Stories by Steve Mirsky

Scientific American contributing editor W. Wayt Gibbs reports from the U.S. epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak: Kirkland, Wash. In this first installment of an ongoing series, he looks at why children seem to weather this disease better than adults and the complicated issue of shuttering schools.

Emmy and Peabody Award–winning science writer, producer and director Ann Druyan talks about Cosmos: Possible Worlds, the next installment of the Cosmos series.

Make way for emergencies—but go safely

Ben Wiegand, global head of the World without Disease Accelerator at Janssen, the Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson, talks about efforts to prevent a disease or to identify it in its earliest stages for more effective treatments.

Duke University evolutionary biologist Mohamed A. F. Noor talks about his book Live Long and Evolve: What Star Trek Can Teach Us about Evolution, Genetics, and Life on Other Worlds.

Artificial illumination is helping to devastate the earth’s insects

Journalist and author Peter Brannen talks about his book The Ends of the World: Volcanic Apocalypses, Lethal Oceans, and Our Quest to Understand Earth’s Past Mass Extinctions.

The 2019 New York Yankees’ record number of injuries led to a change in training staff that will almost certainly correlate with, but not necessarily cause, a lower injury rate this coming season.  

Getting around the sun last year was some trip.

Rats learned to drive tiny cars as a model for acquiring new skills

NASA has a list of every item astronauts left behind

Journalist and author Beth Gardiner talks about her new book Choked: Life and Breath in the Age of Air Pollution. And CRISPR pioneer Jennifer Doudna talks about gene editing.  

Nature is arguably the world’s most prestigious scientific journal. Editor in chief Magdalena Skipper spoke with Scientific American’s acting editor in chief Curtis Brainard about her journal as it celebrates its 150th anniversary.

How worn-out upholstery in doctors’ waiting rooms revealed common psychological traits

John B. Goodenough, M. Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino share the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry “for the development of lithium-ion batteries” that have led to portable electronic devices that are rechargeable virtually anywhere on the planet.

The 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry goes to John Goodenough, M. Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino “for the development of lithium-ion batteries.”

The 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics goes to James Peebles “for theoretical discoveries in physical cosmology” and to Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz “for the discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a solar-type star.”

William Kaelin, Jr., Peter Ratcliffe and Gregg Semenza share the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine “for their discoveries of how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability.” New therapies for cancer and conditions such as anemia are in the pipeline, based on these discoveries.  

The 2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine goes to William G. Kaelin, Jr., Peter J. Ratcliffe and Gregg L. Semenza “for their discoveries of how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability.” They identified molecular machinery that regulates gene activity in response to changing levels of oxygen.

Scientific American senior editor Jen Schwartz talks with WHO officials Maria Neira and Agnès Soucat about climate and health and with Rachel Kyte, special representative to the U.N. secretary-general for, and CEO of, Sustainable Energy for All.

A new book tells the tale of the greatest predator of human beings in history

Former EPA administrator Gina McCarthy talks with Scientific American’s Andrea Thompson about the widespread benefits of taking action against climate change.

Physics historian Graham Farmelo talks about his latest book, The Universe Speaks in Numbers: How Modern Math Reveals Nature's Deepest Secrets.

Paul Romer, an expert in what’s known as endogenous growth theory and winner of the 2018 Nobel prize in economics, speaks to Scientific American about seeing economic growth as increased value, akin to when ingredients in a recipe are used to create a dish worth more than the original raw materials. His research concludes that investment in people, knowledge and innovation are primary growth factors.