Dieting women who kept a diligent food diary lost more weight than other women in a cohort. Skipping meals and eating out slowed weight loss. Katherine Harmon reports
In a study of patients asked to tolerate discomfort, different placebo treatments achieved different levels of relief, in keeping with individual expectations. Katherine Harmon reports
Thresher sharks were seen slapping their long tails through the water, stunning or killing several smaller fish with each strike. Katherine Harmon reports
Patients know that health care workers should wash their hands, but are are often reluctant to ask a doctor or nurse to lather up. Katherine Harmon reports
Scientists hope to learn tuberculosis's genetic secrets by examining TB genes in old bones and comparing them with other strains from the past and present. Katherine Harmon reports
The past few years have seen tremendous strides in our understanding of cancer, including new hypotheses about its genetic origins and new treatment alternatives using the body’s own immune response...
Making ethical decisions involves more than listening to an inner moral compass, a feeling in the gut of what’s right and wrong; and questions of ethics in science are becoming increasingly complex, especially as technology encroaches upon even our most private cellular spaces. In this eBook, Doing the Right Thing: Ethics in Science , we cover a wide range of areas in science and medicine where complicated ethical questions come to bear, including genomics and research where informed—and ethically sound—choices are the basis of many scientific studies...
The onset of cold weather brings out the boots, coats, gloves – and the stoplight-red “Flu Shots Available Here” signs in drugstore windows. For many scientists and public health specialists alike, flu season has become a little like Russian Roulette...
Every organism on Earth has an expiration date. For humans, it's around 78 years, but some people make it to 100 or beyond. Scientific American editor Katherine Harmon explains how these outliers outlive the rest of us...
Young adults at risk for getting a sexually acquired infection were more likely to use a condom if they followed a social media's sex education campaign. Katherine Harmon reports
A small group of type 2 diabetes patients lost significant amounts of fat around their hearts and in their livers and abdomens with regular exercise, even without dietary changes. Katherine Harmon reports...
It may sound like something straight out of a horror movie, but many animals can come under the zombie-like control of parasites. So what about humans? Scientific American editor Katherine Harmon fills us in on the ghoulish side of Nature...
During allergy season, sufferers know the drill: runny nose, watery eyes, sneezing up a storm. If you also have asthma, symptoms might also include coughing and wheezing. Then there’s the common cold, which also presents with similar symptoms...
On June 5, 1981, the scientific community received a wake-up call from the CDC in the form of a terrible new illness that the world would soon know as AIDS. Three decades later, remarkable progress has been made but much more remains to be understood and to be done...
Over at Octopus Chronicles, Katherine Harmon Courage commemorated the eighth day of the eighth month with eight hiding octopuses. Let’s keep the octomonth celebrations going in honor of everyone’s favorite invertebrate...
Desde la época de Charles Darwin, la ciencia ha pintado una imagen de nuestro ancestro más antiguo similar a un chimpancé, pero ahora la nueva evidencia fósil está redibujando las líneas de la evolución humana...
From the time of Charles Darwin science has painted a picture of our earliest ancestor in the image of a chimpanzee. Scientific American editor Katherine Harmon explains how new fossil evidence is redrawing the lines of human evolution...
Why can you vividly recall the day your father took you to your first baseball game many years ago, but you can’t remember where you just put the car keys? The process of how - and what - we remember is a fascinating window onto who we are and what makes us tick...
