Today’s political rhetoric in the U.S. makes it easy to fall into the trap of viewing abortion services as outside the realm of women’s health care—but a recent event in Manhattan belied that logical flaw, just as Scientific American did in an editorial in its May 2012 issue...
The Miss America pageant is often judged to be somewhat of an insult to women. So I was once surprised to learn that the Miss America Organization is the world’s largest provider of scholarship assistance to younger women...
NEW YORK—For a spot news junkie, the sight of a podium-studded dais surrounded by people holding up recording devices is irresistible, especially on a hot summer day.
Circadian rhythms and disrupted sleep cycles were the hot topics during a live 30-minute chat that I hosted on Friday, June 1, with SA Blogs Editor Bora Zivkovic.
The Facebook IPO earlier this month left us a bit disappointed. There were financial and ethical let-downs. But the over-arching surprise is that people were misled in advance about the value of the company...
High-profile suicides of professional football players have mounted in the past several years—Terry Long (2005), Andre Waters (2006), Dave Duerson (2011) and Ray Easterling (2012) all killed themselves following retirement and bouts with diagnoses likely related to the thousands of hits they fearlessly underwent as players...
BRONX–Marine biology and subway construction were the hot topics here today among two groups of Girl Scouts at IS 131, Albert Einstein School. Shenica Odom of the Girl Scouts Council of Greater New York had asked Scientific American to participate this spring in its Career Exploration Program, designed to encourage about 1,200 girls in the South Bronx to explore careers and professions that they might not have otherwise considered for themselves, including jobs involving science, technology, engineering and math (STEM jobs)...
No matter what you think about the Catholic Church, the "Chimp Pope" image (at left) by figurative/narrative artist Nathaniel Gold probably holds your attention and gives you pause about the latest hullabaloo...
RALEIGH, N.C.—Bone-hunters and anthropologists typically guard their fossils as priceless specimens. I've learned to ask: "Is that real or a cast?" when shown a specimen.
I heard on the news this morning that the Occupy Wall Street encampment at Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan was broken up by police overnight and that protesters were set to march north today to the intersection of Sixth Avenue and Canal Street--one block from Scientific American 's office in New York.Indeed, when various SA employees and I independently surfaced from our subway commutes between 8 and 10 am, several hundred protesters and accompanying media, police and lookers-on were assembled off the intersection at Duarte Square (marked by a statue of Juan Pablo Duarte, a leader who helped establish the Dominican Republican's independence in the 19th century).Public health was one of the grounds for the protesters' dismissal (they might return to their original site later today)...
Three members o f Scientific American ‘s editorial staff are joining the conversation this week at the Compass Summit, a conference created to help leaders focus on global challenges and economic opportunities facing their organizations and society...
FLAGSTAFF, Arizona—A relatively new type of drug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus could represent the world's next bacterial epidemic, an environmental health expert said here today at a conference for science writers.The superbug, called methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus strain 398, or MRSA ST398, was first identified in an infant in the Netherlands in 1994 and traced back to her family's pigs...
Scientific American , the oldest continuously published magazine in the U.S., turns 166 years old on August 28, thanks in part to a New England man who decided to use the latest communications technology available in 1845, the printing press, to tell readers about more of the latest, and sometimes weirdest (or so it looks now), technology available—patents, inventions and other "curious works" in the fields of mechanics, chemistry, manufacturing, architecture and other arts and trades...
LINDAU, Germany—A 93-year-old Nobel laureate in physiology or medicine received a standing ovation from hundreds of scientists on June 30 at the end of a speech in which he urged the world's young people to take measures to control runaway population growth in order to resolve related ills that have resulted from humans' remarkable evolutionary success as a species...
LINDAU, Germany—A vaccine to prevent infections of cancer-causing human papilloma virus (HPV) is currently approved for use in the U.S. in boys and girls and in the U.K.
LINDAU, Germany—There's a magazine ad for an expensive skin care product marketed by Christian Dior that claims to trade on aquaporins, the discovery of which by Peter Agre won him the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2003 (he shared it with Roderick MacKinnon)...
LINDAU, Germany—Drab details dominate most academic conferences, but here at the 61st Meeting of Nobel Laureates, the hundreds of young scientists in attendance want and get a lot more—including career tips and snappy anecdotes about the twists and turns of how science actually happens...
LINDAU, Germany—Microsoft founder Bill Gates thrilled a crowd of 566 young researchers from 77 countries gathered here June 26 for the opening ceremony of the 61st Meeting of Nobel Laureates, and he wasted no time in telling them what to do...
Health care reform became law, and within four years, 98 percent of the population was covered by insurance. Only 0.2 percent of all children remained uncovered.
PHILADELPHIA—In medicine, there's the patient and there's the chart. And the chart is paper.
That's the stereotype. Actually, about 20 to 30 percent of all primary care physicians in the nation now use basic electronic health records, according to David Blumenthal, a Harvard Medical School professor who was the national coordinator for health information technology in the Obama Administration until a week ago...
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