Category: 1. Edi-Choice

In December I was in Stockholm, Sweden, for the Nobel Prize award ceremony, a celebration of science and discovery that feels like a national holiday in that country. The week leading up to the awards is stacked with lectures, concerts,…

Theorists have proposed many explanations for consciousness. They are startlingly diverse, with different goals, starting points and even definitions of consciousness. To compare them, researchers surveyed articles suggesting a theoretical model…

This article was made possible by the support of Yakult and produced independently by Scientific American’s board of editors.

After a slip on the ice, a sports injury, even surgery, most people’s instinct is to rest what hurts. “When you…

On Christmas Day 2021, alongside other astronomers, I watched the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) launch from French Guiana and begin its month-long journey to its destination, 1.5 million kilometers from Earth. The trip was filled with many…

Dogs can have wildly different personalities, which often vary by breed and size. Although individual temperament matters most, larger trends can help predict which pooch will be meek and mild and which is most likely to bite the postal worker.

Until half a billion years ago, life on Earth was slow. The seas were home to single-celled microbes and largely stationary soft-bodied creatures. But at the dawn of the Cambrian era, some 540 million years ago, everything exploded. Bodies…

At The White Coat Investor, we talk about risk and cost frequently—usually in terms of the potential to make money or the possibility of losing it. As the first woman physician commercial astronaut who rode into space last year, I think…

The southernmost extent of mainland Canada, along the northern shore of Lake Erie, lies at about the same latitude as Des Moines, Iowa. Though not a “breadbasket” like the grain-producing machine that is the U.S. Midwest, this part of…