Fan Peng-Fei of China’s Dali University was worried the first time he entered the forest habitat of the critically endangered cao vit gibbon (Nomascus nasutus). The isolated forest, skirting the China–Vietnam border, had been heavily degraded by years of agricultural development, firewood collection and charcoal production. What little forest remained provided poor habitat for the [...]

Central Africa has become increasingly inhospitable to forest elephants, according to a study published March 4 in PLoS One that found that 62 percent of the species was killed by poachers between 2002 and 2011. The study—by scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and more than a dozen other institutions—also found that 30 percent [...]

Asia’s turtles and tortoises are in an extinction crisis. Few species embody that more than the critically endangered golden coin turtle (Cuora trifasciata), which is so valued in the illegal pet trade and for its use in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) that a single specimen can fetch $25,000 or more on the black market. The [...]

China’s efforts to conserve and grow its populations of endangered giant pandas (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) are at odds with its own changing forestry policies, which could damage or destroy up to 15 percent of the pandas’ habitat, according to conservationists writing in the February 1 issue of Science. At the heart of the matter is a [...]

Wild yaks are coming back to at least one area of Tibet after a long period of overhunting, but the future for the species is yet unknown as their periglacial habitat melts because of climate change. Wild yaks (Bos mutus) are among Asia’s largest mammals, second only to elephants and rhinos, and are especially adapted [...]

Is the often-illegal market for bear gall bladders and bile for use in traditional Asian medicine starting to shrink? Yes and no and maybe. At least 1,000 Asiatic black bears (Ursus thibetanus) and sun bears (Helarctos malayanus) live in tiny, cramped cages in South Korea, where they are farmed for their gall bladders, which can sell [...]

The appearance of a shark fin piercing the ocean surface is often seen as a sign of danger to humans. Even more dangerous to sharks is the sight of a shark fin floating in a bowl of soup. Around the world, sharks are in crisis. Many species have suffered population declines of 90 to 99 [...]

Ivory to ashes, tusks to dust…. Nearly 5,000 kilograms of elephant tusks and ivory carvings went up in flames on Wednesday in the west African nation of Gabon, sending a powerful message to the international community that poaching and wildlife crime will no longer be tolerated in that country. “Gabon has a policy of zero [...]

Chinese officials added an extra 50,000 carp to the waters of Poyang Lake this week to help feed the endangered Yangtze finless porpoises (Neophocaena phocaenoides asiaeorientalis) that live there, according to a report from the Xinhua news agency. Around 300 to 500 porpoises live in Poyang Lake in northern Jiangxi Province, representing between one third [...]

Two of the world’s rarest and most vulnerable cat species have had some good news in the past few weeks. The best of the news items covers the critically endangered Amur leopard (Panthera pardus orientalis), probably the rarest cat species on the planet, with a wild population of approximately 40 to 50 individuals. Russia, which [...]

A pair of security researchers in the U.K. have released a paper [PDF] documenting what they describe as the “first real world detection of a backdoor” in a microchip—an opening that could allow a malicious actor to monitor or change the information on the chip. The researchers, Sergei Skorobogatov of the University of Cambridge and [...]

This article arises from Future Tense, a partnership of Slate, the New America Foundation, and Arizona State University. On the evening of Wednesday, Oct. 24, Future Tense and Scientific American will be hosting an event in New York City on building resilient cities. To learn more and to RSVP, visit the New America Foundation website. [...]

“Global society operates as a network of creativity and innovation.”–John Sexton, writing in Scientific American. In the October 2012 issue, we publish our Global Science Scorecard, a ranking of nations on how well they do science—not only on the quality and quantity of basic research but also on their ability to project that research into [...]

Despite the hip advertising seen in the U.S. for electric cars such as the Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf, analysts indicate that the vehicles will only make up a small percentage of the market for years to come. But a recent deal between a Boston-based battery maker and a major Chinese auto company shows that [...]

A year ago, Volkswagen in China launched a marketing campaign called The People’s Car Project (PCP), which invited Chinese customers to submit ideas for cars of the future. Participants were able to tinker with designs on a Web site that Volkswagen set up for that purpose, or they could upload their own designs. Wang Jia, [...]

Cotton genetically engineered to produce a natural pest killer not only reduces the spraying of pesticides, but has also boosted the populations of beneficial insects, according to a new study. The study monitored the impacts of so-called Bt cotton over more than 20 years and 2.6 million hectares of farmland in northern China and found [...]

I was saddened to learn from The New York Times this past weekend that astrophysicist and human-rights advocate Fang Lizhi had died at age 76. I met Fang in 1994, a few years after he fled China with help from the U.S. Department of State. Communist party leaders had accused him of helping to instigate [...]

Two subway trains collided in the city of Shanghai on September 26, injuring hundreds, according to early reports. And, much like the collision of two high-speed trains that killed 40 people near Wenzhou on July 23, the culprit appears to be signal failures. According to Chinese news magazine Caixin, the signals began to malfunction at [...]

A crash involving two trains and a fire aboard a long-distance bus in China caused a total of 80 deaths in a two-day period late last week, raising questions about that nation’s safety culture. The high-speed train crash occurred July 23 when a moving train rear-ended a stopped train in Wenzhou, in China’s eastern Zhejiang [...]

China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency has struck back against Google following the Internet giant’s claims earlier this week that recent hacker attempts to steal G-mail user passwords appeared to have originated from China. Xinhua called Google’s statements "evil-intentioned" in an article published Friday and quoted Dai Yiqi, a cyber security researcher with Tsinghua University, as [...]

Since the turn of the 21st century, the number scientific papers published predominantly by Chinese researchers in any of the Nature journals has risen from six to nearly 150 according to a new index published by Nature on May 12. (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.) Campuses such as Tsinghua University and Peking [...]