Scientific American Magazine

Scientists are using new tools and tactics in the race to discover novel antibiotics

The illegal slaughter of African elephants for ivory is now worse than it was at its peak in the 1980s. New forensic tools based on DNA analysis can help stop the cartels behind this bloody trade

Scientists are turning agricultural leftovers, wood and fast-growing grasses into a huge variety of biofuels—even jet fuel. But before these next-generation biofuels go mainstream, they have to compete with oil at $60 a barrel

The worst economic crisis since the Great Depression has prompted a reassessment of how financial markets work and how people make decisions about money

The division of labor by the two cerebral hemispheres—once thought to be uniquely human—predates us by half a billion years. Speech, right-handedness, facial recognition and the processing of spatial relations can be traced to brain asymmetries in early vertebrates

The only scientist and field geologist ever to visit the moon offers some pointers to those who will one day visit Mars