SSS 2009-09-15

If youve ever been to a hairdresser, chances are youve found yourself scrambling for things to talk about as your locks are expertly coiffed. One common topic of discussion, at least for older Americans, is their health. Which leads social scientists

SSS 2009-09-16

Now, heres something you dont see every day: scientists cure color-blind monkeys. According to a report published online in the journal Nature, researchers have used gene therapy to allow color-blind squirrel monkeys to look at their fruit in a whole

SSS 2009-09-17

The early Earths oceans were home to a lot of interesting chemistry. Now scientists have found that amino acids thought to be present way back when could have been cooked into other compounds vital for lifean idea you should take with a grain of salt

SSS 2009-09-18

Species of plants, animals and other categories of living things are disappearing. And millions of people still live in extreme poverty. But is there a connection? For example, is the ongoing destruction of the Indonesian rainforest driven by the eco

SSS 2009-10-01

Being drunk might make you more accident prone, but it also increases your chance of survival. Research published in the journal American Surgeon reveals that trauma patients are more likely to survive if they were intoxicated at the time of their in

SSS 2009-10-05

The 2009 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine goes to Harvards Jack Szostak, Johns Hopkinss Carol Greider and Elizabeth Blackburn at U.C. San Francisco for their work on how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase. The Nobel

SSS 2009-10-06

The Nobel Prize in physics goes to Charles Kao, of Standard Communications Labs in England and the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and George Smith and Willard Boyle of Bell Labs in New Jersey. Kao figured out how to transmit light over long distanc

SSS 2009-10-07

The 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry goes to Venkatraman Ramakrishnan of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in England, Yale Universitys Thomas Steitz, and Ada Yonath of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel for their studies of the ribosome.

SSS 2009-10-09

If the human genome were put in a straight line, it would be over six and a half feet long. So how do you store all that DNA in a tiny nucleus? And have the cell manage it? Researchers explain how in a study featured on the cover of the October 9th i

SSS 2009-10-12

Youve no doubt heard of free radicals, those nasty chemicals that seem to contribute to heart disease, cancer and all sorts of human ailments. Maybe you even take antioxidant vitamins to help get rid of these unwanted toxins. Well, maybe you shouldnt

SSS 2009-10-13

Did you see The Simpsons episode where Homer makes a toast to alcohol?: To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of lifes problems. There are a few reasons why we might find this funny. First theres the inherently ridiculous contradictionthe re

SSS 2009-10-14

In the celebrity vaccine wars, Im siding with actress Amanda Peet. And comedian Bill Maher, well, I like your show, but when it comes to vaccines you dont know a punchline from a clothesline. Maher recently tweeted to his Twitter followers if u get a

SSS 2009-10-15

One of the goals of regenerative medicine is to make tissue to replace our own damaged body parts. Thats still a ways off. But starting with mouse embryonic stem cells, researchers have succeeded in creating heart muscle that actually beats. The stud

SSS 2009-10-16

It's all about the meters. As any would-be installer of solar rooftop panels knows, having the right meter to count how much power your photovoltaics are producing is key. So perhaps it's no surprise that Team Germany snatched victory on the last day

SSS 2009-10-19

In 1865, Pierre Paul Broca pinpointed the part of the brain responsible for language by autopsying brains of the language-impairedthe region is now called Brocas area. But more info has been hard to get. Because most brain research is done on animals

SSS 2009-10-20

Searching the Internet can be a totally exhausting experience, as you bounce from one site to another to another, sometimes until you cant remember what you were looking for in the first place. But according to scientists at U.C.L.A., all that virtua

SSS 2009-11-02

The 12 million Americans with sleep apnea stop breathing for short periods during the night, sometimes hundreds of times. Now a new study finds that a good motivator for some apnea sufferers to get treatment could be improved athletic performance. Be

SSS 2009-11-04

With H1N1 on the rise and flu shots hard to find, few things are as terrifying as [sneeze sound]. But now a report in the journal Psychological Science suggests that coughing and sneezing can spread more than viruses. They also spread fear, of germs

SSS 2009-09-07

Can you hear the end of the daytime insect? Thats the cicada. But Im hearing crickets in the background too. And just listen for a second, listen to how many different sounds you can hear. Thats Allison Beall of the Marshlands Conservancy, a wildlife

SSS 2009-07-07

This is Scientific Americans 60-Second Science, I'm Steve Mirsky. Got a minute? Ever-increasing numbers of people are consuming news via the Internet and cell phones. In London last week at the World Conference of Science Journalists, Philip Hilts, t