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Mona Lisa
"Mona Lisa Effect" Not True for Mona Lisa
scientificamerican.com - Christopher Intagliata
Science
RoboFossil Reveals Locomotion of Beast from Deep Time
scientificamerican.com - Kate Wong
Some 290 million years ago a four-legged, plant-eating creature the size of large dog roamed what is now central Germany. It did not carry itself …
Ultima Thule
The Moment We First Saw Ultima Thule Up Close
scientificamerican.com - Tod R. Lauer, Henry Throop
You plan a voyage of exploration for more than three years and the moment comes when you see a new world for the first time. This is an informal …
Science
The Moment We First Saw Ultima Thule Close up
scientificamerican.com - Tod R. Lauer, Henry Throop
You plan a voyage of exploration for more than three years and the moment comes when you see a new world for the first time. This is an informal …
Science
When Leaders are Bullies
scientificamerican.com - Dawn Starin
For years I spent my days, from before dawn until after dusk, following a troop of endangered red colobus monkeys around a small West African forest. …
Science
Climate Forecast: World Is “Sleepwalking into Catastrophe”
scientificamerican.com - Anne C. Mulkern, E&E News
Climate change is the biggest threat to the planet, the World Economic Forum said yesterday in a sweeping catalog of global risks. The institution’s …
Mental Health
Is Cannabis Good or Bad for Mental Health?
scientificamerican.com - Jonathan N. Stea
The physicist Richard Feynman has been popularly quoted as stating that if you think you understand quantum mechanics, then you don’t. It is perhaps …
Science
Heat Waves Are Causing Mass Fish Deaths in Australia
scientificamerican.com - Bianca Nogrady, Nature magazine
Hundreds of thousands of native fish in Australia’s Darling River have died following a major outbreak of blue–green algae and some severe weather. …
Science
Bitter Reality: Most Wild Coffee Species Risk Extinction Worldwide
scientificamerican.com - Jim Daley
Here’s something to think about as you sip that morning mochaccino: Deforestation, climate change and the proliferation of pests and fungal pathogens …
Science
Bitter Reality: Most Wild Coffee Species Risk Extinction Worldwide
scientificamerican.com - Jim Daley
Here’s something to think about as you sip that morning mochaccino: Deforestation, climate change and the proliferation of pests and fungal pathogens …
Science
Ants Stick to Cliques to Dodge Disease
scientificamerican.com - Lucy Huang
Ants infected with fungal pathogens steer clear of other cliques within the colony—avoiding wider infection, and allowing for a sort of immunity. …
Science
Wildfires Spark Population Booms in Fungi and Bacteria
scientificamerican.com - Jennifer Leman, Nature magazine
Wildfires are getting larger, burning hotter and becoming increasingly unpredictable, devastating plant and animal species. Now, researchers are …
Science
How to Deal With People Who Talk Too Much
scientificamerican.com - Savvy Psychologist Ellen Hendriksen
Listener Brian wrote in with a dilemma. Like many office workers, he works in an open cube environment. He’s friendly and easygoing, but finds he’s a …
Science
Clean Power Plan Replacement Could Lead to Increased Emissions
scientificamerican.com - Niina Heikkinen, E&E News
EPA’s proposed replacement for the Obama-era Clean Power Plan could lead to increases in carbon emissions in 2030 compared with having no climate …
Science
The Rise of Homo Verticalis
scientificamerican.com - Roland Bouffanais, Sun Sun Lim
The evolution of humankind is intimately intertwined with the development of our living spaces. All forecasts point to an almost complete …
Science
Weird Star System’s Planet-Forming Disk Goes Vertical Like a Ferris Wheel
scientificamerican.com - Charles Q. Choi, SPACE.com
Planet-forming disks of material typically orbit around the equators of stars, but now scientists have discovered such rings can go dramatically awry …
Molecular Biology
Human Gene Editing: Great Power, Great Responsibility
scientificamerican.com - E. Paul Zehr
We are at the point where our technology will soon surpass our humanity. It used to be that what we had in our jeans was just what we had in our …
Science
Fukushima Residents Return Despite Radiation
scientificamerican.com - Jane Braxton Little
When the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant began spewing radioactive particles after it was clobbered by a tsunami in March 2011Kaori Sakumafled. …
Science
Physicists Lay Out Plans for a New Supercollider
scientificamerican.com - Davide Castelvecchi, Nature magazine
CERN has unveiled its bold dream to build a new accelerator nearly four times as long as its 27-kilometer Large Hadron Collider—currently the world’s …
Science
Physicists Lay Out Plans for a New Super-Collider
scientificamerican.com - Davide Castelvecchi, Nature magazine
CERN has unveiled its bold dream to build a new accelerator nearly four times as long as its 27-kilometer Large Hadron Collider—currently the world’s …
Science
Hollywood's Portrayals of Science and Scientists Are Ridiculous
scientificamerican.com - Ushma S. Neill
For any scientist on Twitter in recent days, the funny-not-funny meme of “I’m a scientist in a movie…” is familiar. In these hypothetical scenarios, …
Science
Climate Concerns Are Pushing Oil Majors to Look Beyond Fossil Fuels
scientificamerican.com - John Fialka, E&E News
In 2016, Royal Dutch Shell PLC, one of the largest oil and gas companies in the world, started a historic plunge into new businesses. The …
Science
The Scourge of Sepsis
scientificamerican.com - Erin Daksha-Talati Paquette
The death of seven-year-old Jakelin Amei Rosmery Caal Maquin in December, shortly after she was taken into custody by Customs and Border Patrol has …
Science
Our Language Affects What We See
scientificamerican.com - Catherine L. Caldwell-Harris, Ph.D.
Does the language you speak influence how you think? This is the question behind the famous linguistic relativity hypothesis, that the grammar or …
Mindfulness
Proper Breathing Brings Better Health
scientificamerican.com - Christophe André
As newborns, we enter the world by inhaling. In leaving, we exhale. (In fact, in many languages the word “exhale” is synonymous with “dying.”) …
Science
Spare a Thought for the Distant Future
scientificamerican.com - Leonid Solovyev
All of us, with the exception of hedonists, nihilists and goldfish, are in favor of planning for the future. In individuals, we see the ability to …
Science
The Kids (Who Use Tech) Seem to Be All Right
scientificamerican.com - Lydia Denworth
Social media is linked to depression—or not. First-person shooter video games are good for cognition—or they encourage violence. Young people are …
Science
Ocean Moons, Promising Targets in Search for Alien Life, Could Be Dead Inside
scientificamerican.com - Meghan Bartels, SPACE.com
For more than two decades, scientists have wondered whether extraterrestrial life may be flourishing deep below the icy coatings boasted by moons in …
Science
Disaster Response Projects Could Lose Funding to Border Wall
scientificamerican.com - Daniel Cusick, E&E News
Mexico won’t pay for President Trump’s border wall. But Northern Californians might. Many of them live near the American River, one of the country’s …
Science
Fake Whiskeys and Octo-Ecstasy
scientificamerican.com - Andrea Gawrylewski, Tanya Lewis
Scientific American assistant news editor Tanya Lewis and collections editor Andrea Gawrylewski take an deeper look at two short articles from the …