Fight over Solar Power Returns to White House Roof [Video]
The sunshine that warms Washington, D.C. is once again generating electricity for the White House. After an absence of nearly 30 years, the Obama administration has announced that a 6.3 kilowatt photovoltaic installation of the “typical size for an American house,” is back on the White House roof and generating power.
Ring Ritual Reminds Engineers of Their Responsibility
One of my good friends is an engineer trained in Canada. I had noticed over the years that she always wears a plain silver ring on her pinky, but I never asked if it had any special meaning to her.
Rebooting Civilization: Survivors’ How-to Guide for Restoring Technology after the Apocalypse [Excerpt]
In his new book, astrobiologist Lewis Dartnell compiles the knowledge necessary for society to recover after a devastating disaster, including the basics of taking photographs
Happy Birthday, Circle of Willis!
By 1664, the year he published his most famous book of neuroanatomy, Cerebri Anatome, Dr. Thomas Willis was already renowned in Britain for saving lives.
The “Crisis” in Scientific Results Is a Matter of Biology
Biology is making it harder for scientists to reproduce one another's experiments
Book Review: The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons
Books and recommendations from Scientific American
L.S.B. Leakey on the Distant Past; H. G. Wells on the Near Future
Innovation & discovery as chronicled in past issues of Scientific American
One of Srinivasa Ramanujan’s Neglected Manuscripts Has Helped Solve Long-standing Mathematical Mysteries
Mathematician Ken Ono has solved long-standing puzzles using insights hidden in the unpublished papers of Indian prodigy Srinivasa Ramanujan
Statistician David J. Hand Shows How the Seemingly Improbable Becomes a Sure Thing
There are so many things in heaven and earth that coincidences become certainties
Happy 90th Birthday, Evelyn Boyd Granville!
Evelyn Boyd Granville, the second African American woman to earn a Ph.D. in mathematics, turns 90 today (May 1, 2014). I first heard her name in a talk by Patricia Kenschaft about African American mathematicians.
Women of the Periodic Table Quilt
The Cambridge Science Festival (CSF) is an annual spectacle of more than 150 science-related events and activities taking place in and around Cambridge, Mass.
The First Nuclear Arms Race: Churchill's Bomb, Part 2
Graham Farmelo is the award-winning author of the Dirac biography The Strangest Man. His latest book is Churchill’s Bomb: How the United States Overtook Britain in the First Nuclear Arms Race