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In the 1980s, scientists discovered that oyster mushrooms are carnivores. The delicious, inescapable inference is that they’re the only vegan food that can itself eat meat. The meat in question is definitely meat, too. Nematodes, also called roundworms, are little animals complete with guts, nerves, muscles and their own primitive form of hopes and dreams. […]

Congress is under pressure to subsidize flood insurance costs for low-income households after the federal government announced last week that it would increase flood insurance premiums for millions of homeowners. Of the 5 million properties insured by the National Flood Insurance Program, about 3.9 million soon will see a hike in premiums—and 200,000 substantially so. […]

In November and December of 2020, with COVID cases rising across the nation, state and city leaders across the U.S. imposed restrictions to curb the spread ahead of the holiday season. The Centers for Disease Control even recommended that people stay home. Despite these warnings, over six million Americans traveled by air the week of […]

The backbone of President Biden’s plan to use infrastructure spending to advance climate policy is a clean electricity standard for the power sector that has the potential to be the most aggressive ever enacted by the federal government. Tucked into his $2.3 trillion infrastructure proposal is the aim of “achieving 100 percent carbon-free electricity by […]

A clinical trial of COVID-19 vaccines in Peru has sparked outrage and triggered a series of high-profile resignations at universities and in government. Politicians, researchers and some of their family members who were not enrolled as trial participants nevertheless received vaccines—breaching standard protocols. Investigations are ongoing as the country struggles to inoculate its general population […]

The COVID-19 pandemic is the latest chapter in the “Tale of Two Health Systems” saga that has played out in the U.S. during every public health crisis dating back centuries. The pandemic has disproportionately devastated communities of color, proving that we can no longer ignore the need to address health inequities in a real way. […]

No doubt you’ve heard about the novel coronavirus variants that are evolving around the world. There now appear to be more than a dozen versions of SARS-CoV-2, which are of varying degrees of concern because some are linked to increased infectivity and lethality while others are not. It’s easy to be overwhelmed by this diversity […]

It is often said that “a picture is worth a thousand words.” In my case, a picture is worth 66,000 words, the length of my new book, Extraterrestrial. The picture, in this case, doesn’t exist—an image of the first interstellar object, ‘Oumuamua. It could have distinguished between ‘Oumuamua being a natural rock or an artificial […]

The Oort cloud, postulated in 1950 by the Dutch astronomer Jan Oort, defines the periphery of the solar system—extending out beyond 100,000 times the Earth-sun separation. It contains billions of icy rocks larger than Manhattan Island, as bricks left over from the construction process of the solar system’s planets. The Oort objects on orbits that […]

Pakinam Amer: This is a Science Talk podcast from Scientific American. I’m Pakinam Amer.  It’s as old as ancient Greece, and a practice, driven by passion as it is by facts and evidence.  It’s also exclusively human … animals cannot debate, machines cannot debate.  Right?  Well, here’s the thing …  [Audio from the San Francisco […]