People swing their arms when they walk. But did you ever wonder why? Does it help us keep our balance? Is it a relic from our evolutionary past? Is it because we look like doofuses if we dont? Now, a report in the Royal Society journal Biological Sci
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This is Scientific American's 60 Seconds Science. I'm Steve Mirsky. Got a minute? In 1900 legendary physicist Max Planck described the way energy gets dissipated from any nonreflective object, called a blackbody. But even Max said if something else i
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A friends four year old daughter recently complained to me about how badly her mosquito bite itched. She was about to burst into tears. The fact that an uncomfortable itchy sensation can drive many of us to distraction led many scientists to believe
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The so-called birthers cant accept that President Obama is really a natural-born American citizen. Part of whats behind this seemingly irrational belief may lie in whats called implicit social cognitionthe deep-rooted assumptions we all carry around,
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Its been called the vine that ate the south. Kudzu grows so fast it can completely cover a cabin in the woods in a couple of days. The invasive plant takes over another 150,000 acres every year. Which costs another $6 million to control. But plant pa
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Youve given some thought to oxygen, carbon, uranium. But youve probably never mused about the element ytterbium, symbol Yb. A new study by scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST, says that ytterbium could find a rol
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Thin plastic bags are the ultimate throwaway item. Used once to tote groceries, the thin white bags often go on to second lives as permanent pollution and an eyesore. So a host of countries, cities and other governments have banned them or forced con
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Early modern humans didnt just chip away at stones to create their tools. They treated stone with fire in a sophisticated fashion, according to research published August 14th in the journal Science. About 72,000 years ago, our ancestors along coastal
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Youre not under arrest, despite the fact that you probably have some drugs in your pocket. Because theres a good chance your paper money contains trace amounts of cocaine. According to a study presented August 16th at the American Chemical Societys n
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How do you know if someones your friend? Ask your cell. Because your phone knows who your friends are. Sometimes even before you do. Or so says a report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Scientists who study social networks have
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About 10 years ago, I followed some researchers waist deep into the waters of the Everglades. In the middle of the night. We kept a vigilant eye out for alligators and for venomous snakes. But the animals that actually posed the greatest danger were
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Orchids are botany's great mimics, all in the service of getting pollinated. Some have evolved to resemble female wasps to attract males. Others produce odors that smell like potential mates or like more attractive flowers. Now a study published in t
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Maybe its happened to you. You go for a walk in the woods and, after wandering around for a few hours trying to find your way back to the car, you realize that youve basically been walking in circles. Well, youre not alone. Because scientists have fo
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The Great Pacific Garbage Patch may be disappearing, and not in a good way. New research presented at the biannual meeting of the American Chemical Society reveals that polystyrene actually can break down in seawater. Polystyrene is probably better k
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Two years ago, Duke University Medical Center researchers said that the supposedly useless appendix is actually where good gut bacteria safely hide out during some unpleasant intestinal conditions. Now the research team has looked at the appendix ove
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A big clue about whats behind the disappearing honeybees, also known as colony collapse disorder, or CCD: May Berenbaums team at the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign found that bees ribosomes were torn up. The ribosomes make the proteins tha
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Still have some vacation time to burn, but tired of reading bad novels on the beach? Try a book written especially for people whod rather go to the planetarium than to Planet Hollywood. Its called The Geek Atlas: 128 Places Where Science and Technolo
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A planet has been discovered about 325 light-years away. But whats really interesting is that it shouldnt exist. The planet is called WASP-18b, because it was observed by a project called WASP, the Wide Area Search for Planets. It has 10 times the ma
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You cant judge a book by its cover. But you can judge a dog by its coat. You can even read right through to its genes. Because a study in the August 27th online issue of Science shows that just three key genes govern the length and texture of dog fur
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The space shuttle Discovery, mission STS-128, is in orbit right now. With some fascinating people on board. Pilot Kevin Ford became interested in flying when he was a kid and read the book Carrying the Fire, by Michael Collins, command module pilot o
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