You might say blue-green algae are optimists: they put things in the best possible lightliterally. Actually, the organisms arent really algae. Theyre photosynthetic ocean bacteria. And they can fine-tune their photosynthetic apparatus to take advanta...
Ticks are bad news. They spread Lyme disease and Rocky Mountain spotted fever. And theyre also responsible for an unusual food allergyto meat. Yup, get bit by one of these buggers and it could be bye-bye BBQ. The strange allergy has been linked to th...
Ticks are bad news. They spread Lyme disease and Rocky Mountain spotted fever. And theyre also responsible for an unusual food allergyto meat. Yup, get bit by one of these buggers and it could be bye-bye BBQ. The strange allergy has been linked to th...
A crocodiles thick, rough skin looks like an impenetrable suit of armor. But the crocs skin actually confers a delicate sense of touch thats among the most acute in the animal kingdom. Thats according to a study in The Journal of Experimental Biology...
This is Scientific American sixty seconds science. I am Karen Hopkin. This will take just a minute. Your morning coffee. A baking pie. That turkey in the oven. There are some smells you just cant get enough of. But mix them and other scents all toget...
No matter how seldom you've opened that calculus textbook on your shelf, the chances of worms having eaten it are pretty low. But books written back in the Renaissance have had much better odds of becoming worm food. Now we know that the holes left b...
No matter how seldom you've opened that calculus textbook on your shelf, the chances of worms having eaten it are pretty low. But books written back in the Renaissance have had much better odds of becoming worm food. Now we know that the holes left b...
No matter how seldom you've opened that calculus textbook on your shelf, the chances of worms having eaten it are pretty low. But books written back in the Renaissance have had much better odds of becoming worm food. Now we know that the holes left b...
Feeling listless? Unfulfilled? Looks like life have all over, what could have to show for it? You are not alone. In fact, you might not even be human. Because a new study shows that even apes can experience a mid-life crisis. The work appears in the...
Aches and pains getting you down, or maybe they really tick you off. If that's the case, maybe don't look to a placebo to give you any relief. Because a new study shows that sugar pills are less effective for people who are quick to anger. The work a...
This is Scientific American 60 Second Science. I am Christopher Intagliata. Got a minute? In developed countries, we've mostly eliminated freeloaders like parasitic worms from our guts. But we also have the highest rates of inflammatory bowel disease...
Imagine if you could focus your nose the way you focus your eyes. Scientists now believe that animals with a highly developed sense of smell like rats and dogs, do just that. Similar to the way we taste sweet, salty sour and bitter on different parts...
I've always thought that when I get a fever, it's my body trying to make things uncomfortable for the invading pathogen. And that's often true - higher temperatures can inhibit the bad guys' ability to replicate. But my fever may actually be a one-tw...
Rising season severe storm is the most talked about threats of climate change. But here is another. No more coffee. Because rising temperatures make cripple wild populations of Arabica coffee, and most cultivated species in the world. So says a study...
Rising seas and severe storms are the most talked-about threats of climate change, but here's another, no more coffee. Because rising temperatures may cripple wild populations of / coffee, the most cultivated species in the world. So says a study in...
