Science

Atherosclerosis, the accumulation of fatty plaques in the arteries that causes restricted blood flow, is responsible for most heart attacks and strokes – but it often builds up slowly and…

GLP-1 weight-loss drugs are transformational. From helping people lose weight to controlling their blood sugar to tamping down inflammation and improving heart health, these medications herald a new age of…

Older adults at risk of dementia improved their memory, thinking skills, and overall cognitive performance after taking part in two culturally adapted lifestyle programs across 11 Latin American countries. The…

For the past 50 years, the global race for commercial nuclear fusion has been utterly dominated by the “Tokamak”—a massive, perfectly symmetrical donut-shaped reactor designed to magnetically contain superheated plasma….

Charles Dickens is like William Shakespeare: most of his stories are timeless, and can be transplanted into any setting. Take A Christmas Carol for example: it can be a drama,…

A large study involving more than 270,000 people suggests that one common amino acid may be tied to how long men live. Researchers led by Jie V. Zhao, Yitang Sun,…

Scientists have to follow the data, even if it doesn’t make sense. This is the situation that researchers recently found themselves in when analyzing the flow of rivers in the…

Cells do not have brains. Yet somehow, as an organism grows, cells know where to go and what to be without top-down direction. And acting together, cells are collectively intelligent,…

The sunlight arriving at Earth this moment left the Sun’s visible surface a little over eight minutes ago. The energy carried by it may have begun moving out of the…

On Sept. 6, 1947, a rocket launched from an aircraft carrier for the first time. The V-2 rocket was captured from a German manufacturing site by the Allied forces at…

Why are some societies ruled by autocrats—powerful people who make all the decisions with barely, if any, checks and balances—while in others, the governed actually have a say? If you…

The cultural relevance of Back to the Future is indisputable. Not only did the 1985 classic film utterly change the way we talk about time travel stories, but the film…

In a surprisingly common disorder known as trichotillomania, people compulsively pull out their own hair as a way of self-soothing. But sometimes, this disorder can lead to more serious complications…

Rachel Feltman: For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman. I’m just old enough to remember a time when using websites and apps to go on dates was the exception,…

The prospect of fusion power plants is coming closer. But what are the lessons fusion can learn from nuclear fission in areas such as regulation, planning, public approval and finance?…

Identifying distinctive types of conditions like diabetes is helpful in two ways. It means treatments can be personalized more precisely to individuals, and gives researchers a better idea of how…

There are a lot of weird stars in the universe, but if I had to pick the very weirdest, it would be S301. The name is prosaic, but it hides…

We’ve made some drastic changes to ocean ecosystems in the past century. One of the stranger patterns to appear in this is a global proliferation of tentacled creatures known as…

Fusion’s push toward commercial power is creating a new challenge for the industry to produce enough specialized material for the magnets that control the reaction. Bruker Energy & Supercon Technologies…

About 8,000 people in the U.K. are living with Huntington’s disease, a devastating inherited condition that gradually affects movement, thinking and mood. Now, an advanced type of MRI scan could…

Parents strive to support their children’s physical and mental well-being, whether it’s constant cross-town drives to karate, mashing a million peas, or absorbing countless CoComelon marathons.  Adopting a pet is…

Photo Credit: American Fusion Nuclear fusion firm American Fusion is preparing another round of plasma experiments around its Texatron concept after receiving a portable vacuum vessel.  The system is designed…

“Onward and Upward” Mission of Isar Aerospace – YouTube Watch On No rocket has ever reached orbit from European soil — but that could change today. The German company Isar…

You have two nails in the wall and a painting with a string on its back, which can easily be rested on the nails to hang the painting. If you…

Biomedical engineers at Duke University have created an injectable biomaterial that may help the brain recover from damage left behind by an ischemic stroke. In experiments with mice, the material…

28 Days Later is hugely significant for many reasons: it was a key film in the 2000s zombie revival, it was a British production that competed with the best American…

Before birth, the human brain is assembled through an enormous series of cellular choices. At the center of this process are radial glia, a special type of stem cell that…

Early on Thursday morning technical researcher Eric Lu sparked worldwide excitement and confusion by posting a sequence of 130 digits on X (formerly Twitter). The reason for the uproar over…

A superconducting material being considered for future fusion magnets turned amorphous under intense electron irradiation, while a rival material retained its crystal structure. The stark contrast between Bi-2212 and Nb3Al…