I’ve watched this video several times since @PetiteSam first shared it, and each time I’m struck by the simple message that we’re never quite satisfied. Is the idiom “the grass is always greener” true across cultures? It seems to be the case between nuts and bolts.

Just days after Sci Am published my story on the “bleeding” bacterium Serratia marcescens, a friend sent me this video, in which the marketing department behind the film “Contagion” up north apparently decided to go super-geek and cook up something delightful. Science as art, my friends. Way, way cool, boys. In addition to Serratia, which [...]

Can you explain science with seven everyday items? We’re looking for some creative minds to explain how a part of the human body works, or how a process occurs in it, in two minutes or less. No fancy equipment is needed, either—a smartphone camera will do. For inspiration, take a gander at this sample video, [...]

Can you explain science with seven everyday items? We’re looking for some creative minds to say how a part of the human body works, or how a process occurs in the body, in two minutes or less. No fancy equipment is needed—a smartphone camera will do. Winners will be featured on the Scientific American web [...]

YouTube has fast become a place where people get their news, and in that vein, we’re delighted to join the YouTube Space Lab channel with our new online series, The Countdown. Every other Thursday, host and self-proclaimed web nerd Dave Mosher presents the five coolest things happening in space, astronomy and physics. Our first episode [...]

Remember MacGyver from the old TV series? He could build a laser from a pair of eyeglasses, a match, and some dental floss and then mount it on a shark, or so it seemed. We’re not asking you to do that, exactly. Rather, we thought it’d be fun if science enthusiasts like you could explain [...]

Cancel your plans for the next three minutes and forty nine seconds and watch this video instead. I never normally post time lapse videos on their own, but this video of views from the International Space Station at night, made by Knate Myers, has just become my new favourite. It is made up of photographs [...]

Tomorrow afternoon, in “the most eagerly awaited scientific presentation of the century to date”, particle physics laboratory Cern will update the world on its search for the Higgs boson, that elusive particle that is believed to give mass to fundamental particles. The Higgs is the only particle predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics, [...]

For being mildly arachnophobic I’ve been on a real spider binge lately. Here’s a wonderful Smithsonian-produced video highlighting the role of photography in spider science: (h/t Bug Girl)

Thrifty Thursdays feature photographs movies taken with equipment costing less than $500. [Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS3 - $241; Glidetrack shooter - $276] I often fill the Thrifty Thursday slot with still photographs from my trusty Panasonic digicam. As much as I like the camera for snapshots, though, I actually bought it for video. This clip was [...]

So, I haven’t had a chance to blog these last few weeks. Part of it is that I’ve been submitting papers, revising papers, teaching, and giving talks – the usual gig for a professor. Part of it, if I’m being honest, is the new workout program I’ve been on, and the extra three hours a [...]

The #scio13ID session is here! It was a great session thanks to a brilliant, brave, thoughtful audience. Watch live streaming video from scienceonline at livestream.com

Earlier this week, the Women in Science group at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign convened a panel on using social media to promote science. Melanie Tannenbaum, Bill Hammack, Joanne Manaster and I were the panelists, and Jo Holley was the organizer. There were a few things that I found interesting about our varying responses as [...]

Join me, Joanne Manaster, Melanie Tannenbaum and Prof. Bill Hammack today from 4-6pm at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Institute for Genomic Biology, room 612 (that’s the room right next to Array Cafe, in the Gatehouse). The University of Illinois has a surprising number of academics who are successful science writers, bloggers, photographers and social media [...]

I have been traveling and speaking a lot this semester, perhaps too much. Because we’ve both had so many traveling commitments this year, for the last month I’ve hardly seen my husband, because he’s away one week and I’m away the next. But a few of my speaking engagements have been on campus, which certainly [...]

Okay, I don’t know about you all, but I am just about all talked out regarding interventions, childbirth and childbirth locations. At least for now. We can find something else to scream at each other about next week. In the spirit of Web Soup’s Palate Cleanser, I present to you… Newborn. Clouded. Leopard. Cubs. You’re [...]

The University of Montana’s natural history museum in Missoula is the “largest zoological museum in Montana and one of the major zoological collections of the Northern Rocky Mountains,” according to its website. Its collections hold 14,500 mammalian specimens, 7,000 birds, 3,200 fish, and 320 reptiles and amphibians. However, it’s different than the typical ideal of [...]

The earth revolves around the sun. It’s a true fact, and no conspiracy. Even with such enlightenment, it’s nice to be reminded of why people once thought the opposite — that the universe revolves around the earth — to briefly knock us off our ivory tower of knowledge and be reminded of just how far [...]

This is one of my favorite videos that I’ve seen on the whole of the internet. (Gasp!) Piecing together clips from dozens of science documentaries and specials overlaid with stunning music, the youtube user UppruniTegundanna starts out tracing the history of humans, integrating technological and artistic development. Then it takes a turn to beautifully visualize the [...]

In March, the Harvard University researchers behind the RoboBee project wrote an article in Scientific American that detailed the challenges of building a swarm of bee-sized robots. The effort breaks into three loose categories: first, you have to figure out how to build a insect-sized robot that can fly (and build a lot of them—no [...]

Soon after the investigation into Monday’s Boston Marathon bombings began, law enforcement urged the public to e-mail any video, images or other information that might lead them to the guilty party. “No piece of information or detail is too small,” states the F.B.I.’s Web site. Picking through all of this footage in search of clues [...]

Why did James Hansen retire on April 2 after 32 years as director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies? As he told the enterprising students of Columbia University’s Sustainability Media Lab who captured him in the following video, “I want to devote full time to trying to help the public understand the urgency of [...]

LONG BEACH, Calif.—Yesterday I wrote about the excitement at the American Astronomical Meeting here about new exoplanet discoveries. Scientists working on the Kepler satellite announced the discovery of an additional 461 planet candidates, bringing the total to 2,740. What are these planets like? Alex Parker, a postdoctoral researcher in planetary science at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center [...]

LAS VEGAS—In a sign of how wireless technologies have moved to the fore in consumer electronics, Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs kicked off the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) here Monday night with a keynote spotlighting the impact of superfast processors on mobile apps, gaming and even ultra high-definition television (Ultra HDTV). Smart phones, tablets and [...]

Math can be a beautiful, immersive, full-body experience, according to the creators of the newly opened Museum of Math, or MoMath, in New York City. A sculpture that lights up and plays music, a touch-screen floor that turns into a maze and a square-wheeled tricycle that one can ride around a bumpy track are just [...]

October 21 is the anniversary of Martin Gardner’s birth. Gardner (1914-2010) is a legend in recreational (and professional) mathematics circles. Although he had little mathematical training, his 1956-1981 Scientific American column “Mathematical Games” has had a huge impact on the way people view math. In a Science Talk podcast shortly after Gardner’s death, Douglas Hofstadter, [...]

Two years ago we featured an incredible video of the Antikythera Mechanism—an ancient Greek computing device found in a shipwreck in 1901—made entirely out of Legos. The Antikythera Mechanism calculated the positions of astronomical bodies with extraordinary precision. This machine, by contrast, moves little plastic balls around for no particular reason. But, my goodness:   [...]

U.S. swimmer Dana Vollmer’s record-setting performance in London in the 100-meter butterfly is sure to be a model for aspiring Olympians. Vollmer’s edge in butterfly competition comes from her uncanny ability to closely mimic the underwater undulation and kick of nature’s greatest swimmer—the dolphin. The 24-year-old Syracuse, N.Y., native worked with a team of motion-capture [...]

This time-lapse video of Sunday’s solar eclipse highlights the Sun’s outer layers: The photographer Cory Poole constructed the video by pasting together 700 photographs taken with a Coronado Solar Max 60 Double Stack telescope. According to Jason Kottke, Poole used a filter that only allows light from hydrogen atoms moving from the 2nd excited state [...]

The night before SB5.0 started, students and postdocs got together for the first ever Synthetic Biology Slam. Presenters had five minutes to talk about their vision of synthetic biology and their big idea for the future. One of my favorites was by Evan Clark, a member of the Brown-Stanford iGEM team and the Stanford spoken [...]

A few months ago (before the recent batch of scandals), Arnold Schwarzenegger gave the keynote speech at the ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit that several of my colleagues attended. His perspectives as a bodybuilder (“Stephen, how are your glutes?”), a Republican who believes in global warming and the promise of bipartisan environmental legislation, and an action [...]

Not too long ago, I wrote about an awe-inspiring video that captured the night sky in an intriguing way, using timelapse to create “star trails” and to follow the objects in the night sky over Death Valley. Happily, I present to you a follow up, called Death Valley Dreamlapse 2. You will want to watch [...]

I love Paris. I love science films. Oh, to watch science films in Paris! This is possible due to the Pariscience International Film Festival, to be held October 3-8, 2013. Take a look at this beautiful segment from the documentary, Hummingbirds-Jewelled Messengers: This film won the Buffon award (who’s Comte de Buffon?) at the 2012 [...]

A new contest from the NASA Visitor Centers wants to fly you and your family to visit one of them (Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, Space Center Houston or the U.S. Space and Rocket Center) if you create the most impressive 1-2 minute video explaining “Why Space Matters”. Unlike NASA social events, your travel and [...]

Have you ever watched “Mean Girls”? It’s one of the movies before Lindsey Lohan really began to let her career slip. She plays Cady, a smart girl, homeschooled by her parents as they lived in Africa until her high school years, where, desperate to fit in AND to “get the guy”, she dumbs down her [...]

Last night I was at a SuperBowl party and enjoyed many (maybe too many) delicious foods, including Insalata Caprese. This mozzarella, tomato, basil, salt, and olive oil concoction is a traditional summertime treat. What would happen if it was levitated? Would it taste as incredible? I don’t know, but it certainly would be fun to [...]

If you have kids, or teach, or were observant when you were a kid yourself, you know that kids learn in all different ways. Some are happy to sit quietly and read a book, some need the visual input from photo and video and some want to sing and dance their way to learning the [...]

I’ve never had the pleasure of being in the UK at the time that the Royal Institute of Great Britain have aired their very famous Christmas Lectures, but I hear often from followers and friends in the UK on social media how many of them have been positively impacted by these lectures. The history of [...]

Dogs are great at learning things. They love to be taught how to fetch, roll over, and heel, for instance. You can also teach them physics. Physicist Chad Orzel has proven this with his two books “How to Teach Physics to your Dog” and the more specialized, “How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog“. Here, [...]

World AIDS Day is approaching on December 1. As I was looking up more about World AIDS Day and awareness and testing guidelines/suggestions, I discovered there are several other similar days for awareness including National HIV Testing Day (NHTD), June 27, an annual observance to promote HIV testing. There are also days set aside for [...]

Beautiful. Stunning. Hypnotic. Only a few of the words to describe this video posted by Christoph Malin, an outdoor journalist and cinematographer. And watch, at about 1:42 you’ll see Comet “Lovejoy” rising. From beneath the video: “This Video was achived (sic) by “stacking” image sequences provided by NASA from the Crew at International Space Station. [...]

“Big” me. “Little” me. Watch these two versions of me–which are really the same size–explain why I appear petite in one place on screen and large in another. The reason, in short, is that I have been trapped in a clever visual illusion, one invented 78 years ago by American opthalmologist Adelbert Ames Jr. In [...]

In Tyson Schoeber’s class at Nootka Elementary School in Vancouver, 15 fourth through seventh graders struggle to read, write or do math at a level near that of their peers in other classes. Ten-year-olds have entered Schoeber’s program, called THRIVE, virtually unable to read independently (see “One Man’s Mission to Save Struggling Students”). Yet Schoeber [...]

[The text below is a modified transcript of this video.] 5) Couch Potatoes on Mars When you’re sending a manned mission to Mars, you need to plan for every aspect of the trip; including how to get a good night’s rest. A simulated Mars mission has shown the importance of balancing activity with sleep to [...]

Story 5 A team of Harvard-based astronomers have discovered two black holes cohabiting Messier 22, a globular cluster of stars. Links: Cluster Coexistence: Neighboring Black Holes Defy Predictions of Violent Interactions Story 4 A far-out scheme to mitigate global warming calls for tethering space dust to a near-earth asteroid. Links: Asteroid Dust Could Fight Climate [...]

In the 1950s, psychologist Harry Harlow began to study mother-infant relations in monkeys. After depriving young monkeys from their biological mothers, they were placed in a room where they could either hang out with a “wire monkey” – essentially, a metal figure in the rough shape of a monkey – or a “cloth monkey,” which [...]

sciseekclaimtoken-4f761877d9aec I was recently reminded of the fantastic 2001 PBS/NOVA series Evolution, which was released in tandem with Carl Zimmer’s book, Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea. The whole series is great, but episode 6, The Mind’s Big Bang, was my favorite. And this segment in particular, starting around the 2:15 mark, featuring Andrew Whiten. [...]

Is the red panda playing? Maybe. Just a little bit of Friday Fun. Teaser photo via Fotopedia/griangrafanna

They’re better (and more adorable) than snakes on a plane, that’s for sure. Via Yahoo News comes this video of a couple of penguins getting a quick chance to stretch their flippers on a Delta flight from Atlanta earlier this week. The 6- and 12-year-old penguins were winging their way to New York to appear [...]

This video (via the Washington Post, CBS Evening News, and Dana Point Whale Watch) showing a super-pod of perhaps 2000 dolphins off the coast of southern California, made the rounds last week. Dolphin society is typically described in the same way as primate society. Fission-fusion societies among dolphins are characterized by two levels of social [...]

This video (via Al Dove on twitter), which appears to be from Russia, shows a crow (can anybody confirm the identity of the bird?) engaging in an activity that can only be described as play. There is at least some scientific evidence (behind a paywall) that corvids, as well as some species of parrots and [...]

From the Petapixel blog, slow motion video from a 1000fps camera of an eagle attack. (Correction: an eagle owl attack)

Via the Smithsonian Channel: Gudrun Pflueger, first seen in A Woman Among Wolves, returns to wolf country after a grueling and terrifying bout with cancer. Determined to fight for the wolves who gave her the strength to survive her illness, Pflueger battles freezing temperatures and personal setbacks to track the wolves in the wild. The [...]

The narrator laureate of the science world, David Attenborough, describes the birth of a baby grey kangaroo.

An awesome video from our friends over at BBC Earth Life Is: We caught up with Richard Sorger, a hot British fashion designer who draws inspiration directly from animals and nature. As well as designing for big name celebrities his work he has also designed for Swarovski and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.