After months of being cooped up at home to prevent the spread of coronavirus, people have taken to the streets by the thousands over the past few weeks to protest against police killings of Black people and decades of systemic racism. The gatherings have some people worried about a spike in coronavirus infections—but they have […]
We hear about mindfulness everywhere these days—in news articles and wellness magazines, at the doctor’s office, and on social media. We’re bombarded with images of attractive, calm people bathed in sunlight, smiling as they sit cross-legged with their eyes serenely closed. Doesn’t it look nice? If only it were so easy for those of us […]
This year the world awakened to the fact that the most powerful and sophisticated species on earth is tragically vulnerable to the tiniest and most basic of creatures. Infectious disease specialists have been warning about this for decades. And the threat comes not only from novel viruses, such as the one causing COVID-19, that jump […]
DNA and RNA, the two major modern forms of genetic code underpinning all of earthly biology, could have coexisted in strict pairings on our planet before life arose here, scientists in England, Scotland and Poland say. Using a hydrogen cyanide–based chemical system intended to mimic conditions in Earth’s early history, the researchers made four bases, […]
The twin crises roiling society right now—the coronavirus pandemic and pervasive racism—are intertwined and reinforce one another. A way to address both is to nurture the talent for science and technology among underrepresented students across America. Consider these two examples: When David Lucero arrived at the University of Vermont from Queens, New York, in 2004, […]
At no point in my life have I felt less heroic than the last five months. And yet, on or about March 2020, people began calling me a hero. I struggle to describe how angry this makes me. Make no mistake, as a physician, I’m grateful that the public recognizes the tireless and heartbreaking sacrifices […]
As of December 4, 2019, 565 people from 41 countries have gone into space. That’s it. 565 out of more than 7 billion of us currently on this planet. And that’s using the definition of space travel to include any flight over 62 miles or about 100 kilometers. Many of these space travelers are, of course, NASA […]
Quantifying things is an overarching goal in science, but recent events have left me pondering just why that is. After all, we’ve long known that numbers can be precise but inaccurate. The textbook exemplar is Lord Kelvin, the 19th-century British physicist who insisted that unless you could quantify a thing, your knowledge of it was […]
This is Scientific American’s Science Talk, posted on June 20, 2020. I’m Steve Mirsky. Three segments in this episode. We’ll hear from Adam Levy in London about an unexpected lesson we might learn about air pollution from the coronavirus pandemic. We’ll also listen to a segment sponsored by the Kavli Prize, with a new laureate […]
The items below are highlights from the newsletter, “Smart, useful, science stuff about COVID-19.” To receive newsletter issues daily in your inbox, sign up here. Antibodies acquired by survivors of SARS-CoV-2 infections who never showed symptoms [asymptomatic people] “may last only two to three months,” reports Apoorva Mandavilli at The New York Times (6/18/20). The finding, […]