Stories by Steve Mirsky

Evolutionary biologist Lee Dugatkin talks about the six-decade Siberian experiment with foxes that has revealed details about domestication in general.

Lisa Klein, from the materials science and engineering department at Rutgers University, commented on the March for Science at an April 21 talk to the chemistry department at Lehman College in the Bronx.

Evolutionary biologist and science historian Lee Dugatkin talks about the legendary six-decade Siberian experiment in fox domestication run by Lyudmila Trut, his co-author of a new book and Scientific American article about the research.

Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research CEO Todd Sherer, a neuroscientist, talks about the state of Parkinson's disease and research.

The low-end estimate for how much the world's spiders eat is some 400 million tons of mostly insects and springtails.

Let's take a time-out to review the five-second rule

Scientific American technology editor Larry Greenemeier talks with Ken Washington, vice president of Research and Advanced Engineering at Ford, about self-driving cars.

Astronomer Caleb Scharf weighs what ever more exoplanets mean in the search for extraterrestrial life.

Animal Planet's series The Zoo shows viewers the biological, veterinary and conservation science at a modern zoo.

Martin K. Reeves and Simon Levin talk about their Scientific American essay "Building a Resilient Business Inspired by Biology."

Mice that lost weight and then gained back more than they lost maintained an obesity-type microbiome that affected biochemicals involved in either burning or adding fat--suggesting interventions.

A meta-analysis found that being of low socioeconomic status was associated with almost as many years of lost life as was a sedentary lifestyle.

Exposure to specific microbes when an infant is less than a year old seems to have a protective effect against the child's eventual acquisition of asthma.

If anything's alive on the ice-covered ocean world of Europa, a future NASA mission hopes to find it.

What appears to be accepted science in the courtroom may not be accepted science among scientists.

The gravitational waves found last year were short compared with the monster waves that could be turned up by what's called Pulsar Timing Arrays.

It's embedded with tiny, spiky structures that let the animal both comb its fur and lap up water

Genome analysis pinpoints the DNA that gives some people an asparagus edge

Doing large studies of marijuana's potential as medicine means getting it removed from an official federal list of substances with no official medical use—which requires more proof of its potential as medicine.

Properly fermented foods deliver probiotics that could help cut disease risk, said a researcher at the annual meeting of the AAAS.

In urban Asian areas myopia among teenagers is topping 90 percent—but foresight may be able to bring those numbers way down.

Researchers and administrators at the CDC dare not utter the words guns or firearms for fear of budget cuts from Congress, according to health policy researcher David Hemenway.

Astrophysicist and author Mario Livio writes in the journal Nature and talks to Scientific American about the recently rediscovered essay by Winston Churchill that analyzed with impressive scientific accuracy the conditions under which extraterrestrial life might exist.