SSS 2011-02-14

Imagine Van Gogh's paintings of yellow sunflowers. Now imagine the flowers brown. Eh, not so good. Sadly, we may someday see what that would look like. Because the bright yellow paints on the canvas are slowly turning muddy. Now, an international tea

SSS 2011-02-15

This is Scientific Americans 60-Second Science. Im Steve Mirsky. Got a minute? Remember the Seinfeld where George buys Jon Voights car? Or the one where Elaine bids on JFKs golf clubs? Why would anyone spend money, often a lot of money, on a common o

SSS 2011-02-16

This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Karen Hopkin. This will just take a minute. Stand at the bottom of a big hill and you can exhaust yourself just thinking about climbing it. But a new study suggests it's not as bad as it looks. Bec

SSS 2011-03-02

This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Karen Hopkin. This will just take a minute. They say that love is blind. And that's probably for the best. Because a new study shows that people who greatly idealize their spouses have the happiest

SSS 2011-02-07

Patients undergoing coronary bypass surgery need implants of new, healthy blood vessels. So do those who receive repeated hemodialysis due to kidney failure. The best option is to use the patient's own veins or arteries, but thousands of patients don

SSS 2011-07-05

This is Scientific Americans 60-Second Science. Im Karen Hopkin. This will just take a minute. If youve ever wondered where the Earth came from, the answer, it seems, is blowin in the windthe solar wind. Or so say scientists who, after examining sola

SSS 2011-07-07

This is Scientific Americans 60-Second Science.I'm Cynthia Graber . This will just take a minute. (Chirping sound.) That may not sound likemuchbut its the loudest animal in the world. For its size, that is. Theinsect called the water boatman is two m

SSS 2011-07-08

Cameras were once big and bulky. Today,really good cameras fit in your pocket. And now, researchers at Cornell havedeveloped a camera thats just a half-millimeter on each side and a hundredthof a millimeter thick. The lens-less device is called a Pla

SSS 2011-07-11

This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Steve Mirsky. Got a minute? You've heard of tennis elbow. Well, a friend of mine has gamekeeper's thumb. When he told me his diagnosis, it rang a bell. So I went through the Scientific American arc

SSS 2011-07-12

This is Scientific Americans 60-Second Science. Im Steve Mirsky. Got a minute? Obesity is associated with a host of health problems. But a new study finds that obese people may actually have an advantage in a specific medical situation: theyre less l

SSS 2011-07-13

This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Steve Mirsky. Got a minute? You could think of it as the real dancing with the stars. Two white dwarf stars have been found twirling around each other to make a complete orbit in less than every 13

SSS 2011-07-14

This is Scientific Americans 60-Second Science. Im Steve Mirsky. Got a minute? Former major league pitcher Antonio Alfonseca had six fingers on each hand. One of his coaches was once asked about the consequences of Alfonseca having six fingers and re

SSS 2011-07-18

This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Steve Mirsky. Got a minute? At the recent Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting, 2009 chemistry laureate Thomas Steitz recalled that at one institution in the 60s, he saw how informal scientific collaborat

SSS 2011-08-02

Plants are sitting ducks for every hungry herbivore that wanders past. But for some greens, a little grazing is the best thing that can happen. They grow back faster and fuller and make more seeds than they would have if left alone. Now scientists kn

SSS 2011-08-04

This is Scientific Americans 60-Second Science. Im Sophie Bushwick. Got a minute? The carbon molecule known as a buckyball, a member of the fullerene family, can act as a cage for a variety of other chemicals. And now researchers have used one to tra

SSS 2011-08-05

This is Scientific Americans 60-Second Science. Im Steve Mirsky. Got a minute? Its tough to beat watching a spaceship lift off. But for us audio fans, theres another sequence during launch preparation thats awfully compelling. At 12:18 P.M. Eastern t

SSS 2011-08-10

Invasive species get a bad rapbut we humans are usually to blame for their spread. Take Japanese stiltgrass, an invasive that arrived from Asia nearly 100 years ago as a packing material for porcelain. When it creeps into forests, it forms dense carp

SSS 2011-08-12

This is Scientific Americans 60-Second Science. Im Sophie Bushwick. Got a Minute? What's the best way to find out if an unknown mixture contains a specific substance, like an environmental contaminant? You could use an expensive, bulky gas chromatogr

SSS 2011-08-15

This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Cynthia Graber. This will just take a minute. Conventional poultry farms use antibiotics extensively, which contributes to the rise of antibiotic-resistant pathogens. But farms that turn to organic

SSS 2011-08-16

This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Katherine Harmon. Got a minute? Some 50 million Americans 65 and older currently get help from Medicare. But the program doesn't cover all of the patient's medications. After a patient's annual dru