This year, the first Google Science Fair in partnership with Scientific American, CERN, LEGO and National Geographic drew more than 10,000 students from 91 countries. As the chief judge and master of ceremonies for the awards event on July 11 at Google’s Mountain View, Calif., campus, I was delighted to meet and hear directly about [...]

In 2009 California took in $839 million in taxes from the sale of cigarettes. And with its—and many other states’—budget in dire straights, it is hard to turn down any extra income. But that’s just what the state has been doing, with overall cigarette sales dropping year after year thanks to anti-smoking efforts. And these [...]

Could plastic bottles and metal food-can liners be contributing to the American asthma epidemic? A study presented at the Pediatric Academic Societies meeting this past weekend suggests so, finding that pregnant women exposed to bisphenol A (BPA)—a chemical building block of plastics from polycarbonate to polyester—gave birth to children with a higher risk of respiratory [...]

The prevalence of chronic health conditions among children in the U.S. doubled between 1994 and 2006, according to a study published in the February 17 issue of JAMA The Journal of the American Medical Association. Harvard scientists Jeanne Van Cleave, Steven Gortmaker and James Perrin, analyzed data from the Child Cohort of the National Longitudinal [...]