Scientific American July 2020 What can the pandemic teach us about how people respond to adversity? The impact of COVID-19 on the physical health of the world’s citizens is extraordinary. By mid-May there were upward of four million cases spread across more than 180 countries. The pandemic’s effect on mental health could be even more […]
Thirty-six years ago, we were, like today, in the midst of a new and still somewhat mysterious global pandemic. In the U.S. alone, more than one million people were infected with HIV, and 12,000 had already died of AIDS. At the time, we were just beginning to understand how the virus worked. But that didn’t […]
Can philosophy give us Truth? Probably not, but I still enjoy it. At its best, philosophy knocks my perceptions off kilter and helps me see the world anew. Sometimes, it makes me smile. And that brings me to philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel. I first encountered his work in 2015, after I posted a critique of integrated […]
The spines of a cactus, the proboscis of a mosquito, the quills of a porcupine: straight, pointed objects serve a plethora of functions in nature. Yet no matter the size, from bacteriophages’ nanometer-scale tail fibers to narwhals’ two- or three-meter-long tusk, these structures tend to be long and slender cones whose base diameter is much […]
Introduction On the Heels of a Light Beamby Andrea Gawrylewski Section 1: The Nature of Reality 1.1 Space: The Final Illusion by Lee Smolin 1.2 Head Trip by Sabine Hossenfelder 1.3 Is the Cosmos Random? by George Musser 1.4 Spooky Action […]
“Clow-dia,” I say once. Twice. A third time. Defeated, I say the Americanized version of my name: “Claw-dee-ah.” Finally, Siri recognizes it. Having to adapt our way of speaking to interact with speech recognition technologies is a familiar experience for people whose first language is not English or who do not have conventionally American-sounding names. […]
For Australia’s native guava, death came in the form of a fungus. Just 10 years ago, a virulent strain of the fungus Austropuccinia psidii arrived in New South Wales. First observed in Hawaii in 2005, the fungus causes a devastating plant disease called myrtle rust, which has quickly and mysteriously spread around the world—most likely through industrial […]
Scientific American July 2020 Letters to the editor from the March 2020 issue of Scientific American MULTIVERSAL CONFLUENCE “A Cosmic Crisis,” by Richard Panek, discusses possible reasons why the two methods used to measure the universe’s rate of expansion find conflicting values—a discrepancy known as the Hubble tension. I am puzzled that the article does […]
Scientific American July 2020 Science in meter and verse Having trouble accessing this article? Please visit our FAQ page for more information Support Science Journalism Discover world-changing science. Explore our digital archive back to 1845, including articles by more than 150 Nobel Prize winners. Subscribe Now! Source link
Leaders throughout the United States are urging Americans to don face masks as the July 4th holiday weekend approaches amid a surge in coronavirus cases across much of the country. “The virus does not take a holiday,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) said in a statement this week. “The bottom line is be vigilant and stay […]