SCIENCE
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Feeling Overwhelmed by the News? Here’s How to Protect Your Mental Health
It’s February 2025. The world feels like complete chaos, and it’s hard to step away from the news. Maybe your body feels tight, and perhaps your mind is racing. Take a deep breath, then keep reading. It isn’t just you: lots of people have expressed that they have felt overwhelmed and burned out from the events of recent months. Disasters,…
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Math Puzzle: Follow the Calculator Clues
An old calculator uses a seven-segment display, in which numerals are represented by different patterns of vertical and horizontal line segments. But the device is faulty and no longer shows any vertical segments. Someone types a number into this calculator, and the display shows the horizontal segments visible in the top image. Next the person presses the multiplication key and…
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Urgent CDC Data on Influenza and Bird Flu Go Missing as Outbreaks Escalate
Sonya Stokes, an emergency room physician in the San Francisco Bay Area, braces herself for a daily deluge of patients sick with coughs, soreness, fevers, vomiting, and other flu-like symptoms. She’s desperate for information, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a critical source of urgent analyses of the flu and other public health threats, has gone quiet in…
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Penguins Help to Map Antarctica’s Growing Mercury Threat
February 12, 2025 2 min read Penguins Help to Map Antarctica’s Growing Mercury Threat Molted penguin feathers record mercury infiltrating Antarctica’s food web By Gayoung Lee edited by Sarah Lewin Frasier Gentoo penguins have a wide geographic range, making them good targets for follow-up research. David Merron Photography/Getty Images When Philip Sontag first visited Antarctica as a Ph.D. student, he…
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Trump Halts Funding to Build More Electric Vehicle Chargers Nationwide
February 7, 2025 3 min read Trump Halts Funding to Build More Electric Vehicle Chargers Nationwide The Trump administration has halted funding for a $5-billion program that Congress created to help states build out their electric vehicle charging network By Mike Lee & E&E News An electric vehicle at an Electrify America charging station in Atlanta, Ga. Megan Varner/Bloomberg via…
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Elon Musk’s ‘Fork in the Road’ Is Really a Dead End
February 6, 2025 5 min read Why Elon Musk’s ‘Fork in the Road’ Is Really a Dead End Elon Musk’s Fork in the Road isn’t just a sculpture—it’s a monument to the tech world’s obsession with civilizational survival, which has its roots in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence By Rebecca Charbonneau edited by Dan Vergano Unlike the Sistine Chapel-esque utensils…
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H5N9 in Poultry, Tuberculosis Outbreak in Kansas and RFK, Jr.’s Confirmation Hearings
[CLIP: “Let There Be Rain,” by Silver Maple] Rachel Feltman: Happy Monday, listeners! For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman. Hope your February is off to a great start. Let’s kick off the week by catching up on all the science news you might have missed. First, a quick note on some presidential moves that might impact health and…
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The Science of Cynicism and the Transformative Psychological Power of Hope
Rachel Feltman: For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, this is Rachel Feltman. No one wants to be a sucker. But do most of us go too far in our efforts to avoid naivety? In other words, are we all a little overly cynical? My guest today is Jamil Zaki, a professor of psychology at Stanford University. He’s also the author of…
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Expressive Faces Make People More Likable
A skilled card player—eyes hidden by dark shades and features kept as still as possible—looks at their hand. Any small giveaway that they’re bluffing or holding great cards could lose them a painfully large sum of money. Sometimes it helps to have a “poker face.” Yet in day-to-day life—when socializing with family, friends and new acquaintances, for example—you might be…
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Joints Are the Ultimate Flex
Middle age is when you get to know your joints. I have spent the last few years learning that my many youthful party tricks—popping shoulders out of their sockets on a whim, bending elbows backward—had painful long-term consequences. Twenty years of high-impact sports on an imperfect skeleton have also taken their toll. I’m now gritting my teeth through the tiny…
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