be microscopic and simple; there would be no such thing as a plant or a brain or a human. How exactly multicellularity arose is still a mystery, but a new study, published January 16 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science s, found that it may have been quicker and easier than many scientists expected. [More]

• World's Only Known Natural Quasicrystal Traced to Ancient Meteorite

  3 Jan 2012 | 3:15 pm

  Theoretical physicist Paul Steinhardt did not expect to spend last summer travelling across spongy tundra to a remote gold-mining region in north-eastern Russia. But that is where he spent three weeks tracing the origins of the world’s only known natural example of a quasicrystal--an exotic type of structure discovered in 1982 in a synthetic material by Dan Shechtman, a materials scientist at the Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa who netted the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the finding. [More]

• Readers Respond to "Bigger Cities Do More with Less" and Other Articles

  23 Dec 2011 | 7:30 am

  WHY CITIES SUCCEED [More]

• 

  Scientific American - Language & Linguistics

• Scientists Manipulate and Erase Memories (preview)

  26 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  Joël Coutu knelt on the cold cement floor of the pet supply store he managed in Montreal, his wrists bound behind him with telephone wire. He could feel the barrel of a pistol pressed against the back of his neck. “You’re lying!” the gunman screamed. “And I am going to blow your head off.” [More]

• U.S. Science Degrees Are Up

  25 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  [More]

• The Power of Introverts: A Manifesto for Quiet Brilliance

  24 Jan 2012 | 10:40 am

  Do you enjoy having time to yourself, but always feel a little guilty about it? Then Susan Cain’s “ Quiet : The Power of Introverts ” is for you. It’s part book, part manifesto. We live in a nation that values its extroverts – the outgoing, the lovers of crowds – but not the quiet types who change the world. She recently answered questions from Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook . [More]

• Stuttering Reflects Irregularities in Brain Setup

  23 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  Put on a pair of headphones and turn up the volume so that you can’t even hear yourself speak. For those who stutter, this is when the magic happens. Without the ability to hear their own voice, people with this speech impediment no longer stumble over their words--as was recently portrayed in the movie The King’s Speech . This simple trick works because of the unusual way the brain of people who stutter is organized--a neural setup that affects other actions besides speech, according to a new study. [More]

• Forgetting Actually Strengthens Memory--a Special Report (preview)

  18 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  Most people picture human memory as something resembling a secure metal vault into which we cram our valuable--and not so valuable--thoughts for safekeeping. The people with the biggest vaults, then, can keep the most stuff. They know the most and make the fewest mistakes. [More]

• 

  Scientific American - Physics

• Primitive Attraction: Magnetized Moon Rock Points to Lunar Core's Active Past

  26 Jan 2012 | 1:01 pm

  The moon of today is a static orb with little to no internal activity; for all intents and purposes it appears to be a dead, dusty pebble of a world. But billions of years ago the moon may have been a place of far more dynamism--literally. [More]

• New Water-Repelling Surfaces Avoid the Deadly Perils of Icing [Video]

  26 Jan 2012 | 7:44 am

  Joanna Aizenberg's muse is the whole of the natural world. The Harvard University materials scientist takes her inspiration from creatures that suggest engineering of substances in unexpected ways. Ocean creatures in particular have proved inspirational. The brittle star, a relative of the starfish and the sea urchin, has a shell coated with lenses, which may furnish ideas for new types of optical communication systems. There is also the deep-sea sponge with a crown composed of optical fibers. [More]

• How to Make Science and Tech Jobs More Enticing to Undergrads

  25 Jan 2012 | 6:59 am

  The number of U.S. undergraduate degrees being awarded in most STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering and math) has risen steadily in recent years{link to G Sci page}. Yet some American employers say they are having trouble finding candidates to fill STEM jobs. The mismatch is not occurring because of an actual shortage of graduates; the numbers of job openings and new degree holders align fairly closely. And the shortfall is not because more foreign-born students are returning home after earning U.S. degrees, as has been rumored lately. [More]

• Should the U.S. Collaborate with China in Space?

  23 Jan 2012 | 6:00 am

  The next time humans set foot on the moon, they may well plant a five-starred red flag there. The Chinese space program is developing rapidly, and further progress should come this year when taikonauts, a colloquial term for Chinese astronauts, visit the Tiangong-1 space module. [More]

• Recommended: Science on Ice: Four Polar Expeditions (preview)

  20 Jan 2012 | 10:00 am

  Science on Ice: Four Polar Expeditions [More]

• 

  Scientific American Topic - Electrical Engineering

• Ohm Run: One-Atom-Tall Wires Could Extend Life of Moore's Law

  5 Jan 2012 | 2:05 pm

  There may be a bit more room at the bottom, after all. [More]

• Speaking Out on the "Quiet Crisis" (preview)

  16 Dec 2011 | 7:00 am

  When Shirley Ann Jackson was in elementary school in the 1950s, she would prowl her family’s backyard, collecting bumblebees, yellow jackets and wasps. She would bottle them in mayonnaise jars and test which flowers they liked best and which species were the most aggressive. She dutifully recorded her observations in a notebook, discovering, for instance, that she could alter their daily rhythms by putting them under the dark porch in the middle of the day. The most important lesson she took away from these experiments was not about science but compassion. “Don’t imprison…

• Graphene: The Pencil Material That Will Revolutionize Our Lives [Video]

  15 Dec 2011 | 1:45 pm

  For materials-science fans, graphene is one of those substances that's easy to get excited about. Not only is graphene transparent and superstrong--a sheet with the thickness of Saran Wrap could support an elephant--but it also conducts electricity very quickly. It could lead to computer circuits that run 100 times faster. [More]

• Next-Generation Flex-Fuel Cells Ready to Hit the Market

  18 Nov 2011 | 6:00 am

  A fuel-cell power unit that can use natural gas, propane or diesel may in a couple of years provide on-site electricity to factories, computer-server farms and even your home. The solid oxide fuel cell , or SOFC, is also set to go mobile, with new systems providing auxiliary or "hotel" power to long-haul trucks. They may also keep a solar-powered surveillance drone in the sky for what could be years at a time. The latter's "two-way" fuel cell system could in addition electrolyze water to store backup energy as hydrogen to supplement intermittent solar and wind power.

• World-Changing Ideas (preview)

  15 Nov 2011 | 10:30 am

  Revolutions often spring from the simplest of ideas. When a young inventor named Steve Jobs wanted to provide computing power to “people who have no computer experience and don’t particularly care to gain any,” he ushered us from the cumbersome technology of mainframes and command-line prompts to the breezy advances of the Macintosh and iPhone. His idea helped to forever change our relationship with technology. [More]

• 

  Scientific American - Math

• How to Make Science and Tech Jobs More Enticing to Undergrads

  25 Jan 2012 | 6:59 am

  The number of U.S. undergraduate degrees being awarded in most STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering and math) has risen steadily in recent years{link to G Sci page}. Yet some American employers say they are having trouble finding candidates to fill STEM jobs. The mismatch is not occurring because of an actual shortage of graduates; the numbers of job openings and new degree holders align fairly closely. And the shortfall is not because more foreign-born students are returning home after earning U.S. degrees, as has been rumored lately. [More]

• The Not-So-Hot Hand

  15 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  Reggie Miller, Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant. They’ve all gone on seemingly memorable shooting streaks. But past research has shown that the so-called hot hand is a myth, rooted in our tendency to see patterns where there are none. [More]

• Are Physical Constants Really Constant?

  14 Jan 2012 | 11:00 pm

  Some things never change. physicists call them the constants of nature. Such quantities as the velocity of light, c , Newton’s constant of gravitation, G , and the mass of the electron, m e , are assumed to be the same at all places and times in the universe. They form the scaffolding around which the theories of physics are erected, and they define the fabric of our universe. Physics has progressed by making ever more accurate measurements of their values. [More]

• A Brief History of Clocks

  14 Jan 2012 | 11:00 pm

  Humankind’s efforts to tell time have helped drive the evolution of our technology and science throughout history. The need to gauge the divisions of the day and night led the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans to create sundials, water clocks and other early chronometric tools. Western Europeans adopted these tech­nologies, but by the 13th century, demand for a dependable timekeeping instrument led medieval artisans to invent the mechanical clock. Although this new device satisfied the requirements of monastic and urban communities, it was too inaccurate and unreliable for…

• Stephen Hawking, "Equal to Anything!" [Excerpt]

  6 Jan 2012 | 2:15 pm

  Editor's note: The following is an excerpt from the chapter "Equal to Anything!" from the new book Stephen Hawking: An Unfettered Mind (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), by Kitty Ferguson . [More]

• 

  Scientific American - History of Science

• Study Fails to Confirm Existence of Arsenic-Based Life

  23 Jan 2012 | 9:30 am

  A strange bacterium found in California’s Mono Lake cannot replace the phosphorus in its DNA with arsenic, according to researchers who have been trying to reproduce the results of a controversial report published in Science in 2010. [More]

• Warfare in 1912: A Look in Scientific American 's Archives [Slide Show]

  21 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  These implements of warfare were developed to fill a perceived need or follow a specific doctrine. Some, such as the development of artillery, became a central facet during the Great War, the first “total war” that involved all of its citizens, industries and scientific ingenuity. [More]

• 100 Years Ago: Vickers Machine Gun

  21 Jan 2012 | 6:59 am

  February 1962 [More]

• MIND Reviews: The Better Angels of Our Nature

  20 Jan 2012 | 7:00 am

  The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined [More]

• Rainforest in Transition: Is the Amazon Transforming before Our Eyes?

  18 Jan 2012 | 1:31 pm

  The Amazon rainforest is in flux, thanks to agricultural expansion and climate change. In other words, humans have "become important agents of disturbance in the Amazon Basin," as an international consortium of scientists wrote in a review of the state of the science on the world's largest rainforest published in Nature on January 19. ( Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.) The dry season is growing longer in areas where humans have been clearing the trees--as has water discharge from Amazon River tributaries in those regions. Multiyear and more frequent…

• 

  Scientific American - Chemistry

• Cabbage Chemistry--Finding Acids and Bases

  26 Jan 2012 | 9:00 am

  Key concepts [More]

• Designers of Exotic Materials Learn New Tricks from Animals (preview)

  26 Jan 2012 | 7:45 am

  Among the first things you notice when you step into the corner office of Harvard University professor Joanna Aizenberg are the playthings. Behind her desk sit a sand dollar, an azure butterfly mounted in a box, a plastic stand with long fibers that erupt in color when a switch is pulled, and haphazard rows of toys. Especially numerous are the Rubik’s cubes--the classic three-by-three, of course, but also ones with four, five, six and even seven mini cubes along each edge. An eight-year-old would be in heaven. [More]

• New Water-Repelling Surfaces Avoid the Deadly Perils of Icing [Video]

  26 Jan 2012 | 7:44 am

  Joanna Aizenberg's muse is the whole of the natural world. The Harvard University materials scientist takes her inspiration from creatures that suggest engineering of substances in unexpected ways. Ocean creatures in particular have proved inspirational. The brittle star, a relative of the starfish and the sea urchin, has a shell coated with lenses, which may furnish ideas for new types of optical communication systems. There is also the deep-sea sponge with a crown composed of optical fibers. [More]

• How to Make Science and Tech Jobs More Enticing to Undergrads

  25 Jan 2012 | 6:59 am

  The number of U.S. undergraduate degrees being awarded in most STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering and math) has risen steadily in recent years{link to G Sci page}. Yet some American employers say they are having trouble finding candidates to fill STEM jobs. The mismatch is not occurring because of an actual shortage of graduates; the numbers of job openings and new degree holders align fairly closely. And the shortfall is not because more foreign-born students are returning home after earning U.S. degrees, as has been rumored lately. [More]

• Recommended: Science on Ice: Four Polar Expeditions (preview)

  20 Jan 2012 | 10:00 am

  Science on Ice: Four Polar Expeditions [More]

• 

  Observations

• Jumping Spiders Use Blurry Vision to Catch Quick Prey with Precision [Video]

  Katherine Harmon

  26 Jan 2012 | 1:26 pm

  Jumping Spider: image courtesy of Science/AAAS To figure out how far away our dinner plate is our brain melds the slightly different images coming from our two eyes. Other creatures, including many insects, move their heads to glean how far a piece of food might be. But jumping spiders (Hasarius adansoni) don’t seem to possess either of these abilities. So how do they manage such quick and exacting lunges to capture their lunches? Researchers have suspected the answer might have something to do with their four-layered eyes. Previous molecular and physiological work had shown that the…

• Could a Balloon Fly in Outer Space?

  George Musser

  26 Jan 2012 | 12:28 pm

  Here’s the sort of crazy idea that animates our office conversation at Scientific American. It all started with my colleague Michael Moyer’s joke that a certain politician could build his moon base using a balloon: just capture the hot air and float all the way up. Ha ha, we all know that balloons don’t work in outer space. But is that really true? Why couldn’t they? The more I thought about it, the more confused I got, so let me float it as a trial balloon and see whether you can shoot it down. Ground rules: no weaselly appeal to “feasibility” or “practicality” allowed. You…

• Newt to NASA: Stop Talking about Space Exploration–Just Do It

  John Matson

  26 Jan 2012 | 10:19 am

  Gingrich in New Hampshire. Credit: Patrick Gensel via Flickr/Creative Commons Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich made a campaign stop on Florida’s Space Coast January 25, laying out a vision for NASA that included a manned moon base within a decade. The former speaker of the House, who topped our rankings of the candidates in terms of geek cred, wasted no time in trotting out his space bona fides. “I have a deep passion about this because I’m old enough that I used to read Missiles & Rockets magazine,” Gingrich said at public event at a Holiday Inn…

• New Orleans Protection Plan Will Rely on Wetlands to Hold Back Hurricanes

  Mark Fischetti

  26 Jan 2012 | 7:15 am

  Encroaching seas have eroded southeastern Louisiana. More than six years after Hurricane Katrina plowed into New Orleans and the Mississippi River delta, a plan has finally emerged to protect the area from future storms. It relies heavily on the restoration of wetlands to cut down high surges of ocean water like those that flooded the city in 2005—somewhat of a surprise, considering past efforts focused on levees and seawalls. Last week, after prolonged deliberations over competing plans between state and federal agencies, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and cities and parishes…

• Risk of Heart Disease Underestimated, Researchers Say

  Katherine Harmon

  25 Jan 2012 | 4:00 pm

  Image courtesy of iStockphoto/energyy Heart disease is the leading killer in the U.S., and more than 27 million Americans currently have a cardiac condition. But what is your risk of developing heart disease at some point in your entire life? It might be a lot higher than you think, according to a new paper published online Wednesday in The New England of Medicine. “We are giving incomplete and misleading risk information if we only focus on the next 10 years of someone’s life,” Donald Lloyd-Jones, an associate professor at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of…

• 

  Extinction Countdown

• Should YouTube Ban Videos of the Adorable but Endangered Slow Loris?

  John R. Platt

  27 Jan 2012 | 1:40 pm

  Like hundreds of thousands of other people, my first encounter with a slow loris occurred online when I watched the now-famous 57-second video of one of these adorable primates being tickled and throwing up its arms in apparent glee. That video has been viewed more than nine million times since it was posted in June 2009. But some conservationists argue that videos like this create a false impression of the slow loris in viewers’ minds, and in the process fuel the illegal pet trade that brutally mangles the tiny creatures and puts them at risk of extinction in the wild. On January 25…

• Can Stem Cells Help Save Snow Leopards from Extinction?

  John R. Platt

  23 Jan 2012 | 4:19 pm

  Jurassic meow? Scientists at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, have come up with a novel idea for possibly saving endangered big cats: reproduce them in the lab. And the researchers have already accomplished the first step, creating embryonic stem-like cells from the tissue of an endangered adult snow leopard (Panthera uncia). The research was published in the January 2012 issue of Theriogenology. Rajneesh Verma, a PhD student at Monash, told the Study Melbourne blog that he was inspired by fleeting childhood glimpses of tigers in the jungles of India and the plight these big cats…

• Nearly Extinct Primate Rediscovered in Borneo [Video]

  John R. Platt

  20 Jan 2012 | 3:00 am

  Researchers working on the island of Borneo have discovered two tiny new populations of Miller’s grizzled langurs (Presbytis hosei canicrus), one of the world’s 25 most endangered primates. The species is so rare that it has probably disappeared from all of its previously known habitats, which have been almost completely logged and burned out of existence. The langur was last observed in 2008 (pdf) in an isolated patch of mangrove forest on the banks of the Baai River which flows through Borneo’s Sangkulirang Peninsula, when just five of the primates were found. Those five…

• Manta Rays Endangered by Sudden Demand from Chinese Medicine

  John R. Platt

  17 Jan 2012 | 3:20 pm

  Demand for the gills of manta and mobula rays has risen dramatically in the past 10 years for use in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), even though they were not historically used for this purpose, a team of researchers from the conservation organizations Shark Savers and WildAid has discovered. “We first came across manta and mobula ray gills in Asian markets several years ago, and followed the trail to the dried seafood markets of southern China,” Manta Ray of Hope Project lead investigator Paul Hilton said in a prepared statement (pdf) released on January 14. Specifically, the…

• Disease-Carrying Virile American Crayfish Invade U.K. Rivers

  John R. Platt

  11 Jan 2012 | 2:35 pm

  U.S. crayfish and their British cousins do not get along. First the U.K. was invaded by the American signal crayfish (Pacifastacus leniusculus) carrying the deadly crayfish plague, which has killed 95 percent of Britain’s native white-clawed crayfish (Austropotamobius pallipes) over the past 20 years. Now another invasive crayfish species—the virile crayfish (Orconectes virilis), native to the U.S. and Canada—is starting to spread in the rivers around East London. The species also carries crayfish plague. The disease, caused by a water mold (Aphanomyces astaci), is a pretty nasty…

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  Scientific American - Scientific American Magazine

• Is Space Digital? (preview)

  31 Jan 2012 | 11:00 pm

  Craig Hogan believes that the world is fuzzy. This is not a metaphor. Hogan, a physicist at the University of Chicago and director of the Fermilab Particle Astrophysics Center near Batavia, Ill., thinks that if we were to peer down at the tiniest subdivisions of space and time, we would find a universe filled with an intrinsic jitter, the busy hum of static. This hum comes not from particles bouncing in and out of being or other kinds of quantum froth that physicists have argued about in the past. Rather Hogan’s noise would come about if space was not, as we have long assumed, smooth…

• How Scientists Are Tackling the Bed Bug Nightmare (preview)

  31 Jan 2012 | 11:00 pm

  The elderly man lived by himself in a low-income apartment near Cincinnati. But he was not alone. After dark the bed bugs would emerge from his recliner and tattered box-spring mattress to feed on his blood. Judging from the thousands of insects I found in his home, I would venture that it had been this way for many months. Imprisoned by poverty and infirmity, the man had nourished generations of these pests, enduring their bites night after night while their numbers swelled. [More]

• Designers of Exotic Materials Learn New Tricks from Animals (preview)

  31 Jan 2012 | 11:00 pm

  Among the first things you notice when you step into the corner office of Harvard University professor Joanna Aizenberg are the playthings. Behind her desk sit a sand dollar, an azure butterfly mounted in a box, a plastic stand with long fibers that erupt in color when a switch is pulled, and haphazard rows of toys. Especially numerous are the Rubik’s cubes--the classic three-by-three, of course, but also ones with four, five, six and even seven mini cubes along each edge. An eight-year-old would be in heaven. [More]

• Forgetting Actually Strengthens Memory--a Special Report (preview)

  31 Dec 2011 | 11:00 pm

  Most people picture human memory as something resembling a secure metal vault into which we cram our valuable--and not so valuable--thoughts for safekeeping. The people with the biggest vaults, then, can keep the most stuff. They know the most and make the fewest mistakes. [More]

• A Brief History of Clocks

  31 Dec 2011 | 11:00 pm

  Humankind’s efforts to tell time have helped drive the evolution of our technology and science throughout history. The need to gauge the divisions of the day and night led the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans to create sundials, water clocks and other early chronometric tools. Western Europeans adopted these tech­nologies, but by the 13th century, demand for a dependable timekeeping instrument led medieval artisans to invent the mechanical clock. Although this new device satisfied the requirements of monastic and urban communities, it was too inaccurate and unreliable for…

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  Scientific American - Mind Matters

• The Power of Introverts: A Manifesto for Quiet Brilliance

  24 Jan 2012 | 10:40 am

  Do you enjoy having time to yourself, but always feel a little guilty about it? Then Susan Cain’s “ Quiet : The Power of Introverts ” is for you. It’s part book, part manifesto. We live in a nation that values its extroverts – the outgoing, the lovers of crowds – but not the quiet types who change the world. She recently answered questions from Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook . [More]

• In Atheists We Distrust

  17 Jan 2012 | 6:30 am

  Atheists are one of the most disliked groups in America. Only 45 percent of Americans say they would vote  for a qualified atheist presidential candidate, and atheists are rated as the least desirable  group for a potential son-in-law or daughter-in-law to belong to. Will Gervais at the University of British Columbia recently published a set of studies  looking at why atheists are so disliked. His conclusion: It comes down to trust. [More]

• The Neuroscience of Looking on the Bright Side

  10 Jan 2012 | 11:00 am

  Ask a bride before walking down the aisle “How likely are you to get divorced?” and most will respond “Not a chance!” Tell her that the average divorce rate is close to 50 percent, and ask again. Would she change her mind? Unlikely. Even law students who have learned everything about the legal aspects of divorce, including its likelihood, state that their own chances of getting divorced are basically nil. How can we explain this? [More]

• What Hand You Favor Shapes Your Moral Space

  3 Jan 2012 | 9:35 am

  You’re out to dinner at a restaurant that just recently opened. Steamed mussels or steamed calamari? Three cheese ravioli or eggplant parmesan? Strawberry cheesecake or chocolate mousse? With so many good choices, how to decide? [More]

• The Hidden Logic of Deception

  27 Dec 2011 | 1:55 pm

  We lie to ourselves all the time. We tell ourselves that we are better than average -- that we are more moral, more capable, less likely to become sick or suffer an accident. It’s an odd phenomenon, and an especially puzzling one to those who think about our evolutionary origins. Self-deception is so pervasive that it must confer some advantage. But how could we be well served by a brain that deceives us? This is one of the topics tackled by Robert Trivers in his new book , “The Folly of Fools,” a colorful survey of deception that includes plane crashes, neuroscience and the…

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  Scientific American - Ask the Experts

• Bed Bug Confidential: An Expert Explains How to Defend against the Dreaded Pests

  23 Jan 2012 | 7:30 am

  Chances are, you or someone you know has had a run-in with bed bug s. It might have happened in a scrupulously clean bedroom. Or maybe it was a hotel room, office or college dorm. In the February issue of Scientific American entomologist Kenneth Haynes of the University of Kentucky explains how, after a lengthy absence, bed bugs are staging a comeback . The good news is scientists are intensively studying these insects, and their insights suggest novel ways of detecting the bugs and eradicating infestations. Some of those potential solutions are a long way off, however. In the meantime the…

• Can A Middle-Aged Neophyte Make It to Carnegie Hall?

  21 Jan 2012 | 6:00 am

  Gary Marcus suffers from what a friend jokingly describes as congenital arrhythmia--the inability, despite many hours of his youth spent practicing and taking lessons, to learn to play a musical instrument. A few years ago Marcus, a cognitive psychologist at New York University, decided at 38 to make one last try when he took up guitar. No surprise: He did not succeed in becoming the next Jimi Hendrix, but managed to acquire a modicum of skill--and went on to describe his experience in Guitar Zero: The New Musician and the Science of Learning . [More]

• How Has Stephen Hawking Lived to 70 with ALS?

  7 Jan 2012 | 5:00 am

  Stephen Hawking turns 70 on Sunday, beating the odds of a daunting diagnosis by nearly half a century. [More]

• North Korea's Nukes: Does the Death of Kim Jong-il Mean Trouble for the U.S.?

  20 Dec 2011 | 4:00 pm

  As the body of North Korea's "dear leader" Kim Jong-il lies in state at his palace in Pyongyang, his youngest son Kim Jong-un takes control of the country's nuclear weapons program. Despite being named Kim's successor in 2009, Kim Jong-un remains a bit of a mystery to the West. One unanswered question: How much power does the younger Kim wield over the country's military? [More]

• What Is Propofol--and How Could It Have Killed Michael Jackson?

  3 Oct 2011 | 6:00 am

  In the first week of the trial of Conrad Murray, Michael Jackson 's physician, Los Angeles jurors heard audio recordings of the late pop star's slurred speech, in addition to the litany of prescription drugs he had taken in the hours and weeks prior to his June 25, 2009, death. [More]

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  Scientific American - More Science

• Microbubbles Cut Cost of Algae-Derived Biofuel

  27 Jan 2012 | 6:47 pm

  Algae naturally produce oil. When it’s processed, that oil can be turned into biofuel, an alternative energy source. There’s just one snag--harvesting the oil from algae-filled water is prohibitively expensive. But researchers have come up with an effervescent solution: bubbles smaller than the width of a human hair can help reduce the costs of collecting algae oil. [More]

• Microcartography

  27 Jan 2012 | 5:44 pm

  Feet smell like feet and armpits smell like armpits because they each harbor unique species of bacteria with unique metabolisms that produce unique volatiles. Human skin is covered in a patchwork of many different microbes and microbial communities, collectively known as the microbiome , a layer of our bodies that is still very poorly understood. Research initiatives like the Human Microbiome Project aim to catalog and characterize the species of microbes living on different body parts or in our gut, to better understand the role they play in health and disease. Maps showing the composition…

• A Marine Biologist's Story (#IAmScience)

  27 Jan 2012 | 3:38 pm

  In the wake of Science Online 2012, a new hashtag has emerged on twitter: #Iamscience. [ View the story "A quick storify: #IAmScience" on Storify ] [More]

• Should YouTube Ban Videos of the Adorable but Endangered Slow Loris?

  27 Jan 2012 | 1:40 pm

  Like hundreds of thousands of other people, my first encounter with a slow loris occurred online when I watched the now-famous 57-second video of one of these adorable primates being tickled and throwing up its arms in apparent glee. That video has been viewed more than nine million times since it was posted in June 2009.But some conservationists argue that videos like this create a false impression of the slow loris in viewers’ minds, and in the process fuel the illegal pet trade that brutally mangles the tiny creatures and puts them at risk of extinction in the wild. [More]

• Readers Respond to "Toxins All Around Us" and Other Articles

  27 Jan 2012 | 11:00 am

  CHEMISTRY COMMENTARY [More]