Behavior
Why Losing Our Newspapers Is Breaking Our Politics
Study finds newspaper closures are linked to partisanship
Culture1080 articles archived since 1845
Neuroscience
Tech's Brain Effect: It's Complicated
We don't yet know what the immersion in technology does to our brains, but one neuroscientist says the answer is likely to be that there's good, there's bad, and it's complex.
Culture
Was Thomas Kuhn Evil?
Filmmaker Errol Morris, once Kuhn’s grad student, accuses him of being a bad philosopher and bad person.
Culture
Sing Solo For Higher Fidelity
By tracking duetting choir singers, researchers found that when an individual singer's pitch drifts off tune their partner’s tend to too. Christopher Intagliata reports.
Culture
It's True: We're Probably All a Little Irish--Especially in the Caribbean
Everyone is supposedly a little Irish on St. Patrick's Day but there is more truth to this saying than most recognize. It's not merely a loophole allowing for the uninhibited consumption of Guinness...
Space & Physics
Starstruck—60 Years of NASA’s Dazzling Archives
Get lost in space with this thrilling collection of images from the revered agency
Computing
Baseball Commish Talks Big Data
At a sports technology conference, baseball commissioner Rob Manfred addressed issues including an automated strike zone and advanced analytics.
Computing
Computer Program Measures the Entropy of Art
The digitization of paintings could help art historians detect previously unknown patterns and connections
Culture
The True Story of Einstein's Wife, a Revised History of Humans, and Other New Science Books
Book recommendations from the editors of Scientific American
Evolution
On the Origin of Darwin
On this 210th anniversary of Darwin's birth we hear evolution writer and historian Richard Milner perform a brief monologue as Charles Darwin, and former Scientific American editor in chief John Rennie and Darwin's great-great-grandson Matthew Chapman read excerpts from The Origin of Species ...
Culture
Different Humpback Whale Groups Meet to Jam
Humpback populations from the Atlantic and Indian oceans meet up south of Africa and trade song stylings.
Culture
A Man-Eating Tiger, the Science of Athletic Recovery and Other New Science Books
Book recommendations from the editors of Scientific American
Cognition
"Mona Lisa Effect" Not True for Mona Lisa
The Mona Lisa effect is the illusion that the subject of a painting follows you with her gaze, despite where you stand. But da Vinci's famous painting doesn't have that quality. Christopher Intagliata reports...
Hollywood's Portrayals of Science and Scientists Are Ridiculous
And Twitter is taking note
Behavior
Seeing Superman Increases Altruism
Subject who saw a Superman poster were more likely to offer help than were people who saw another image.
Space & Physics
Ultima Thule and the Apes of Earth
As the New Horizons mission approached Ultima Thule, Rowan University paleontologist Kenneth Lacovara put our close-up study of the Kuiper Belt object into a deep-time perspective.
Behavior
Facebook Users Value the Service More Than Investors Do
Users of the social network said they'd require payment of more than $1,000 to quit the platform for one year. Christopher Intagliata reports.
Culture
Meet the Real Ravenmaster
Christopher Skaife talks about his new book The Ravenmaster: My Life with the Ravens at the Tower of London, in front of a live audience at Caveat, “the speakeasy bar for intelligent nightlife" in Lower Manhattan...
Biology
Germs of Genius—a Masterpiece’s “Microbiome” Can Spell Its Demise
But microbes living on canvases may also help preserve irreplaceable works of art
How Scientific American Helps Shape the English Language
The magazine is more widely cited than the Bible by the Oxford English Dictionary
