Stories by Steve Mirsky

A decade of modest financial investment has revitalized Mozambique's Gorongosa National Park, explains biologist Sean B. Carroll in his new book The Serengeti Rules: The Quest to Discovery How Life Works and Why It Matters.

A conversation following a play about the famous Milgram experiments about conformity and authority included mention of a just-published new version of the test.

Facial hair illustrates an inequality in American medicine

A provocative book surveys the wide world of passionate proclivities

If a socially prominent gorilla is in the midst of a meal, it may hum or sing to tell others nearby that it's busy at the moment and will get back to you later.

Scientific American's energy and environment editor, David Biello, met with Bill Gates on February 22 to discuss tackling carbon emissions while at the same time making necessary energy available to ever more of the globe’s growing population.

Jessica Witt of Colorado State University explains that how well you're performing affects your visual perception of the world around you, at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Gypsyamber D’Souza of Johns Hopkins University discussed the rise in HPV-related oral cancer, its connection to oral sex and the risk for men at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Wilson Compton, deputy director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, addressed ways to deal with the U.S. opioid epidemic at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Almost all the ivory in large stockpiles seized by law enforcement originates in just two locations in Africa, informing authorities about where to focus their resources.

Scientific American editors Mark Fischetti, Dina Maron and Seth Fletcher talk about the info they picked up at the just-concluded annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C. Subjects covered include gravitational waves, whether there's really a war on science, the growing concern over Zika virus, sea level rise and advances in artificial intelligence.
 

Scientific American's Josh Fischman talks with renowned astrophysicist and general relativity expert Kip Thorne about the discovery of gravitational waves by the LIGO Project, co-founded by Thorne.
 

Freelance journalist Kevin Begos talks with archaeologist Aren Maeir, from Bar Ilan University in Israel, at his dig site in Gath, thought to be Goliath's hometown and a major city of the Philistine civilization.
 

Developed nations that drive climate change incur relatively few of the costs whereas countries that produce few greenhouse gas emissions will be hard-hit, like nonsmokers exposed to second-hand smoke.

At a Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health forum on diet and health, Walter Willett, chair of the school's nutrition department, talked about benefits and risks associated with antioxidant supplements.

Some words may not mean what you think they mean

The newly discovered Himalayan forest thrush looks a great deal like the alpine thrush, but its far silkier song stylings gave it away as a potential new species.

The presence of a gun increases the likelihood that someone in the home will die a violent death, particularly by suicide.

Caltech astronomer Mike Brown, the driving force for demoting Pluto, now claims evidence for a massive, distant replacement ninth planet in our solar system.

At a Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health forum on diet and health, Walter Willett, chair of the school's nutrition department, said that adoption of more healthful eating habits even late in life still has benefits.

The remains of a clearly butchered woolly mammoth in Siberia date to 45,000 years ago, 10 millennia earlier than when humans were thought to have crossed north of the Arctic circle.

The University of Cambridge's Piers Mitchell, author of the 2015 book Sanitation, Latrines and Intestinal Parasites in Past Populations, talks about the counterintuitive findings in his recent paper in the journal Parasitology titled "Human parasites in the Roman World: health consequences of conquering an empire."
 

Some set of numbers will definitely be drawn in the $1.3-billion Powerball Lottery, so all you have to do is make sure you hold every possible combination of numbers.

More than a quarter century after the federal funding ban on needle exchange programs went into effect, it has quietly been almost completely lifted.