Originally published in August 1863 Credit: Scientific American Advertisement “If the sun were composed of coal, it would last at the present rate only 5,000 years. The sun, in all probability, is not a burning, but an incandescent, body. Its light is rather that of a glowing molten metal than that of a burning furnace. […]
The World Health Organization declared 2020 to be the “Year of the Nurse and Midwife” in celebration of the 200th birthday of Florence Nightingale (1820–1910). Across the globe many organizations, professional associations, health care systems and other entities were poised to affirm this theme and celebrate the many roles and contributions of nurses in advancing […]
Globe-trotting humans were the culprits Credit: Martin Krzywinski Advertisement The world struggled to understand how COVID-19 spread during the pandemic’s first four months, but genetic sequences of the coronavirus reported by laboratories tell the real story—when the virus arrived in each place and where it came from. The sequences, which advance from left to right […]
The first time Fred Gillis noticed something was wrong he was on the ice, holding his hockey stick but somehow unable to shoot the puck. Was middle age catching up with him, or was it something more serious? Over the following months Gillis’s arms continued to weaken. Soon it took two hands to brush his […]
Big, dark ocean waves were rolling our research ship from side to side. The Falkor is 83 meters long and weighs more than 2,000 metric tons, but a storm from Siberia that had just missed us was still churning the seas. Sitting in the science lab on the main deck, I was trying to keep […]
Still-life artists know that to make an image of an object look like the real thing, they must account for the way light reflects off it. The appearance of these glimmers—their color, position and brightness—is influenced by the item’s surroundings. And this effect means an object can, in turn, reveal key aspects of its environment. […]
Artificial intelligence is still in its infancy. But it may well prove to be the most powerful technology ever invented. It has the potential to improve health, supercharge intellects, multiply productivity, save the environment and enhance both freedom and democracy. But as that intelligence continues to climb, the danger from using AI in an irresponsible […]
Section 1: Underpinnings of Disease 1.1 Shifting Tactics on Alzheimer’s by Claudia Wallis 1.2 Possible Missing Link in Alzheimer’s Pathology Identified by Karen Weintraub 1.3 Troubled Sleep and Dementia by Claudia Wallis 1.4 “Stress Hormone” Cortisol Linked to Early Toll on Thinking Ability by Karen Weintraub 1.5 […]
“The irony of [the human condition] is that the deepest need is to be free of the anxiety of death and annihilation; but it is life itself which awakens it, and so we must shrink from being fully alive.” —Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death “We can experience union with something larger […]
Black holes are hidden behind event horizons, and just as in Las Vegas, “whatever happens inside the horizon, stays inside the horizon.” No information leaks out. A black hole horizon brings the added benefit of hiding an embarrassment of the theory that predicts it. Matter falling into a black hole ends up in a singularity […]