Some professions have to worry about absenteeism—employees not reporting to work. But in the medical field, researchers are calling attention again to the troublesome trend of "presenteeism" among health care workers, and its implications...
An illicit drug shows promise as a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder
Editor in Chief Mariette DiChristina and issue editor Michael Moyer talk with podcast host Steve Mirsky about the September single-topic issue of Scientific American --endings in science...
Some surgeons making more than $1 million in consulting fees did not disclose that fact in journal articles related to devices on which they consulted. Cynthia Graber reports
Large arrays of pressure sensors could lend a human sense of touch to robots and might someday form the basis of better prosthetics
Less neuroticism and more extroversion may be at the root of patients' improvement
Hailed as a potential alternative to embryonic stem cells, induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells) raise their own ethical dilemmas
As children grow, brambles of short brain connections are gradually pruned down to longer, stronger neural pathways. Research has shown this trend to follow a fairly standard curve during normal development to adulthood, and scientists are now using this information to create predictive models of brain maturation...
Until someone develops a common platform for building robots (think of the combination of Windows and Intel that has made PCs so accessible), the technology will remain elusive to the general public...
Discovering why even bad habits can protect the brain
Babies born to mothers with HIV have a much smaller risk of getting the virus themselves if medical personnel administer preventive drugs, such as nevirapine, at birth to the moms and their newborns...
Evidence mounts that ancient Nubian brewers purposely made beer so that it contained a dose of antibiotic tetracycline. Christopher Intagliata reports
New experimental models based on three-dimensional reconstructions of human skin are helping to reduce chemical testing on live animals, but cannot yet replace animals altogether
A European lab combines "light sheet" microscopy with an illumination process that subtracts the static caused by scattered photons to devise a way to clearly observe the inner workings of cells over a period of days...
Bacterial outbreaks are traced back to nonpasteurized milk, yet proponents claim it is healthier and tastes better
More doctors are turning to repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) of their patient's brains, but fears of possible seizures may be limiting its growth as a therapeutic tool...
Although liver cells created from induced pluripotent stem cells reflect the defects of their source, they may offer a new tool to study inherited disorders
CyberKnife and other noninvasive radiosurgery systems are producing ever more accurate energy beams, raising the possibility of extending the use of potentially lethal radiation to fight Parkinson's, epilepsy and other afflictions...
Drug policy has focused on a policing approach of prohibition and incarceration, which has contributed to spreading HIV within the injection-drug community. Comprehensive drug reform policies are showing better results...
Success of a vaginal microbicide gel reveals how HIV-prevention strategies can emerge from progress in treatment
