Now in its second year, the $50,000 Science in Action award, sponsored by Scientific American as part of the Google Science Fair, an annual global competition for teens ages 13 to 18, honors a project that can make a practical difference by addressing an environmental, health or resources challenge. Submissions should be innovative, easy to [...]

Last year, Sakhiwe Shongwe and Bonkhe Mahlalela of Swaziland, both then 14, won the first Scientific American-sponsored $50,000 Science in Action award as part of the Google Science Fair. Their project, which they titled a Unique Simplified Hydroponics Method, or USHM, used mostly freely available waste materials (cardboard boxes for containers, sawdust or grass as [...]

More than 30,000 people visited the White House for the 135th annual Easter Egg Roll on Monday—and I spent several happy hours there myself doing science activities with dozens of kids and their families with the Lawrence Hall of Science. If you couldn’t make it to Washington, D.C., you can find instructions to make the [...]

The term “autism” comes from the Greek word “autos,” meaning self, used to describe conditions of social withdrawal—or the isolated self. Around 1910, a Swiss psychiatrist first used the term to refer to certain symptoms of schizophrenia. Later, in the 1940s, physicians Leo Kanner and Hans Asperger independently used that name to describe what was [...]

Magicians need to resort to trick props to pull a rabbit out of a hat. But we pulled DNA out of a banana with nothing more than a few household ingredients during a Scientific American Google Hangout on December 20. (See Scientific American Goes Bananas on December 20. No artifice or foolery was involved: just [...]

Editor’s note: Join the Hangout by visiting Scientific American’s Google Plus page at 1 p.m. Eastern on Thursday. That’s right. Using ordinary household items and a humble piece of fruit, we’re going to perform a seemingly magical feat of science while you watch on a Google Science Fair Hangout on December 20 at 1 p.m. [...]

Who will win the first $50,000 Science in Action prize, sponsored by Scientific American? This award, offered as part of the 2012 Google Science Fair, will recognize a student project that addresses a social, environmental, ethical, health or welfare issue to make a practical difference to the lives of a group or community, and that [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Like many families in the path of superstorm Sandy, we’ve spent much of the last week indoors trying to stay sane. Fortunately, we live in a part of Brooklyn that was spared the worst storm damage, so I had the luxury of finally reading the children’s science books that have been piling up on my [...]

In journalism you look for one thing and find another that confounds your expectations. It’s what make makes this gig so frustrating and fun. I went looking for reassurance in Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding (Harvard University Press, 2009) by the anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy and found something scary. Hrdy is [...]

We learned all kinds of things from our parents—manners, safety, housekeeping, how to make a cake, how to pump our legs to make ourselves go high on a swing and where to find crayfish in a creek. As they showed us how to reach these small successes in our daily life, they also taught us [...]

About one in three children in the U.S. are now overweight, and since the 1980s the number of children who are obese has more than tripled. But a new study of 26.7 million young children from low-income families shows that in this group of kids, the tidal wave of obesity might finally be receding. Being [...]

Antibiotics have been a boon to modern pediatric medicine—transforming many previously fatal childhood ailments into mere inconveniences. But these revolutionary treatments are not a cure-all. In fact, many common pediatric illnesses, including many ear and respiratory infections, fail to respond to antibiotics. And over-prescription of these meds—especially broad-spectrum antibiotics—is not only costly; it can also [...]

Banned for indoor use since 2001, the effects of the common insecticide known as chlorpyrifos can still be found in the brains of young children now approaching puberty. A new study used magnetic imaging to reveal that those children exposed to chlorpyrifos in the womb had persistent changes in their brains throughout childhood. The brains [...]

A strange illness has been killing thousands of young people each year, and recently it has started claiming even more victims in Africa. Called nodding disease, it usually strikes children at the age of 4 or 5 years and starts with occasional bouts of uncontrolled nodding. As the disease progresses through adolescence, the nodding often [...]

The obesity epidemic has already reached the youngest demographic: About 17 percent of U.S. children and teens are obese, and about one in three are overweight. These numbers, reflected in many other countries, have risen steadily in recent decades. And researchers are racing to find the most powerful drivers behind these scary figures, as children [...]

Mothers-to-be know they must be extra vigilant about what they put in their bodies—avoiding too much seafood, and making sure they get plenty of fruits and vegetables, for instance. But research has been piling up suggesting that the mother’s overall weight and metabolic health before—and while—she is pregnant can also have a lasting impact on [...]

Infant mortality is at its lowest rate ever. Now fewer than three percent of babies worldwide die within the first five weeks of life, which is surely cause for celebration. Many of the infants who have been saved, however, did not enter this world easily. A new analysis published online Thursday in The Lancet found [...]

At Scientific American, we appreciate the value of a good experiment. So in May, we launched Bring Science Home as a series of free science activities for parents to do together with their six- to 12-year-old kids. We made sure the activities would be fun and easy to do, so families could complete them in [...]

There are few sure investments in this chaotic economic climate, but on a national level, education has proven to pay off big down the road. As tight economic times have put the squeeze on education budgets here in the U.S., a new report shows the big benefits of even small investments in early education worldwide. [...]

As a kid, I often spent an afternoon after a big rain storm with my brothers tromping down to a local drainage stream to see what the water had washed in. And it wasn’t unusual to find us sitting around the kitchen table with our hands coated in a green, oozy cornstarch-and-water mixture, wondering at [...]

I have four children of my own, the eldest already in college studying atmospheric sciences and the next one thinking she would like to go into chemistry or physics. Even though I have a 50% track record of creating future scientists so far, there are many reasons to engage young people in science other than [...]

On Monday, May 13, at 7pm, I’ll be moderating a panel at The New York Academy of Sciences. If you are in the area, please attend! Here a description of the event: Social and Emotional Learning: Preparing Our Children to Excel Monday, May 13, 2013 | 7:00 PM – 8:30 PM The New York Academy [...]

A few months ago, I logged on to Lumosity.com to play my daily dose of brain games. The company had given me a free, temporary account so that I could try out their system as part of my research for an article I was writing on brain training. My then 11-year-old son wanted to play, [...]

Practice makes progress, if not perfection, for most things in life. Generally, practicing a skill—be it basketball, chess or the tuba—mostly makes you better at whatever it was you practiced. Even related areas do not benefit much. Doing intensive basketball drills does not usually make a person particularly good at football. Chess experts are not [...]

Editor’s note: The below is a response to a critique of MindUP, a social and emotional learning program pioneered by actor Goldie Hawn. I have covered this program in other blogs (see list below) and in a feature in Scientific American Mind (visit “Schools Add Workouts for Attention, Grit and Emotional Control”). I hope this [...]

Editor’s note: The following is a critique of a social and emotional learning program called MindUP that I have covered in other blogs (see list below) and in a feature in Scientific American Mind (visit “Schools Add Workouts for Attention, Grit and Emotional Control”).  Please also read a response to this critique, posted separately, from [...]

Guest blog by Frank C. Worrell, Paula Olszewski-Kubilius and Rena F. Subotnik For more than a quarter century, critics have faulted gifted education programs for catering to kids from advantaged backgrounds. These programs do, after all, typically enroll outsized numbers of European American and Asian American students hailing from relatively well-off homes. Members of other [...]

The November/December Scientific American Mind, which debuted online today, examines the origins of genius, a concept that inspires both awe and confusion. Some equate genius with IQ or creativity; others see it as extraordinary accomplishment. As this issue reveals, genius seems to arise from a mosaic of forces that coalesce into a perfect storm of [...]

One of the hardest aspects of school for young children is in some ways the simplest: sitting still. Recess is the time worn antidote to such restlessness. But regular physical exercise is also generally important to academic performance—and not just for young students. It can help boost various types of cognition in kids into the [...]

Emotion is a powerful driver of behavior, sometimes too powerful. Virtually everyone has had the experience of reacting in the heat of the moment only to later regret his or her words or deed. An almond-shaped structure in the center of the brain called the amygdala is a hub for emotional responses. When it’s in [...]

In MindUP, a social and emotional learning program pioneered by actor Goldie Hawn, children learn to be mindful—that is, attuned to the present without judgment. This skill engenders a healthy outlook on life, hones the ability to pay attention and creates a sense of calm, preparing the mind for learning. (For more on the brain [...]

This seems to have become unofficial volcano week, here at ScienceBlogs. If you haven’t been following the coverage of the Eyjafjallaj