SSS 2010-03-29

This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. Im Christie Nicholson. Got a minute. Innocent? Or guilty? As any judge can tell you, its not so simple. What was going on the defendants mind is important. Underlying intent is a pretty big deal when i

SSS 2010-02-17

The Journal of the American Medical Association doesnt usually report autopsy results. But they make an exception this week: for King Tut. The study of the boy king involved DNA analysis and CAT scans. Researchers used genetic fingerprints from Tut a

SSS 2010-02-18

Welcome to the Science Talk, the weekly podcast of Scientific American posted on February 18th, 2010. I am Steve Mirsky. And you know what the hottest sport in the world is right now? Thanks to the Winter Olympics, it is, of course, curling. That's t

SSS 2010-02-19

When youre looking for a table in a crowded cafeteria, you probably give wide berth to the family that sounds like its sharing a big dish of whooping cough. Well, not if youre a house finch, particularly a male. Because a study in the journal Biology

SSS 2010-02-22

Lost in the coverage of the so-called climategate email controversy is a key point about the IPCCs track record of climate change estimates. James McCarthy is on the faculty of the Harvard Medical School Center for Health and the Global Environment.

SSS 2010-02-23

Its long been known that nutrient-rich dust from Africa floats across the Atlantic to the Amazon. And its assumed that the dust fertilizes the rainforest. Oliver Chadwick from the University of California, Santa Barbara, says that Hawaii can also tha

SSS 2010-02-24

Wanna be lazy and productive at the same time? Try a napbecause napping can improve learning. So said U.C. Berkeleys Matthew Walker February 21st at the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Diego. He followed two

SSS 2010-02-25

Welcome to the science stock, the weekly podcast of scientific Americans posted on Feburary 25th, 2010. I am Steve Mirsky. Its called The Poisoner's Handbook. But in the most subversive way its about something that is buried in my heart which I think

SSS 2010-02-26

Bring home a bucket of fried chicken and you may find that people have strong feelings about which part of the bird is best. Well, scientists at Washington University in St. Louis say the answer is: the eyes. At least when you compare them to our own

SSS 2010-01-20

Ever wonder what your French fries were fried in? Like bumbling burglars who leave fingerprints at a crime scene, cooking oils leave their own clues. And by measuring the carbon isotopes in French fries, University of Hawaii researchers found that on

SSS 2010-01-21

At one time or another, youve probably said, Its a small world. Well, it used to be much, much smaller. Because according to scientists from the University of Utah, about a million years ago our ancestors numbered fewer than 20,000. The estimate appe

SSS 2010-01-22

When you picture ancient Egyptian beauties such as Queen Nefertiti or Cleopatra, theyre probably wearing dramatic black eyeliner. Ancient Egyptians believed that eye makeup had properties bestowed by the gods that protected the wearers from illness.

SSS 2010-01-25

They say that men dont like to ask for directions. Well, that reluctance to seek expert advice may extend to the shopping cart. Because a study in the Journal of Consumer Marketing finds that guys also will likely avoid asking salespeople for suggest

SSS 2010-01-26

What was around the bend in rivers hundreds of millions of years ago? Its a trick questionbecause there werent any bends. Ancient rivers were typically just wide, sheetlike flows of water. New reports in the journals Geology and Earth-Science Reviews

SSS 2010-01-27

We all know that talking on a cell phone can impair our ability to drive (although too many of us do it anyway). Now a study in the journal Psychonomic Bulletin and Review shows that the reverse is also true: driving makes it hard to keep track of wh

SSS 2010-01-28

Studies from around the world have reported that men are more jealous of sexual infidelity than emotional infidelity. And women are the oppositetheyre more jealous of emotional cheating than sexual cheating. And experts often lean on an evolutionary

SSS 2010-03-30

This is Scientific American's 60-Seconds Science. I'm Karen Hopkin. This will just take a minute. Elephants. Theyre the SUVs of the animal kingdom. Theyre big and rugged, and can carry lots of cargo. And now a study in the Proceedings of the National

SSS 2010-05-25

This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science, I'm Cynthia Graber. This'll just take a minute. Its often said we know more about the moon than we do about the depths of the ocean. There is a lot we dont know about the H2O that covers much of the pl

SSS 2010-05-26

This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science, I'm Karen Hopkin. This'll just take a minute. What do a carnivorous sponge, a lobular yam and a flat-faced psychedelic frogfish all have in common? They're among the Top 10 Species first described in 2

SSS 2010-05-27

This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science, I'm Steve Mirsky. Got a minute? A strain of mutant mice groom compulsively till they seriously injure themselves. The condition is considered a good animal model for OCD, and its similar to the human d