SSS 2010-08-11

Theres nothing like a good steak. And our Australopithecus afarensis ancestors apparently felt the same way. Because new discoveries from Ethiopia show that what was likely the species of the famous fossil Lucy used stone tools to butcher meat from b

SSS 2010-07-14

Doctors like to think that theyll turn in colleagues who are doing a particularly bad job. But its not so straightforward when physicians are faced with such a colleague, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Associati

SSS 2010-12-10

This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Karen Hopkin. This will just take a minute. 'Tis the season when many of us go on a seafood diet: we see food and we eat it. But if you want to avoid packing on the pounds, a new study suggests tha

SSS 2009-01-02

This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Cynthia Graber. This will just take a minute. Mosquitoes carry nasty diseasesdengue fever, west nile, malaria. But the microbes that cause those diseases dont attach themselves to the mosquitoes an

SSS 2009-01-05

This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Steve Mirsky . Got a minute ? We residents of the Milky Way should have a little extra skip in our step today. Turns out our home galaxy is much bigger and moving a lot faster than we previously th

SSS 2009-01-06

This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Cynthia Graber. This will just take a minute. If we want to learn more about our planet and other planets in the universe, we can get some help from stars that are long dead and gone. Thats what U.

SSS 2009-01-07

This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Adam Hinterthuer. Got a minute? Man-made light sources can really throw animals for a loop. Moths can't tear themselves away from lightbulbs, and newly hatched sea turtles often shun moonlit ocean

SSS 2009-01-08

This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Karen Hopkin. This will just take a minute. Aspirin is a popular painkiller, and chances are you have some in your medicine chest right now. You might even have some in your flesh-and-blood, put-a-

SSS 2009-01-09

This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Karen Hopkin. This will just take a minute. Have you ever turned off your lights and heard [mosquito buzz]? To you its a sound that signals bites in the night. But to a male mosquito its a love son

SSS 2009-01-12

This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Cynthia Graber. This will just take a minute. Thousands of medieval European books survive to this day. Authors and scribes carefully handwrote the works on parchments made of animal skins. But the

SSS 2009-01-13

This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Karen Hopkin. This will just take a minute. A bird in flight is a thing of beauty. Even their takeoffs and landings usually look effortless. But pterodactyls? Well, thats another story. Scientists

SSS 2009-01-14

This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Cynthia Graber. This will just take a minute. When we think about how to represent sound visually, most of us probably picture those volume-dependent sine waves. But thats not how John Stuart Reid

SSS 2009-01-15

This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Adam Hinterthuer. Got a minute? Forget the scalpel, researchers at Johns Hopkins University have created a tool that can move easily through tissue, potentially making biopsies much less invasive.

SSS 2009-01-16

This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Cynthia Graber. This will just take a minute. Theres definitely methane on Marsand there are seasonal variations of how much is being released into the thin Martian atmosphere. Which means that Mar

SSS 2009-01-19

This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Karen Hopkin. This will just take a minute. A new study with worms shows that some have a gene that helps them stave off infections. Not through some kind of biochemistrybut by changing their behav

SSS 2009-01-20

This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Karen Hopkin. This will just take a minute. For years, scientists and physicians have been up in arms about the rise in antibiotic resistance. Seems that many bacteria, devious buggers that they ar

SSS 2009-02-02

This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Karen Hopkin. This will just take a minute. If you have a dog, you know you gotta walk it. But do you know how it walks? Well, if you have no idea which foot Fido puts forward when, youre in good c

SSS 2009-02-03

This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Adam Hinterthuer. Got a minute? Mosquitoes have an unwitting new ally in the war on infectious diseasesconservationists. Turns out that, for mosquitoes carrying dengue-fever, environmentally consci

SSS 2009-02-05

Transcript This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Steve Mirsky . Got a minute ? Nearly 20 percent of servicemen and women returning from Iraq and Afghanistan report symptoms of post-traumatic stress or major depression. Another 19 perce

SSS 2009-02-06

This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Karen Hopkin. This will just take a minute. Its good to be the Queen. You get fed and cared for and generally treated like royalty. But if youre a blue butterfly caterpillar, you can get the same b