Posts

May 21, 2013

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6:57 PM | Physics, Metaphysics and Cosmology Collide in New E-Book, Possibilities in Parallel: Seeking the Multiverse

Parallel universes are a staple of science fiction, and it’s no wonder. They allow us to explore the question, “What if?” in a way that lets us step completely outside of the world we know, rather than question how that world might have turned out differently. For cosmologists, the question isn’t “What if the South [...]

May 14, 2013

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8:59 PM | Congratulations to the winners of the ScienceSeeker Awards!

ScienceSeeker Awards have been announced earlier today. If you are not sure what this is, ScienceSeeker is the main portal for collecting, connecting and filtering science writing online, especially on science blogs (Note: it is a project of ScienceOnline of which I am one of the co-founders and co-chairmen). It is also the main tool [...]

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3:31 PM | The Basics of Good Health is the Subject of New eBook, Eat, Move, Think: Living Healthy

While many of us strive to live healthy lives, the task can be daunting and the information overwhelming. Should we be more concerned with our diet or with keeping our weight down? How important is exercise? What kinds of diseases should we really be worried about? In this eBook, “Eat, Move, Think: Living Healthy,” we’ve [...]

May 10, 2013

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3:22 PM | Moderated Discussion on Social and Emotional Learning: Preparing Our Children to Excel

Monday, May 13, 2013 | 7:00 P.M.–8:30 P.M. The New York Academy of Sciences For more information about the event click here. School has traditionally been about teaching kids new knowledge and skills. Most people have long believed that each child’s temperament and capacity for learning are more or less inborn—or at least, not the [...]

May 06, 2013

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5:40 PM | A Busy Week at Scientific American: Meetings, Events and Honors

One of the pleasures of Scientific American is how very international it is, just like science itself: In addition to the domestic (U.S. and Canada) and global English editions, the magazine is translated into 14 languages. Scientific American Mind also appears in about half a dozen. Last week, representatives of nearly all of them gathered [...]

April 23, 2013

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7:16 PM | Don’t Forget our new eBook Remember When? The Science of Memory

Why can you vividly recall the day your father took you to your first baseball game many years ago, but you can’t remember where you just put the car keys? We tend not to think about it much, but memory is the seat of consciousness. The process of how we remember, how we forget, and [...]

April 12, 2013

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6:21 PM | Scientific American Co-Hosts Whale Tweet-Up at American Museum of Natural History

Captain Ahab went insane chasing the elusive Moby Dick. Good news: you don’t have to suffer a similar fate. On May 1 at 6:30pm, Scientific American will co-host a whale-themed tweet-up and reception in partnership with the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. The event is timed to coincide with the recent [...]

April 09, 2013

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5:22 PM | Earth Day E-Book Examines The Future of Energy: Earth, Wind and Fire

Since the Industrial Revolution our civilization has depended on fossil fuels to generate energy – first it was coal; then petroleum. But there are two problems: the first is that petroleum isn’t an infinite resource; and the second is that burning coal and oil puts billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, trapping [...]

April 03, 2013

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1:48 PM | Kids Check Out Science at the White House

More than 30,000 people visited the White House for the 135th annual Easter Egg Roll on Monday—and I spent several happy hours there myself doing science activities with dozens of kids and their families with the Lawrence Hall of Science. If you couldn’t make it to Washington, D.C., you can find instructions to make the [...]

March 26, 2013

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6:30 PM | New eBook Forever Young: The Science of Aging Investigates Longevity

An infant born in the U.S. today will probably live to see his or her 78th birthday, a 20- year-plus increase over the average lifespan a century ago. As living well into our 80s and 90s becomes more attainable, how many more years can humanity expect to gain going forward? The two main physiological barriers [...]

March 22, 2013

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2:45 PM | Behind the Curtain at Malofiej—Mecca for Visual Journalists

On Saturday, March 8, I arrived in Pamplona, Spain, a familiar destination for many in the information graphics community. Pamplona isn’t the easiest destination in Spain to reach—from anywhere, really. But that seems to have become part of the point. It’s an annual pilgrimage for many visual journalists. And pilgrimages shouldn’t be too easy. This [...]

March 18, 2013

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5:10 PM | Scientific American Graphics Win 3 Bronze Medals at Malofiej

Last week, the world information graphics community convened in Pamplona, Spain, for the 21st annual Malofiej International Infographics Summit and Awards, organized by the Spanish chapter of the Society for News Design. Scientific American won 3 bronze medals in the print category, for “Exoplanets Everywhere” (print version below, web-formatted version here), “Space Age Wasteland” (print [...]

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3:47 PM | New eBook Takes Aim at Understanding Autism

The term “autism” comes from the Greek word “autos,” meaning self, used to describe conditions of social withdrawal—or the isolated self. Around 1910, a Swiss psychiatrist first used the term to refer to certain symptoms of schizophrenia. Later, in the 1940s, physicians Leo Kanner and Hans Asperger independently used that name to describe what was [...]

March 15, 2013

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8:00 PM | Hanging Out with Nobel Prize Winner Sir Harold Kroto

What is it like to win a Nobel Prize? Should you worry about picking something “important” to work on as a scientist? How can art help in trying to understand how the universe works? And what is the real key to success? You can find out by watching today’s Google Science Fair Hangout with Sir [...]

March 13, 2013

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2:00 PM | Scientific American MIND Launches a New Home Page and Blog Network

I am thrilled to announce two big developments for Scientific American MIND today. We are launching a new home page, mind.scientificamerican.com, so that fans of the magazine can find our print and online articles, as well as multimedia, in one convenient location. Starting today, you’ll start to see several new contributors in the mix, which [...]

March 10, 2013

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11:33 PM | Inspiration abounds at SXSW Interactive 2013

Long known as an event for introducing groundbreaking Web sites and Social networking platforms, this year SXSW featured stand outs who provide the infrastructure and a platform which invite and inspire further innovation. Bre Pettis, the Brooklyn, NY based founder and CEO of MakerBot Industries (known for their 3D printers) unveiled the MakerBot Digitizer, a [...]

February 26, 2013

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5:09 PM | Newest Scientific American E-Book Ripped from the Headlines: Cyber Hacking: Wars in Virtual Space

From media and communications to banking, an increasing number of our daily activities is performed online. While this transformation has raised the curtain on exciting new frontiers, it also opens doors to security threats undreamed of by previous generations. In Scientific American’s newest eBook, Cyber Hacking: Wars in Virtual Space, we peer behind the scenes [...]

February 12, 2013

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7:06 PM | No Silly Love Songs? Celebrate Valentine’s Day with Our Latest eBook: Love, Sex and Science

Will “Love Will Keep Us Together” or is it true that “Love Is a Battlefield”? Whereas the topic of romance has provided limitless inspiration for artists, writers and musicians, scientists are just as fascinated by affairs of the heart, though they seldom sing about it. Cupid’s unpredictable arrow explains little, so it can be more [...]

January 16, 2013

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4:35 PM | Humor and Clever Editing Win Iron Egghead Video Contest

Cups, balls, paperclips, rubber bands, string, pens, a writing surface and your own body: these are the simple, commonly found ‘ingredients’ that we asked you to use as part of Scientific American’s Iron Egghead video contest. Could you explain a part, process or system of the human body using only these everyday implements and a [...]

January 09, 2013

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9:25 PM | Scientific American’s latest eBook takes A Look Back at The Best of 2012

It’s hard to believe that 2012 has come to a close. Lucky for us, the year saw some amazing science, and in this eBook, we’ve compiled Scientific American’s best stories of 2012 with an eye on content, authorship and news value. Section 1 kicks off with some award-winners. First up, SA editor Katherine Harmon’s story [...]

December 21, 2012

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1:54 PM | The Banana That Gave Its All for Science

Magicians need to resort to trick props to pull a rabbit out of a hat. But we pulled DNA out of a banana with nothing more than a few household ingredients during a Scientific American Google Hangout on December 20. (See Scientific American Goes Bananas on December 20. No artifice or foolery was involved: just [...]

December 19, 2012

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6:55 PM | Scientific American Goes Bananas on December 20

That’s right. Using ordinary household items and a humble piece of fruit, we’re going to perform a seemingly magical feat of science while you watch on a Google Science Fair Hangout on December 20 at 1 p.m. EST: we will get strands of DNA out of a banana. (Scientific American is a partner in the [...]

December 05, 2012

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2:00 PM | Watch: How Do Knees Work? An Iron Egghead Sample Video

Can you explain science with seven everyday items? We’re looking for some creative minds to explain how a part of the human body works, or how a process occurs in it, in two minutes or less. No fancy equipment is needed, either—a smartphone camera will do. For inspiration, take a gander at this sample video, [...]

December 03, 2012

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10:33 PM | Want a Free Scientific American Subscription? Enter Our Iron Egghead Video Contest

Can you explain science with seven everyday items? We’re looking for some creative minds to say how a part of the human body works, or how a process occurs in the body, in two minutes or less. No fancy equipment is needed—a smartphone camera will do. Winners will be featured on the Scientific American web [...]

November 14, 2012

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7:00 PM | Storytelling with Big Data: Thoughts on VISUALIZED

As an attendee at the inaugural VISUALIZED conference last week in New York City, I was ready to experience, as the website described, “an inspiring two-day gathering with the brightest minds and social innovators from around the world who are changing how we understand and interact with data; and gain insight into designing data-driven narratives [...]

November 13, 2012

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11:13 PM | Storm Warnings: Climate Change and Extreme Weather–SA‘s Latest E-Book

Scientific American launched its e-Book program this summer, starting with The Science of Sports: Winning in the Olympics. Each month, we add new titles selected from the most relevant issues facing science today. For November, we turn our attention to our immediate environment. Hurricanes. Blizzards. Flooding. Drought. If extreme weather events like these seem to be [...]

October 25, 2012

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10:51 PM | Playing Politics: The Science of Elections–SA‘s Latest E-Book

Scientific American launched its e-Book program this summer, starting with The Science of Sports: Winning in the Olympics. Each month, we add new titles selected from the most relevant issues facing science today. For October, our newest e-Book reminds readers that politics makes strange bedfellows. This maxim becomes even more vivid when politics is put under [...]

October 04, 2012

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5:00 PM | A Defense of Artistic License in Illustrations of Scientific Concepts

The other day, my own hypocrisy slapped me in the face. I was looking at a quantum illustration. One for which I had just encouraged an artist to develop a dimensional and detailed representation of a particle, that—by the author’s own admission—may or may not exist. And if it does exist, we certainly know nothing [...]

October 02, 2012

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8:35 PM | Scientific American’s Growing Catalogue of E-Book Titles Includes HIV and AIDS, Exploring Mars, The Higgs Boson and More

Scientific American launched its e-Book program this summer, starting with The Science of Sports: Winning in the Olympics. Each month, we will add new titles selected from the most relevant issues facing science today. We are delighted to announce that our e-Books for the end of the summer and early fall seasons are available. Keep [...]

September 21, 2012

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3:43 PM | SA Biology Blogger Wins L’Oreal For Women in Science Fellowship

The Miss America pageant is often judged to be somewhat of an insult to women. So I was once surprised to learn that the Miss America Organization is the world’s largest provider of scholarship assistance to younger women. A total of $45 million in cash and scholarships was given out last year by MAO and [...]