SSS 2009-05-07

Rainforests exist because it rains a lot and that makes forests grow, right? Well, not so fast. What if its not the rain that makes the forests? What if its the forests that actually generate the rain? That is the contention of a paper in BioScience

SSS 2009-04-09

This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Steve Mirsky . Got a minute ? Male chimpanzees often compete aggressively for mates. Now researchers have observed a friendlier behavior that males use to woo potential partners: they exchange meat

SSS 2009-09-04

Some things are hard to remember. Others are hard to forgetespecially things that are traumatic. But kids, it turns out, are better than adults at forgetting the bad stuff. Now scientists think they know why. According to an animal study in the Septe

SSS 2009-09-08

When we lie, our brains work hard to make sure we get the story right and come off as truthful. Law enforcement officials try to tap into that effort, for example with polygraphs, to find out if a suspect is telling the truth. But such stress tests a

SSS 2009-09-09

To do a job right, you need the right tools. Even a chimp knows that. According to a study in the American Journal of Primatology, chimps in the Congo use multiple tools to capture army ants. Youve probably seen footage of chimps using sticks to harv

SSS 2009-09-10

The National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration [NOAA], spends most of its time trying to understand and predict changes in the environment, along with conserving and managing coastal and marine resources. But its scientific expertise also just made

SSS 2009-09-11

We humans love to decorate things. We wear flashy clothes, tie ribbons to suitcases and personalize the cases for our iPhones. And apparently weve had this tendency for a long, long time. More than thirty-four thousand years, to be exact. Harvard res

SSS 2009-09-14

If scientists have their way, we may someday be tapping maplesnot for pancake fixins, but for power. Because researchers from the University of Washington in Seattle have found theres enough electricity flowing in trees to run an electronic circuit.

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