How Scientists Are Tackling the Bed Bug Nightmare (preview)
2012-01-19 08:00:00
The elderly man lived by himself in a low-income apartment near Cincinnati. But he was not alone. After dark the bed bugs would emerge from his recliner and tattered box-spring mattress to feed on his blood. Judging from the thousands of insects I found in his home, I would venture that it had been this way for many months. Imprisoned by poverty and infirmity, the man had nourished generations of these pests, enduring their bites night after night while their numbers swelled. [More]

Boa Constrictors Listen To Loosen
2012-01-18 14:32:08
True to their name, boa constrictors squeeze the life out of their prey. But how does a boa know it's snuffed out a rat? The snake listens for a heartbeat. When it stops, that's the cue to let go, according to a study in the journal Biology Letters . [Scott M. Boback et al, Snake modulates constriction in response to prey’s heartbeat ] [More]

Rainforest in Transition: Is the Amazon Transforming before Our Eyes?
2012-01-18 14:31:00
The Amazon rainforest is in flux, thanks to agricultural expansion and climate change. In other words, humans have "become important agents of disturbance in the Amazon Basin," as an international consortium of scientists wrote in a review of the state of the science on the world's largest rainforest published in Nature on January 19. ( Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.) The dry season is growing longer in areas where humans have been clearing the trees--as has water discharge from Amazon River tributaries in those regions. Multiyear and more frequent severe droughts, like those in 2005 and 2010, are killing trees that humans don't cut down as well as increasing the risks of more common fires (both man-made and otherwise). [More]

How to Predict the Future of Technology
2012-01-18 12:00:00
As a tech columnist, I’m often asked to speak about the future of technology. Well, sure. Who doesn’t want to know what the future holds? Yet I’d be in much better shape if I were asked to predict the future of politics or bass fishing. Because nothing changes faster, and more unpredictably, than consumer technology. [More]

Use It Better: The Worst Tech Predictions of All Time
2012-01-18 11:59:00
In my Scientific American column this month , I pondered why it's so hard to predict the future of technology. It sometimes seems as though it's not even worth the effort; inevitably you wind up looking like an idiot. [More]

Green Chemist: A Q&A with Departing EPA Science Advisor Paul Anastas
2012-01-17 14:15:00
Editor's Note :  Paul Anastas, the father of green chemistry, is leaving his high-ranking post at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency next month and returning to Yale University . During an interview with Jane Kay of Environmental Health News, Anastas, who will remain at his post for another month or so, said there has been a "growing realization across EPA" that green chemistry "can meet environmental and economic goals simultaneously." During his two years as science advisor and assistant administrator at EPA's Office of Research and Development , Anastas played a key role in many important decisions and issues, including the use of dispersants during the Gulf oil spill and the agency's long-awaited analysis of dioxin.  – Marla Cone, Editor in Chief [More]

In Atheists We Distrust
2012-01-17 07:30:00
Atheists are one of the most disliked groups in America. Only 45 percent of Americans say they would vote  for a qualified atheist presidential candidate, and atheists are rated as the least desirable  group for a potential son-in-law or daughter-in-law to belong to. Will Gervais at the University of British Columbia recently published a set of studies  looking at why atheists are so disliked. His conclusion: It comes down to trust. [More]

Scientific American Presents the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) [Slide Show]
2012-01-17 07:00:00
Ultrabooks , smart phones and gadget-friendly automobiles were the stars of last week's International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. But they were hardly the expo's only bright spots. Spread out on a show floor more than 37 football fields in area were plenty of robots, 3-D printers and a variety of new gadgets. [More]

The Future Is for Fools
2012-01-17 00:00:00
As a tech columnist, I’m often asked to speak about the future of technology. Well, sure. Who doesn’t want to know what the future holds? Yet I’d be in much better shape if I were asked to predict the future of politics or bass fishing. Because nothing changes faster, and more unpredictably, than consumer technology. [More]

Gee Whiz, Why Not Recycle Urine for Drinking Water?
2012-01-16 11:32:08
Americans produce 32 billion gallons of sewage every day. And we need to start drinking it. After treating it, of course. So argues a report from the U.S. National Research Council . Why drink reprocessed pee? Because freshwater supplies are getting squeezed .  [More]

Why Nobel Laureates Are Getting Older
2012-01-16 08:00:00
Albert Einstein once commented that “a person who has not made his great contribution to science before the age of 30 will never do so.” This may have been an accurate reflection of physics in his time, but it is no longer the case--for physics or any other field. Benjamin Jones, an expert in innovation at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and Bruce Weinberg of Ohio State University analyzed 525 Nobel Prizes awarded in physics, chemistry and medicine between 1900 and 2008. With a few exceptions--notably quantum mechanics discoveries of the 1920s and 1930s--the trend across all fields is toward researchers being older when they produce their greatest work.    [More]

The Science of the Glory (preview)
2012-01-16 08:00:00
On a daytime flight pick a window seat that will allow you to locate the shadow of the airplane on the clouds; this requires figuring out the direction of travel relative to the position of the sun. If you are lucky, you may be rewarded with one of the most beautiful of all meteorological sights: a multicolored-light halo surrounding the shadow. Its iridescent rings are not those of a rainbow but of a different and more subtle effect called a glory. It is most striking when the clouds are closest because then it dominates the whole horizon. [More]

Infants Possess Intermingled Senses
2012-01-15 08:00:00
What if every visit to the museum was the equivalent of spending time at the philharmonic? For painter Wassily Kandinsky, that was the experience of painting: colors triggered sounds. Now a study from the University of California, San Diego, suggests that we are all born synesthetes like Kandinsky, with senses so joined that stimulating one reliably stimulates another. [More]

The Impracticality of a Cheeseburger
2012-01-15 08:00:00
What does the cheeseburger say about our modern food economy? A lot, actually. Over the past several years blogger Waldo Jaquith ( http://waldo.jaquith.org ) set out to make a cheeseburger from scratch, to no avail. “Further reflection revealed that it’s quite impractical--nearly impossible--to make a cheeseburger from scratch,” he writes. “Tomatoes are in season in the late summer. Lettuce is in season in spring and fall. Large mammals are slaughtered in early winter. The process of making such a burger would take nearly a year and would inherently involve omitting some core cheeseburger ingredients. It would be wildly expensive--requiring a trio of cows--and demand many acres of land. There’s just no sense in it.” [More]

A Man-Made Contagion
2012-01-15 08:00:00
It’s a rare kind of research that incites a frenzied panic before it is even published. But it’s flu season, and influenza science has a way of causing a stir this time of year. [More]