A year and a half ago, the decision to pack up shop at ScienceBlogs and begin blogging at Scientific American was an easy one. The inimitable Bora Zivkovic had assembled a blogging dream team, a group of people I respected and admired and couldn’t wait to call networkmates. Under Bora’s nurturing oversight, we all have [...]

It seems like every time a male republican tries to talk about women, he somehow says something stupid and misogynistic. Last year, Missouri candidate Todd Akin was torn apart for his negligent comment that, when a woman is raped, she needn’t worry about pregnancy because “the female body has ways to try to shut that [...]

Though childish songs make crude jokes, there’s nothing funny about diarrhea. Aside from the painful, twisting feeling in your guts, there’s just something psychologically upsetting about losing control of your bowels. It’s embarrassing. It’s disgusting. And we’ve all been there. But for many, diarrhea is more than a shameful stain to be washed away in [...]

Take a moment to look at yourself in the mirror. I want you to really examine your features—the curves, lines and shapes that make up your face. How broad is your chin? Narrow, or wide? How big is your mouth in comparison? Or your nose? Do you have strong, prominent eyebrows? How close are they [...]

“Oh, beauty is a beguiling call to death, and I’m addicted to the sweet pitch of its siren.” – Johnny Quid, RocknRolla Glinting in shimmering shades of blue and green, the emerald cockroach wasp is surely a thing of beauty, but its shimmering exterior masks its cruel nature. The emerald cockroach wasp is one nature’s [...]

There’s a lot to be said for smarts—at least we humans, with some of the biggest brains in relation to our bodies in the animal kingdom, certainly seem to think so. The size of animal brains is extravagantly well-studied, as scientists have long sought to understand why our ancestors developed such complex and energetically costly [...]

Tonight, we usher in a brand new year and say farewell to 2012. The first full year here at Scientific American Blogs. The year of the Higgs Boson. The year Curiosity landed on Mars. The year the world was ending, but didn’t. It’s been a good year here at Science Sushi. In the past year… [...]

Stumpy (devil scorpionfish, Scorpaenopsis diabolus) and Ginny (Hawaiian green lionfish, Dendrochirus barberi) wishing you the best this holiday season!

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to do a great parody video, but if you have some to include, it’s even more brilliant:

Nothing can turn a fun day at the beach into a nightmare faster than a jellyfish sting, as Angel Yanagihara, researcher at the University of Hawaii, learned firsthand when she was swimming off Kaimana beach in 1997. She had never heard of the nastiest group of jellyfish, the cubozoans (better known as box jellies), until [...]