I vividly remember getting my first pair of glasses as a child. My mum is very near-sighted and dispatched me to the optician every year. My older sister was diagnosed at around the age of 8 and I prayed I...
As I sit in my backyard in Abuja, Nigeria, looking out at the open landscape around me, I can’t help but feel a deep sense of loss. The rolling hills that were once vibrant with a rich carpet of wild...
As memes go, it wasn’t particularly viral. But for a couple of hours on the morning of November 6, the term “darkest timeline” trended in Google searches, and several physicists posted musings on social media about whether we were actually...
November 13, 20244 min readThe U.S. Must Lead the Global Fight against SuperbugsAntimicrobial resistance could claim 39 million lives by 2050, yet the pipeline for new antibiotics is drying up. U.S. policy makers can help fix itBy Howard DeanColored scanning...
November 13, 20245 min readThe Mathematical Mind Offers Neuroscientists a Master Class in ConcentrationExpertise bulks up the brain’s ability to think deeply, a skill that may generalize across tasksBy Hanna Poikonen Malte Mueller/Getty ImagesThink of the last time you concentrated...
Rachel Feltman: For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman. Plenty of us only think about insects when we’re trying to keep them out of our homes. But the truth is that our fates and fortunes are totally intertwined with...
Eurasian reed warblers migrate between Europe and AfricaAGAMI Photo Agency / Alamy Stock Many migratory birds use Earth’s magnetic field as a compass, but some can also use information from that field to determine more or less where they are...
Wildfires in the tropics drove some increase in CO2 emissions but the bulk was driven by burning fossil fuelsCarl De Souza/AFP/Getty Images Carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels in 2024 are set to blow past last year’s record levels,...
Fruit-flavored gummies. Tinctures. Creams.Today’s cannabis is not simply dried flowers in plastic baggies or the special ingredient in dorm-room brownies. These days, it comes in candy form, suppositories and even vaporizable dab and wax concentrates. This new cannabis is heavily...
If you cook with stainless steel pans, you are probably familiar with the Leidenfrost effectFranck Celestini A jet of liquid can bounce off of a hot plate without ever touching it. This extension of the Leidenfrost effect – the phenomenon...
