Tag Archives: Scientific American Magazine

Science Review: Scientific American – July 2023 Issue

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Scientific American – July 2023 Issue: Smart, adaptable and loud, parrots are thriving in cities far outside their native ranges.

Parrots Are Taking Over the World

Parrots Are Taking Over the World

By Ryan F. Mandelbaum

At Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery the living get as much attention as the dead. Groundskeepers maintain the 478-acre historic landmark as an arboretum and habitat for more than 200 breeding and migratory bird species. But many visiting wildlife lovers aren’t interested in those native birds. They’re at the entryway, their binoculars trained on the spire atop its Gothic Revival arches. They’ve come to see the parrots.

Extreme Heat Is Deadlier Than Hurricanes, Floods and Tornadoes Combined

Extreme Heat Is Deadlier Than Hurricanes, Floods and Tornadoes Combined

When dangerous heat waves hit cities, better risk communication could save lives

By Terri Adams-Fuller

Exposure to extreme heat can damage the central nervous system, the brain and other vital organs, and the effects can set in with terrifying speed, resulting in heat exhaustion, heat cramps or heatstroke. It also exacerbates existing medical conditions such as hypertension and heart disease and is especially perilous for people who suffer from chronic diseases. The older population is at high risk, and children, who may not be able to regulate their body temperatures as effectively as adults in extreme conditions, are also vulnerable.

Brain Waves Synchronize when People Interact

Brain Waves Synchronize when People Interact

The minds of social species are strikingly resonant

By Lydia Denworth

Science Review: Scientific American – June 2023 Issue

Scientific American Magazine Vol 328 Issue 6

Scientific American – June 2023 Issue:

What Is the Future of Fusion Energy?

Nuclear fusion won’t arrive in time to fix climate change, but it could be essential for our future energy needs

What Is the Future of Fusion Energy?

Last December physicists working on fusion claimed a breakthrough. A team at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) in California announced it had extracted more energy from a controlled nuclear fusion reaction than had been used to trigger it. It was a global first and a significant step for physics—but very far from enabling practical exploitation of fusion as an energy source.

Physicists Make Matter out of Light to Find Quantum Singularities

Physicists Make Matter out of Light to Find Quantum Singularities

Experiments that imitate solid materials with light waves reveal the quantum basis of exotic physical effects

By Charles D. Brown II

A Traumatized Woman with Multiple Personalities Gets Better as Her ‘Parts’ Work as a Team

A Traumatized Woman with Multiple Personalities Gets Better as Her 'Parts' Work as a Team

Therapy for dissociative identity disorder has aimed to meld many personalities into one. But that’s not the only solution, a caring therapist shows

By Rebecca J. Lester

Science Review: Scientific American – May 2023 Issue

Scientific American – May 2023 - Free PDF Magazine download

Scientific American – May 2023 Issue:

Synthetic Morphology Lets Scientists Create New Life-Forms

Synthetic Morphology Lets Scientists Create New Life-Forms

The emerging field of synthetic morphology bends boundaries between natural and artificial life

The Six Moons Most Likely to Host Life in Our Solar System

The Six Moons Most Likely to Host Life in Our Solar System

Vast quantities of liquid water may exist on moons of Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune, making life possible there, too

How Much Does ‘Nothing’ Weigh?

How Much Does 'Nothing' Weigh?

The Archimedes experiment will weigh the void of empty space to help solve a big cosmic puzzle

Science Review: Scientific American – April 2023 Issue

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Scientific American – April 2023 Issue:

Quantum Physics Falls Apart without Imaginary Numbers

Imaginary numbers—the square roots of negative numbers—are an inescapable part of quantum theory, a study shows

Fixing the Hated Open-Design Office

Fixing the Hated Open-Design Office
An early open-plan office, designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright for the S. C. Johnson company in the 1930s, was intended to boost productivity.

Open-office designs create productivity and health problems. New insights from Deaf and autistic communities could fix them

No One Knows How the Biggest Animals on Earth—Baleen Whales—Find Their Food

How do giant filter-feeding whales find their tiny prey? The answer could be key to saving endangered species

Science Review: Scientific American – March 2023

March 2023

Scientific American – March 2023 Issue:

Long COVID Now Looks like a Neurological Disease, Helping Doctors to Focus Treatments

The causes of long COVID, which disables millions, may come together in the brain and nervous system

Tiny Bubbles of Quark-Gluon Plasma Re-create the Early Universe

New experiments can re-create the young cosmos, when it was a mash of fundamental particles, more precisely than ever before

Babies Are Born with an Innate Number Sense

Plato was right: newborns do math

Cover Preview: Scientific American – January 2023

Scientific American – January 2023 issue:

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New Human Metabolism Research Upends Conventional Wisdom about How We Burn Calories

Metabolism studies reveal surprising insights into how we burn calories—and how cooperative food production helped Homo sapiens flourish

How Star Collisions Forge the Universe’s Heaviest Elements

Scientists have new evidence about how cosmic cataclysms forge gold, platinum and other heavy members of the periodic table

This Spiritual Tradition Could Be the Most Poetic Bereavement Therapy Ever Documented

A mourning ritual of dialogues with the dead speaks to the fragility of theological diversity

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Cover Preview: Scientific American – December 2022

December 2022

Scientific American – Inside the December 2022 issue:

How JWST Is Changing Our View of the Universe

The James Webb Space Telescope has sparked a new era in astronomy

JWST’s First Glimpses of Early Galaxies Could Break Cosmology

The James Webb Space Telescope’s first images of the distant universe shocked astronomers. Is the discovery of unimaginably distant galaxies a mirage or a revolution?

How Taking Pictures of ‘Nothing’ Changed Astronomy

Deep-field images of “empty” regions of the sky from JWST and other space telescopes are revealing more of the universe than we ever thought possible

Cover Preview: Scientific American – November 2022

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Antarctica’s Collapse Could Begin Even Sooner Than Anticipated

Two expeditions to the Thwaites Ice Shelf have revealed that it could splinter apart in less than a decade, hastening sea-level rise worldwide

Engineered Metamaterials Can Trick Light and Sound into Mind-Bending Behavior

Advanced materials can modify waves, creating optical illusions and useful technologies

Fossils Upend Conventional Wisdom about Evolution of Human Bipedalism

For most of human evolution, multiple species with different ways of walking upright coexisted

Cover Preview: Scientific American – September 2022

New Solutions to Black Holes, Snake Phobia and Forecasting Atmospheric Rivers

New Solutions to Black Holes, Snake Phobia and Forecasting Atmospheric Rivers

These fun stories show progress from the scale of quantum effects to that of snakes and from Earth to the edge of the universe

Monkeypox Explained: Transmission, Symptoms, Vaccines and Treatment

Tanya Lewis

AI Can Help Indigenous People Protect Biodiversity

Wai Chee Dimock

CLIMATE CHANGE

What Megafires Can Teach Us about California Megafloods

Chelsea Harvey and E&E News

Previews: Scientific American – June 2022

June 2022 – Volume 326, Issue 6

FEATURES

NEUROSCIENCE

How the Brain ‘Constructs’ the Outside World

Neural activity probes your physical surroundings to select just the information needed to survive and flourish

By György Buzsáki

NEUROSCIENCE

U.S. Kids Are Falling behind Global Competition, but Brain Science Shows How to Catch Up

Paid parental leave and high-quality child care improve children’s brain development and prospects for a better future

By Dana Suskind and Lydia Denworth

PALEONTOLOGY

How Mammals Conquered the World after the Asteroid Apocalypse

They scurried in the shadows of dinosaurs for millions of years until a killer space rock created a new world of evolutionary opportunity

By Steve Brusatte

ASTROPHYSICS

Mysterious Fast Radio Bursts Are Finally Coming into Focus

Twenty years after their initial detection, enigmatic blasts from the sky are starting to deliver tentative answers, as well as plenty of science

By Adam Mann