Queen Victoria's curse: New DNA evidence solves medical and murder mysteries
Queen Victoria and many of her descendants carried what was once called "Royal disease"—now known as hemophilia, a blood clotting disorder.
Observations
Opinion, arguments & analyses from guest experts and from the editors of Scientific American
What caused Saturn to lurch? Second dispatch from the annual planets meeting
FAJARDO, Puerto Rico—I first heard about Matt Hedman's talk while going out to dinner on Tuesday night. Best talk of the meeting, I was told. Everywhere I went yesterday, I kept hearing about this guy Matt Hedman...
Crew of Ocean Watch docks in New York City to share data and stories from voyage around Americas
Waters in the Gulf of Alaska were surprisingly acidic this summer, an indication they are absorbing high levels of carbon dioxide. Farther north, a polar bear in search of food wandered dangerously close to a town where it would have been killed...
From carbon planets to the lakes of Titan: Dispatch from the annual planets meeting
FAJARDO, Puerto Rico—Part of the fun of coming to astronomy conferences is seeing the nonplussed reaction of local people in restaurants and bars--it's not often you get a crowd of people sweeping through your town to talk about Titanian lakes, lunar soil, and the prospects for life beyond the solar system...
Uncharted waters: Success!? New Clermont voyage showcases student ingenuity as well as green power
Editor's Note: A team of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute students traveled up New York's Hudson River on the New Clermont , a 6.7-meter boat outfitted with a pair of 2.2-kilowatt hydrogen fuel cells to power the boat's motor...
17th-century Brueghel paintings trace the early, mysterious history of the telescope
Thanks to the much-heralded International Year of Astronomy, this much we know: Galileo used a telescope to observe the moon in 1609. But the inventor of the revolutionary resolutionary device remains unknown, and its early history is muddied by simultaneous discoveries and competing claims...
First H1N1 vaccines to arrive Tuesday
The first doses of approved vaccines for the H1N1 "swine" flu will start trickling in across the U.S. on Tuesday. The first to arrive, 600,000 doses of MedImmune's FluMist nasal spray, will be for healthy people ages two to 49, the Associated Press reported...
Breast cancer deaths drop over past two decades
The number of women who die from breast cancer has decreased slowly (about 2 percent per year) but steadily since 1990, according to a new report by the American Cancer Society (ACS), released to mark the start of Breast Cancer Awareness Month...
Lessons from a Dead Fish
The revolution in neuroscience is often characterized as a revolution in new imaging technology.A long overdue reassessment of neuroimaging machines—in particular the functional magnetic resonance imager—has underlined that what you see is not always what you get.A study published this year in Perspectives on Psychological Science noted that many papers in social neuroscience, the field that examines the neurobiology of social behavior, suffered from faulty analyses that produced "voodoo correlations" in their data...
NASA spacecraft to buzz Mercury a third and final time today
In a pair of flybys by a robotic explorer last year, planetary scientists began to unravel some of the mysteries of Mercury, a planet that is difficult to study from Earth and that had not been visited by a spacecraft since the 1970s...
Blog Index
@ScientificAmerican
STAFFBehind the scenes at Scientific American
Read
Anecdotes from the Archive
STAFF
Read
Anthropology in Practice
Exploring the human condition.
Read
Beautiful Minds
Insights into intelligence, creativity, personality, and well-being
Read
Budding Scientist
Everything you always wanted to know about raising science-literate kids
Read
Cross-Check
Critical views of science in the news
Read
Dark Star Diaries
STAFF
Read
Dog Spies
Explore the science behind the dog in your bed
Read
Extinction Countdown
News and research about endangered species from around the world
Read
Eye of the Storm
The Science Behind Extreme Weather
Read
Frontiers for Young Minds
Science by and for kids ages 8-15
Read
Guest Blog
Commentary invited by editors of Scientific American
Read
Hot Planet
Climate science in a changing world
Read
Illusion Chasers
Illusions, Delusions, and Everyday Deceptions
Read
Life, Unbounded
Discussion and news about planets, exoplanets, and astrobiology
Read
Observations
Opinion, arguments & analyses from guest experts and from the editors of Scientific American
Read
Roots of Unity
Mathematics: learning it, doing it, celebrating it.
Read
Rosetta Stones
Adventures in the good science of rock-breaking.
Read
SA Visual
STAFFIllustrating science since 1845
Read
Talking back
STAFFA science blog, sans blague
Read
The Artful Amoeba
A Blog About the Weird Wonderfulness of Life on Earth
Read
Voices
Exploring and celebrating diversity in science.
Read
