Space
"You're the Top..." [From the Archive]
Fermilab finds the top quark—sort of
Stories by Philip Yam
Mind
Breakthrough Could Enable Others to Watch Your Dreams and Memories [Video]
Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have reconstructed the internal "movie" that plays in a person's head. To re-create dynamic visual experiences, they used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure the brain activity of volunteers (the other members of the research team) as they watched short movie clips (left panel in the video below)...
The Sciences
Colorado Cat Missing for 5 Years Found in Manhattan
Or maybe I should have titled this post as "Colorado Cat Becomes Big Star in New York, Goes Home to Rural Life Anyway." After all, she made it to NBC's Today show this morning (video), and several media outlets picked up the Associated Press story about how she went missing at a time when most people did not know who Barack Obama was.The cat, named Willow, belongs to the Squires, a Colorado family that was doing home renovations at the time of Willow's disappearance—contractors inadvertently left a door open...
Sustainability
Can Hurricanes Be Controlled?
Everyone likes to talk about the weather, and maybe someone could do something about it someday. From the dances and prayers of the past, we get to the weather-modification technology of the 24th century (at least, that's what I recall from an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation ).Controlling cyclones is an effort entirely different from, say, making it rain...
The Sciences
Learn to Forgive Yourself in a Parallel Universe
Let me be clear: Another Earth , opening July 22, is not a science-fiction film, despite its premise of the discovery of a planet just like our own.A
Health
Should Morbid Childhood Obesity Be Considered Child Abuse?
Now that the battle against the bulge in the U.S. has reached the grade school level, plenty of efforts have begun to fight childhood obesity and its dangers.
Space
How the Northern Lights Form [Video]
Here's a great video primer on how auroras form, from Per Byhring and the physics department at the University of Oslo. With wonderful graphics, the nearly five-minute-long video details the origin of the solar storms that trigger the Northern and Southern lights...
The Sciences
Will Convicted Sex Murderer Amanda Knox Benefit from the CSI Effect?
The strange case of Amanda Knox, the 23-year-old American convicted in 2009 of killing her roommate in Italy and sentenced to 26 years in prison, may get new life.
Evolution
Miss USA Pageant Winner One of Two Contestants to Back Evolution [Video]
I admit, the only time I even notice beauty pageants is when one of the contestants flubs a response and video of the embarrassing moment makes the YouTube rounds.
The Sciences
Why We're Suckers for Stories of the Apocalypse
For rational people, dismissing the silliness around the supposed end of the world on May 21 is all too easy. In case you haven't heard, Christian radio broadcaster Harold Camping has done some questionable math based on Biblical writing to determine that the faithful will be "raptured" tomorrow and that nonbelievers will be left behind to fester to death over the next few months...
Mind
Natural Born Prion Killers: Lichens Degrade "Mad Cow" Related Brain Pathogen
Remember mad cow disease? In the 1980s, cattle in the U.K. had begun contracting a fatal brain ailment triggered by an infectious protein called a prion.
The Sciences
Scientific American Wins 2011 National Magazine Award for General Excellence
So you may have noticed an elephant in the room—more specifically, an elephantine abstraction that began appearing on our Web site today, like the one outside the margin at the left...
Sustainability
Experts on Japan nuclear crisis answer questions from Nature readers
During the morning of April 6, our colleagues at Nature ran a live, online question-and-answer event about the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear crisis. Visitors posted questions for Jim Smith, an environmental physicist from the University of Portsmouth, U.K., and Geoff Brumfiel, Nature’s senior physical sciences correspondent...
The Sciences
Computer restoraton of juvenile art, by Ricardo Chiav'inglese
Back in 1995, a few of the editors at Scientific American decided to resurrect a tradition of a previous generation of editors, who saw fit to publish a joke column in each April issue...
Health
Attention, Ann Coulter: Report to aisle 5 for radiation cleanup
Well, I am impressed how conservative columnist Ann Coulter finds ways to make headlines. The darling of the radical right ventured into science journalism the other day, when during an interview with Fox News's Bill O'Reilly, she said that radiation above the government cutoff is good for you. She was promoting her latest column on her Web site, "A Glowing Report on Radiation"...
The Sciences
The spread of the tsunami from Japan across the Pacific [Video]
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released this video showing the spread of the tsunami generated by a magnitude 8.9 quake off Sendai, Japan, on March 11.
The Sciences
The International Year of Chemistry 2011: The chemical secrets of chocolate revealed [Video]
If it stinks, it's chemistry—that's one memory trick some smart-aleck high-school students might recommend to identify the core sciences. But chemistry goes far beyond noxious fumes...
The Sciences
Wind and Mr. Ug: Finding love on the (Möbius) strip [Video]
If you're a fan of clever and fun, you must check out this video from Vi Hart, a self-proclaimed recreational "mathemusician". This video went viral a few weeks ago.
The Sciences
Obama spotlights science in his State of the Union address
President Barack Obama's State of the Union address Tuesday night had to hearten the science and technology community. The effort to "win the future," in which the U.S.
Mind
Bad prion breath: Mad cow disease agent can infect via the air
As if it weren't bad enough that deadly prions can survive boiling and radiation, now comes word that aerosolized forms of the pathogen can enter the nose and find their way to the brain, with fatal consequences...
