Stories by Steve Mirsky

Tech advisers tell STEM-winders

Environmental engineer Kartik Chandran of Columbia University won a MacArthur Fellowship for his work on extracting nutrients and energy from wastewater and sewage

As Daniel Boorstin, former director of the Smithsonian National Museum of History, once put it, clockmakers were the "pioneer scientific instrument makers"  

Medical researcher Richard Johnson, of the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, talks about his October Scientific American article "The Fat Gene," co-authored by anthropologist Peter Andrews of University College London and the Natural History Museum in London. Their piece is about how a genetic mutation in prehistoric apes may underlie today’s pandemic of obesity and diabetes

Physicist and cosmologist Lawrence Krauss, director of the Origins Project at Arizona State University, talks about his article "What Einstein Got Wrong," in Scientific American’s September issue, devoted to the 100th anniversary of Einstein’s publication of general relativity

Every so often a critter takes a shot at making headlines

Some animals can count; others can be counted on

Jimmy Carter talks about his public health efforts to eradicate guinea worm and improve global mental health and women's health. Plus, magazine collector Steven Lomazow brings part of his collection to the Scientific American 170th birthday party

Smith College sports economist Andrew Zimbalist talks about why the Olympics is almost always a big financial hardship for the host city, a subject he treats at length in his book Circus Maximus: The Economic Gamble behind Hosting the Olympics and the World Cup. Recorded at the Bergino Baseball Clubhouse in New York City
 

Holes in Swiss cheese finally give up their gaseous secrets

In his induction speech at the Baseball Hall of Fame, pitcher John Smoltz hoped that the number of such procedures could be lessened in the future

Stephen Hawking and entrepreneur and former physicist Yuri Milner announce a $100-million, 10-year initiative to look for signs of intelligent life in the cosmos

Stephen Hawking and entrepreneur and former physicist Yuri Milner announce a $100-million, 10-year initiative to look for signs of intelligent life in the cosmos

Entrepreneur and former physicist Yuri Milner talks about the just-announced $100-million Breakthrough Listen Project to search for extraterrestrial technological civilizations

At 8:52 P.M. Eastern time, July 14, 2015, an all's-well signal from the New Horizons spacecraft finished its 4.5-hour, three-billion-mile trip from near Pluto through the solar system to alert mission control on Earth that it was in working order and had succeeded in gathering data

At just before 7:50 A.M. today, July 14, 2015, the New Horizons spacecraft made its closest approach to Pluto. After a 9.5-year, three-billion-mile voyage, the ship got within about 7,750 miles from the surface

An astrophysicist's novel considers the contingency of history

Norman Augustine, former CEO of Lockheed Martin and former undersecretary of the Army talks about the report he co-chaired for the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, "Restoring the Foundation: The Vital Role of Research in Preserving the American Dream"    
 

On June 3, 2015, Vilhelm Bohr talked about his famous grandfather's life, including the relationship with Einstein, at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics

Ornithologist Eduardo Inigo-Elias, senior research associate with the conservation science program at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, talks about the challenges of studying migratory birds and how improved relations between the U.S. and Cuba will help his field   

Mathematician Eugenia Cheng, tenured in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Sheffield in the U.K. and currently Scientist in Residence at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago talks about her new book How to Bake Pi: An Edible Exploration of the Mathematics of Mathematics   

A cloud with a silver lining pales next to solid waste laced with gold

Unusual adrenal and lung conditions seen in dead dolphins in the months after the 2010 BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill point to the oil as the cause. Steve Mirsky reports

Contemporary women's baseball chronicler Jennifer Ring says the fastest women pitchers currently hit speeds in the 80s (mph) and it keeps going up. Steve Mirsky reports