BRONX–Marine biology and subway construction were the hot topics here today among two groups of Girl Scouts at IS 131, Albert Einstein School. Shenica Odom of the Girl Scouts Council of Greater New York had asked Scientific American to participate this spring in its Career Exploration Program, designed to encourage about 1,200 girls in the [...]

Above all, science is a collaborative enterprise, where researchers working together can span the continents. Increasingly, nonspecialists—citizen scientists—are pitching in as well. Whale.FM—a collaborative effort of Scientific American, Zooniverse and the research institutions WHOI, TNO, the University of Oxford and SMRU—lets citizen scientists help marine researchers who are studying what whales are saying. (You can [...]

“Big Data”—large and often complicated data sets that thwart quick analysis—remained a key phrase at the World Infographics Summit last month. But the buzz that surrounded that phrase seemed measured and in control. Experts of data visualization have emerged, and they come bearing elegant examples of what works, clumsy examples of what doesn’t, lessons learned, [...]

Scientific American is very happy to help expand the Google Science Fair this year with the new $50,000 Science in Action Award. The international online fair, launched in 2011, has three age categories, for teens from 13 to 18. The Science in Action Award will honor a project that addresses a social, environmental or health [...]

As the art director of information graphics at Scientific American, I’m charged with developing explanatory art for some pretty mind-blowing topics. Our team—text editor, expert author, artist, and me—often works toward illustrating a process or concept that has never been rendered before, or may have only been visualized for other specialists in the field in [...]

And…We’re live! This week, Scientific American Mind launched its Facebook page. Join us here to stay up to date on our latest articles on the mind and brain. Read, share, comment—we are keen for your feedback. Fashionably late, you say? Allow me to take a step back to explain. When I was in journalism school, [...]

What is time? It begins, it ends, it’s real, it’s an illusion. It’s the ultimate paradox. Scientific American has been covering different aspects of this subject ever since the beginning. In our latest anthology “A Matter of Time” we’ve consolidated more than 20 articles, from “How to Build a Time Machine” to “Could Time End.” [...]

In November 2011, Scientific American, Zooniverse and a team of research partners launched the Web site Whale.FM, a citizen-science project devoted to cataloging the calls made by Pilot whales and Killer whales (Orcas), both of which are actually dolphin species. Different whale families have their own dialects and closely related families share calls. Underwater microphones, [...]

Improving science education is not just important to me as the editor in chief of a science magazine for the usual reasons of maintaining our country’s well-being and global competitiveness: It’s also very personal. I have two school-age daughters myself—and they think science is cool. So when I got the top editor’s job at Scientific [...]

We’re counting down the days here until the Scientific American tweet-up at the American Museum of Natural History on Wednesday, January 18, starting at 6 p.m. Full details are on my earlier blog post. We’ll enjoy talks, a tour of the “Beyond Planet Earth” exhibition–and some conversations over cocktails. Attendance is free for followers of [...]