SSS 2011-08-17

This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Steve Mirsky. Got a minute? When a healthy rat smells a cat, it flees. But rats infected with the Toxoplasma brain parasite actually follow cat odors, often presumably to their doom, red in tooth a

SSS 2011-08-18

This is Scientific Americans 60-SecondScience. Im Steve Mirsky. Got a minute? The traveling salesman problem is afavorite math conundrum: if a salesman has to visit a bunch of cities, how doyou get him to all of them once via the shortest possible ro

SSS 2011-08-19

Some graduate students in science, technology, engineering and mathor STEMonly do research, under the guidance of a mentor. Other STEM grad students also have teaching responsibilities, for example, instructing undergrads or local high schoolers. Now

SSS 2011-09-01

This is Scientific Americans 60-Second Science. Im Cynthia Graber. This will just take a minute. Pasteurization makes food safe by heating microbes to death. But the high temperatures can destroy some nutrients too. A possible alternative? Ultrahigh

SSS 2011-09-02

This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science.I'm Steve Mirsky. Got a minute? Hi. Im running. Im also telling some ofmy stem cells what to do right now. Well, I probably am, based on a new study with mice. We have what are called mesenchymal stemce

SSS 2011-09-06

This is Scientific Americans 60-Second Science. Im Cynthia Graber. This will just take a minute. Labor Days over, and Americans fortunate enough to have jobs are getting back to work. But all work and no play might make us, well, less productive. Tha

SSS 2011-09-07

This is Scientific Americans 60-SecondScience. Im Steve Mirsky. This will just take a minute. Economics:supply and demand. Thats Father Guido Sarducci... Thats it. sharing theentirety of the economics course at his Five-Minute-University. Of course,

SSS 2011-09-08

This is Scientific Americans 60-Second Science. Im Karen Hopkin. This will just take a minute. Thars gold in them thar hillsand we may have meteorites to thank. Because it appears that a rain of meteors nearly 4 billion years ago peppered the Earths

SSS 2011-09-13

This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Cynthia Graber. This will just take a minute. The little black boxes in airplanes provide useful information after a crash has taken place. Now researchers have devised a way to use black box info

SSS 2011-07-06

What does a bookworm have in common with a black-tufted marmoset? They both like a little quiet. Or so say scientists in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters. As urban areas continue to expand, their human inhabitants spread all sorts of polluti

SSS 2011-04-14

This is Scientific Americans 60-Second Science. Im Steve Mirsky. Got a minute? Only 10 percent of people die from primary tumors. The real problem is when it spreads around the body. The problem of metastases. Arizona State Universitys Paul Davies, s

SSS 2011-04-15

This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Christopher Intagliata. Got a minute? When your stomach's empty, it pumps out the hormone ghrelin, to whet your appetite and get your juices flowing. But ghrelin doesn't just make you crave a bite.

SSS 2011-04-18

This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Cynthia Grabera. This will just take a minute. Keeping the brain active and engaged appears to combat the cognitive decline associated with getting older. Now a study has found a new, but related,

SSS 2011-05-02

This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Steve Mirsky. Got a minute? The story is called Appointment in Samarra. A Baghdad merchant sends a servant to buy provisions. While at the market, the servant bumps into Death, who makes a threaten

SSS 2011-05-03

This is Scientific Americans 60-Second Science. Im Karen Hopkin. This will just take a minute. The tabloids love a good celebrity romance. But so do scientists. One has even used movie stars as models for understanding why people tend to marry partne

SSS 2011-05-04

This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Cynthia Graber. This will just take a minute. Parents wring their hands over infant sleep patterns. And so when those patterns change, parents tend to panic. But if your baby is sleeping more or na

SSS 2011-05-05

This is Scientific Americans 60-Second Science. Im Karen Hopkin. This will just take a minute. Some things are best done after dark--setting off fireworks, telling scary stories and charging your plug-in hybrid electric vehicle, because a new study s

SSS 2011-05-06

This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Karen Hopkin. This will just take a minute. Albert Einstein wins again. A new study has confirmed another prediction of his theory of general relativity. The corroboration appears online in the jou

SSS 2011-05-09

This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Christopher Intagliata. Got a minute? It's not news that tobacco's bad for your healthnearly half a million Americans die from tobacco-related illnesses every year. And among people who abuse drugs

SSS 2011-05-10

This is Scientific Americans 60-Second Science. Im Christopher Intagliata. Got a minute? One way advertisers convince us to buy something is to remind us that weve enjoyed their product before. But unfortunately, we can have fond memories of a produc