SSS 2008-02-05

This is Scientific Americans' 60-Second Science. Im Cynthia Graber. Thisll just take a minute. When is an ant like a piece of fruit? When its infected by a parasite. Researchers affiliated with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute discovered t

SSS 2008-02-04

This is Scientific Americans' 60-Second Science. I'm Chelsea Wald. Got a minute? Vinaigrette dressing: when you shake it little vinegar droplets scatter through the oil, but when you put it down, the droplets merge and the dressing separates. That's

SSS 2008-02-01

This is Scientific Americans' 60-Second Science. I am Cynthia Graber. This'll just take a minute. Air pollution is bad for our health, but scientists say we don't know much about the long-term effects. So researchers in Canada and the Netherlands dec

SSS 2008-01-14

This is Scientific Americans' 60-Second Science. I'm Karen Hopkin . This'll just take a minute. If I ask you to picture someone who recycles, you might come up with an image of an idealistic young nature lover, someone who has the time and energy to

SSS 2009-08-07

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

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 2009-07-01

This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science, I'm Christie Nicholson. Got a minute? During the last ice age our problem was too little carbon. Unlike today where too much carbon is causing global warming. Past glacial ages occurred partly because

SSS 2009-03-04

This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Cynthia Graber. This will just take a minute. Over the past 50 years more and more women have entered the work force. And theyre increasingly taking on jobs that have traditionally gone to men. Now

SSS 2010-07-14

Doctors like to think that theyll turn in colleagues who are doing a particularly bad job. But its not so straightforward when physicians are faced with such a colleague, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Associati

SSS 2010-07-20

A couple of studies on perception. First, theres now visual data to back up the idea that everything looks kinda gray when you feel blue. Researchers examined how the retina responds to different black-and-white contrast situations. They did the test

SSS 2010-07-09

City planners and citizens alike frequently push for better public transportation. They argue that it can lessen traffic and reduce emissions from cars. Now theres a new reason to be gung-ho about public transitit helps make people skinnier. Thats ac

SSS 2010-04-01

Spotted hyenas grunt and growl. But you know what they're famous for. So what's all the laughing about? Well, field researchers have noticed that groups of hyenas tend to giggle around a kill, while they're waiting for their hunk of meat. Now a study

SSS 2010-03-04

The food industry leads the nation in pounds of waste produced annually. So, whats second? Its health care facilities. They dispose of more than four billion pounds of waste each year. Another shocker? A lot of that waste is perfectly functional. In

SSS 2010-02-10

Its called functional magnetic resonance imaging, or FMRI. And some neuroscientists call it the greatest scientific advance of the last 25 years. Because FMRI lets researchers look at the human brain in action. By measuring blood flow, it produces co

SSS 2011-06-15

This is Scientific Americans 60-Second Science. Im Cynthia Graber. This will just take a minute. Climate change affects seasonal eventsspring flowers open earlier, songbirds breed sooner. But what about mammals? A new study documents the effect on a

SSS 2011-09-09

This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Cynthia Graber. This will just take a minute. Common batteries are electrochemical cells. And they may get better thanks to living cells: the multicellular organism called brown algae. Lithium ion

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 2011-01-17

This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Cynthia Graber. This will just take a minute. Many people love what they consider a suntan's healthy glow. But the color you get from eating vegetables might be the most attractive glow of all. Tha

SSS 2011-03-18

This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Steve Mirsky. Got a minute? Wanna get out of the hospital alive? Well, the nursing staff has a lot to do with it. Now a study finds that a patients risk of dying goes up along with the number of wo

SSS 2011-01-11

This is Scientific Americans 60-Second Science. Im Cynthia Graber. This will just take a minute. Thats a sound that inspires fear around the world: the dentists drill. And fear of that sound itself could play a part in keeping some people from gettin