Everyday Science

Books and recommendations from Scientific American MIND

Of studies presented at conferences, those that found a cognitive benefit to bilingualism were almost twice as likely to get published in journals as were studies finding no benefit. Karen Hopkin reports

 

Superpressure technology could keep gamma-ray telescope aloft for 100 days or more around Antarctica

My fermentation obsession has reached new heights – on Christmas day I bottled my first mead, and it was delicious. My wife also gave me a book on mead making, and I’m getting ready to start a wild-ferment mead.

New clues from Guinea yield tantalizing pieces of the puzzle 

Why scientists continue to be perplexed by how to define the outbreak that has killed 7,000

A tasty food science task from Science Buddies

British students made a wrist monitor that senses if you nod off and sends a signal to your DVR to record whatever you were watching. Future such devices could control additional household functions. Larry Greenemeier reports

 

Have you ever smelled something so familiar that it felt like you were transported back through time into one of your earlier memories? Have freshly baked cookies, your grandmother's chili sauce, or a specific brand of sunscreen after a long winter actually affected the way you feel?

Volunteers who read from an iPad before bed took longer to fall asleep and had less restful nights than when they read from a printed book. Dina Fine Maron reports.

 

This week millions of people will find themselves standing in an airport-security line, hoping their supposedly travel-size toiletries don’t create a national security incident.

When I visited the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod in early 2013 for an open house for prospective students, in many senses I was feeling under the weather.