Biometrics

This question was not proposed by a mad scientist bent on world doggie domination. The idea to see whether dogs follow life-sized videos is actually entirely sensible.

Robot octopuses can already walk, jet along and even grasp tools. But new advances have these machines swimming faster than ever. And thanks to the addition of soft, fleshy webs, they’re starting to look—and move—much more like the real thing, too.

Bob Dylan asked: "Are birds free from the chains of the skyway?" Sure, this is a metaphor (in Dylan's case, for a lost love) but it works because the complexities of avian flight—from migration and navigation to group dynamics—have long been a mystery, one with a preponderance of ideas, but few firm answers.

The FDA will continue to monitor safety from health records

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.—What happens in the brains of people who see Jesus in a piece of toast? What are the physics of slipping on a banana peel?

Tonight, Google will announce the winners of its fourth annual Google Science Fair, which Scientific American co-sponsors. Watch the awards ceremony here live.

So yesterday, I adopted an unborn land-mine-detecting African giant pouched rat (Cricetomys gambianus) from Tanzania. Did I spend 20 minutes figuring out what I was going to call it, as one of my many privileges as an adoptive parent?

Do you have a FitBit story? Last November, S came home with a Fitbit Flex. For those of you who don’t have one of these increasingly ubiquitous devices, it’s a small, plastic band that you wear on your wrist (there are other tracker options as well).

Is this agile appendage as brawny as people believe?

HBO's John Oliver can rest easy: Technicians have restored control over a satellite with which Roscosmos had lost contact last week. It's carrying five experimental geckos #gogetthosegeckos

A successor to an essential part in today’s computers may arrive in just a few years

Implants to restore brain function lost to injury and disease win support from a defense agency