2018-04-24 所属栏目:科学美国人

Tomorrow is April 20th—4/20. It’s sometimes called a “High Holiday”. Because for a lot of people, 4/20 is Marijuana Day. And for them it’s kind of a t

2018-04-20 所属栏目:科学美国人

Rats. They’re a defining feature of life in New York City, rustling in trash bags, scurrying along the subway tracks—and becoming famous for occasionally eating pizza.

2018-04-19 所属栏目:科学美国人

Hi, I’m Scientific American podcast editor Steve Mirsky. And here’s a short piece from the April issue of the magazine, in the section we call Advances: Dispatches from

2018-04-18 所属栏目:科学美国人

Monarch butterflies depend on milkweed. They lay their eggs on milkweed, and their caterpillars eat only the leaves of the plant. No milkweed means no monarchs. So the best way to

2018-04-17 所属栏目:科学美国人

“So, the internet is really a network of networks that underlies critically so many things in our lives. But really 50 years ago it was an experiment that escaped from the la

2018-04-16 所属栏目:科学美国人

Hi, I’m Scientific American podcast editor Steve Mirsky. And here’s a short piece from the April issue of the magazine, in the section we call Advances: Dispatches from

2018-04-13 所属栏目:科学美国人

As astronomers hunt for habitable, Earth-like worlds, one popular place to look is around M stars, a type of red dwarf. Couple reasons for that:

"First of all most of the stars in

2018-04-12 所属栏目:科学美国人

As animals grow, the sounds they make change. But some sounds continue to change, even after an animal matures. That's true for humans, and now it turns out to be true for North A

2018-04-10 所属栏目:科学美国人

Hi, I’m Scientific American podcast editor Steve Mirsky. And here’s a short piece from the April issue of the magazine, in the section we call Advances: Dispatches from

2018-04-09 所属栏目:科学美国人

Here's the gamble: Twenty bucks guaranteed…or a 50/50 chance of winning sixty bucks?

Which would you choose?

The answer might actually be evident in a brain scan, accordi

2018-04-08 所属栏目:科学美国人

Neandertal walks into a bar. Bartender says, “Why the long, forward-projecting face?” Well, according to a new study, it helped the Neandertal air-condition the large v

2018-04-08 所属栏目:科学美国人

“Photosynthesis is surprisingly inefficient, only of the order of 1 to 2 percent. And one of the main culprits is an enzyme called RuBisCo.”

Laura Barter, a biological

2018-04-04 所属栏目:科学美国人

During the last ice age, the northern half of North America was blanketed by ice. But along the Pacific coast of Canada, some land remained bare…a place where animals and pl

2018-04-03 所属栏目:科学美国人

<<knuckle-cracking sound>>

Knuckles cracking. You may not mind the sound. You may despise it. Or you could study it.

Couple years back, Vinny Suja was taking a biomechanics class

2018-04-03 所属栏目:科学美国人

The fossil record is far from being a complete library of everything that's ever lived.

"The vast, vast majority of everything that's ever lived has completely decayed away, bon

2018-03-27 所属栏目:科学美国人

There's a well-known conspiracy of ravens—that's what you call a group of ravens—that likes to hang out near a zoo in the Austrian Alps. Every day these ravens conspi

2018-03-26 所属栏目:科学美国人

If you&rsquo;ve got the flu, your focus is on getting better—not on how you caught it. But from a public health standpoint, tracking how flu spreads can help keep the virus c

2018-03-22 所属栏目:科学美国人

“Legislation to restrict the current overuse, I would say abuse, of antibiotics by farmers who raise livestock for human consumption.”

Louise Slaughter, member of Cong

2018-03-21 所属栏目:科学美国人

February was unusually hot in the Arctic. Thawing out temperature: 35 degrees Fahrenheit."It made big news when it got to 35, I don't know if that's T-shirt weather yet, but&hell

2018-03-19 所属栏目:科学美国人

The whipworm is a parasite that infects half a billion people around the world. It lives in the gut—burying its head in the large intestine, causing symptoms like nausea, abd

2018-03-16 所属栏目:科学美国人

Ecologists crouching quietly amidst vegetation, using binoculars to tally birds in a roost, may soon be a charming relic of the past. Because a new study shows that, when it comes

2018-03-13 所属栏目:科学美国人

Every day, you produce one to two liters of spit. It kick-starts digestion and helps you swallow. And it helps prevent bacterial infection in your mouth.

"But that still seemed li

2018-03-12 所属栏目:科学美国人

In the last few decades, astronomers have discovered thousands of exoplanets orbiting other stars. Now, scientists want to know what they look like. Do they have oceans? Atmosphere

2018-03-12 所属栏目:科学美国人

Many bats use a system similar to sonar to navigate in the dark. They send out high frequency sound, sometimes as clicks, and get information about their surroundings by the timing

2018-03-07 所属栏目:科学美国人

Nature may be red in tooth and claw. But one plucky caterpillar dresses in orange and black to avoid becoming somebody&rsquo;s lunch. What&rsquo;s really surprising, though, is tha