Commentary invited by editors of Scientific American
It’s been a decade since al-Qaida flew planes into the soaring World Trade Center and the seemingly impenetrable Pentagon. The passengers of the hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 bravely fought back and thwarted hijackers’ plans to hit the U.S...
I do not have a problem recognizing that we are at the top of the food chain – I think that it is no more wrong for us to eat meat than it is for lions or wolves to do so.
Just because someone has had some brilliant ideas, it doesn’t mean every word he utters shines with truth. Let’s keep that in mind in the furor about James Lovelock, inventor of Gaia theory...
Greetings from Drilling Vessel Chikyu! We are floating precisely at N37 o 57' E143 o 54'. I know we are precisely there because this unusual ship with its five working thrusters can maintain position to within meters...
My father didn’t go to college, but he was a scientist. After he died, I inherited his old copies of Scientific American—dating from the 1960s to the early 2000s.
This is the third week of our Guest Blog weekend experiment, which we call #StorySatuday, in which we invite people to write something different – fiction, science fiction, personal stories, poetry, or comic strips...
Today’s news starkly juxtaposed this countries’ priorities.First was news of the approval of yet another look-alike drug for erectile dysfunction, avanafil (Stendra).Then “From First Cold To Grave: How Two-Month-Old Brady Died Of Pertussis.” Brady was too young to have been protected by receiving immunizations, but there are strategies for protecting newborns from pertussis, or whooping cough...
I was recently asked to comment for a BBC article whether quantum computing was “just around the corner”. Did I see quantum computers being here in 5 years?
In 1996, Lyle Brenner, Derek Koehler and Amos Tversky conducted a study involving students from San Jose State University and Stanford University. The researchers were interested in how people jump to conclusions based on limited information...
I thought I was done with this miniseries on alcohol, yeast and civilization, but several people have written me asking about one particular mystery of great relevance to their lives, lager beer...
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